Day 47 (June 11, 2021)

801.6 to 815.4 (14.8 miles)

I had learned something about the snow yesterday. First, despite the forecast, the low temperatures were near freezing. Though this didn’t stop the melting, it was enough to refreeze the top layer of snow and support my weight during the morning hours. So that meant getting going earlier, which I did. Second, I have started to learn that I could reasonably guess what snow would support me based on its look, at least before it started turning slushy. It wasn’t a guarantee, but it helped.

The wind had died down. Yeah. And the early start helped. Though a little slippery, the crusted snow early in the day helped a lot. And not much of the early going had slopes either, which also helped. I hoped it would help make up for the low mileage of the previous day.

It did for a while. There were less snowfields and slopes, until Blue Lake. Blue Lake itself is still partially frozen over. The trail goes up the west side of the lake in the trees. Sure enough, large snow drifts. I stupidly tried. Nope. Once again, reverse course, climb up to the ridge hoping it was clear (on the west side it was) and navigate back to the trail. This time the trail was actually on the other side of a drainage, so a little extra bushwhacking was required back up a draw to get to it. Better than traversing snow drifts on a slope, but still slowed things down.

Cool animal sighting today, a ptarmigan. The are great at camouflage; I would have stepped on this one if they had not moved.

Mid afternoon I checked the map for a possible campsite. There was a possible one just before I thought I would stop and the next was after trail with a steep slope right before sunset. Never easy.

It got hard again with snow late in the afternoon Including some steep traverses. The real excitement came nearing my intended campsite. It was at the end of a steep descent. Well, the descent was north facing and completely snow covered. Though with the slushy snow I could walk down, it would be not fun and would take a while. It was obvious others had glissade down. Well, so would I. I got out my ice axe (to control my descent speed) and away I went. Since the snow was slushy, I could control my speed well. I then realized others had stopped their glissade about halfway down for some reason. Whoa. I stopped mine as well to see my path turned into a stream! Yikes. I had to shift over to a new path and finish the glissade. I had dropped about 800 feet into the valley.

Once I found my campsite (which took longer than it should have since I thought I knew better than my nav app) I looked back up at the glissade path I took. Boy was it steep. And I could now see another path some others had taken down a longer chute. It looked like the better choice. Oh well. Looking ahead at the first part of the trail for tomorrow provided no encouragement as it was on steep slope with lots of snow. 14.8 miles. That was a lot of work for that mileage. Not encouraging at all.