Posted by 22 mile
Today felt like one of the hardest hiking days I’ve ever done. My day started out fine with some easy trail walking with several snow traverses, all with a nice hard surface to cruise across.
Around 10am I reached Blue Lake and from there things progressed down hill. Having just descended from height a huge climb was immediately required back up a 12,000 feet. The hiking is fine, its the altitude I’m struggling with. Each climb seems to be a slow plod placing one foot in front of the other and utilising my hiking poles and upper body to assist pulling my self up. It is slowing me down considerably, dropping my average pace of 2.5 miles/hour to 1.5 to 2 miles.
Having reached the top of this climb I was confronted with another immediate drop back down to new valley floor however on a north western face covered in a long snowy traverse. The time of day meant that snows had soften to a point where each step would break through an icy crust on top and sink into the soft snow below. Think of it like an icy creme brûlée.
The traverse was challenging and slow, often each step would sink up to a knee’s depth and occasionally up to thighs.
Having made successfully negotiating the traverse across a mile or so I reached the valley floor and found a suitable spot by a river to stop for lunch. Just as I had everything out the skies darkened and the air temperature immediately dropped. A storm was brewing above and in a matter of minutes I found myself huddled under my umbrella as the skies opened and small marble sized hail fell from the skies. I quickly slipped on rain gear and smashed down a quick lunch. Just as I was about to get back into hiking the storm cleared just as quickly as it arrived. The sun shone through again and the air temperature returned to a warm day. I was just headed uphill again and had to stop and pulled off rain gear again as it would be too warm to hike in.
The remainder of the day saw a huge number of steep and sloppy snow traverses, all slowing progress with deep postholing with each foot placement. Time was getting on and it felt like I was not making much progress. With so much snow there is basically no trail and often relying on the foot marks of hikers who had gone through the day before. Many times theses would lead me astray having to pull out my phone and check positioning against where the trail should be underneath.
By 6pm I was up to eye balls in snow and sick of it. Looking ahead I had another 1.4 miles more of traversing which was going to catch me out. On a steep, steep hill side I could see that a previous hiker had glissaded down to the valley floor, a steep and horrifying run out. Following suit but without the glissade I bailed straight down hill to the valley floor to walk up along side the river where I could see dry ground on the opposite side. Why push through snow for another 1.4 miles when an obvious easier path was right in front on me. So that is exactly what I did.
Reaching the Adam’s Fork on the river I called it a day wet and cold.
Mick Beckers 