Day 2
Trail Miles 4.2
Actual Miles Hiked 6.5
I woke early and watched Aidan sleep for about an hour. So relaxed and wonderful.
Then coffee, then toaster pastry and cheeses and dried fruit and nuts.
Then more snow and snowshoeing and exhausting route finding. Maybe one or two people went this way a few days ago. Maybe the snow just melts in a way that looks like footprints. Who can tell, really?
Lots of confusion. The maps on one device didn’t match the maps on the apps. Wandering around in the trees cussing. Aidan’s water bladder leaked, cascading two liters on the inside of his pack and poured right out the bottom, so we found a lunch spot and spread all his gear out to dry.
Thirty people trotted up the trail. They said they just followed our snowshoe prints to get to our spot – they figured we knew where we were going since we had snowshoes – and by the way, do you know which way to the ridge?
Fresh bear tracks, they said, on top of your tracks in the snow.
We finally crested the ridge after a brutal uphill, then down the other side and wound around, eventually landing at a little cabin in the woods. We took a break there, then pushed on through more brutal snowshoe climbing and up to another ridge.
The great thing about snowshoeing – it doesn’t really matter which route you take as long as you are headed in the general direction of the trail. Trouble is, snowshoes are so heavy and clumsy and tiring whether you wear them or carry them.
We camped on a high ridge, snow icing impressive peaks all around.
TVP, jalapeño, tomato flakes, mashed around in some potatoes totally hit the spot.
I fell into a hard sleep beneath a ten foot wall of snow.