Attempted Death By Mountain

Yesterday I dressed warmly, strapped on a snow shovel and a pair of snowshoes, and headed mountainward in search of deep enough snow to snowshoe in.

As I arrived at Water Canyon, a state police cruiser was exiting. As I parked, a four-wheel drive two truck arrived and started to head up the ice-packed road. I went up trail 13, one of my favorites, because there was certain to be snow on top.

On the way up I encounted lots of snow 8 inches or deeper. All powder, and all in shady areas on the sides of the mountain. No chance for snowshoeing, but it did make the hike extra tiresome as I plowed through it all.

The hike up was amazingly quiet. The air was perfectly still, and the canyon was deathly quiet.

Up top, the stillness ended, and a bitter cold wind blew across the mesa. I'd packed with the plan that I'd add my windproof layers last, but I was too warm for the stuff on top of my pack and needed the shells, so it was a pain to dig them out. At some point, I took my googles off, and forgot to put them back on. I'm not really sure how long I had them off, but I didn't seem to burn my retinas, so it must have been thankfully short.

I took a few silly pictures of myself up top with my camera in the self-timer mode balanced on my snow shovel which was on top of a mound of snow. I set up my hammock and laid around for a while looking up at how crisply green the trees were above me (in retrospect, it was probably the tint of my googles that made them look so good), and then headed back down. Descending the trail was a lot more treacherous than ascending it had been, but I made it.

I took pictures, but I'm not sure any of them are interesting enough for a follow up post, but I might put some up anyway.