We got up early to take advantage of the early morning crusty snow and we were on trail by 6. I wish we had gotten up even earlier. The hiking was a breeze. The snow was so hard and crusty that even Memphis wasn't postholing.
We made really good time going well over 2 mph. We made it 8 miles by 10 and had hopes that we'd cover the daily goal of 15 miles easily. That didn't happen. Around 11 we hit a section of really soft snow. It was just Memphis and me again at this point and we were postholing like crazy. It took us until 1230 to cover about 3/4 a mile.
We found a dry spot and grabbed lunch while talking about what to do. We still had 4.5 miles to go to reach our goal, but that would mean spending the entire 8 hours of the day postholing to get there. I suggested we just setup camp here and wait for the snow to get crusty again. Yesterday after 6 the snow firmed up a bunch and we were able to hike much better. The was also a full moon so if we night hiked on that crusty snow we had this morning we'd make great time. Memphis agreed so we setup our tents and waited.
I was really happy with our choice when some thunderstorms rolled in around 4 and rained. It was a really cold rain. Postholing in that would have sucked. Unfortunately the rain kept the snow warm so it didn't harden. We ended up staying on that ridge the rest of the day testing the snow every two hours.
No comments:
Post a Comment