well, this is a bit late, but better late than never.
brian and i, along with his younger sister whitney and her friend chris, went snowshoeing on valentine's day. we got up early and got to the trail head at rock canyon shortly after 7am. it had snowed a lot that night and was still snowing, which seemed like good snowshoeing weather to me. we got started with the absolute goal of making it to squaw peak.
there wasn't much of a trail for us (and we later realized that the trail we were following was three guys hiking up just ahead of us without snowshoes on--we couldn't belive people could make it all the way up there without snowshoes), but we carried on. the steep parts once the trail forked were quite challenging. i remember at one point when i was leading the way thinking "i just.....have to make..... it....to that tree....up there."
we finally made it up to the top and it was really cool. it was so snowy (we were really socked in) that you couldn't see anything down in the valley. we had to remind ourselves to stay away from the edge since it seemed so inocuous (as if you really wouldn't fall hundreds of feet down if you went over). we took some pictures at the top, but whitney discovered just how cold it was up there since she almost immediately lost feeling in her fingers when she took off her gloves to snap the pics.
the hike down is always colder (and it didn't help that i fell down a lot), but we did ok until we made it to the fork in the trail. at that point the wind and snow seemed particularly strong, and it just felt really, really cold. poor brian got very cold...so we really snowshoe walked fast to make it back to our car.
once we got back home it still took us awhile to actually and fully warm up, but finally we did. although there were times when we felt super cold (at least me and brian), it was a lot of fun. it was really pretty up there and cool to actually make it to squaw peak. now we'll have to make it there when the weather's warm and summery to compare which time of year is the best time to summit the peak.
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2 comments:
Personally, I hate being cold like that. I have such terrible circulation in both my fingers and toes you might of had to cut some off.
interesting to think about having to consciously remember to not go close to the edge because of the appearance. I'm glad you were so careful. It sounds like it was bitter cold. Makes me think that when I say I'd rather be cold than hot, maybe that's not true!
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