The trail was groomed and firm so we hiked up in 1:50 even with the heavy packs. We arrived and decided not to head back out so we settled in. We did a lot of snow clearing and the snow was starting to come down.
Every time someone had to use the outhouse we were digging more snow. But that was just Sunday.
Monday we awoke to a lot of new snow. We took the opportunity to get in a workout and headed out on Cal's Trail and then off towards Puyallup Ridge. The open areas had some significant drifting going on and we found a couple of places where we postholed to our crotches.
We arrived at the corner for the turn to Snow Trooper's Point and elected to head back. The wind was really picking up and the snow was coming down relentlessly.
We arrived just as the last of the Sunday night guests were readying for the descent and eventually it was just Pam, Garry and I. The rest of the expected guests used the "discretion is the better part of valor" approach and stayed home so we had the cabin that sleeps 14 guests and 3 ski patrollers to ourselves.
We were back on the trail at 7:10 for the trip down. We were breaking trail the whole way. The first 3 miles or so were fairly easy with an average 8 inches of compression under the snowshoes except for open areas where there was a lot of drifting snow. The last 1.5 miles or so was much worse and took us nearly 1.5 hours to complete. All in all we were back at the car - now a snow cocoon - in 2:45 including some trail maintenance removing some heavy branches that broke under the weight of the snow.
We spent 15 minutes digging the car free and slid our way down the road into Ashford.
Pam says that even knowing what we now know she wouldn't change a thing and I am going to have to agree. The peaceful night at Copper Creek was more than worth the tough snowshoe down.
Be very well and more soon....
Damnnnnnn... that's a lot of snow...
ReplyDelete