Hard Day on the Snow
6/18/04
What an awkward night of sleep. Since I was on snow again, there were several contributing factors to my clumsy slumber. Snow is cold, so uninsulated contact is bad. My ground sheet is slippery, so everything wanted to move, yes, you guessed it, to the uninsulated places. Plus, I did a lousy job of leveling the floor, so my head was lower than my shoulders and the sleeping area was tilted.

Amazingly though I slept reasonably well. We got out of camp on time, which on this cold morning we had agreed would be 8:15. The first 100 yards of trail was...trail. Then a snowbank. An icy snowbank. Gottago and I could make it. She has 8-point crampons (Kahtoolas), and I have 6-pointers (Thanks Matt!!). Spur has crampons suitable for level sidewalks, and Apple Pie has paste-on crampons.

So Gottago and I stayed on the Highline Trail while Apple Pie and Spur dropped down into a burned area to bushwack around the steep snow. To condense the day, Gottago and I stayed high all day, and Spur and Apple Pie stayed low (and beat us).

It was a hard day. But it wasn't much hiking. We had crampons on and ice axes in hand for 5 hours, and we only covered a few miles. We were doing light-duty mountaineering. It took the two of us 5 hours to go 2 miles. Most every step had to be considered, kicked, placed, and evaluated before repeating the process. Corresponding to each step or two was placement of our ice axes on the uphill side and trecking pole on the downhill side. Sometimes steps slipped. It's full body walking requiring complete attention.

When we got to the first junction, we saw a note from Apple Pie and Spur with a time of 1.5 hours earlier. We were reunited a short time later. We hiked through more snow, over Swiftcurrent Pass, and down, down, down to Many Glacier, a spot in the park with hotels and shiny people. And restaurant food.

Coming down Swiftcurrent Pass toward Many Glacier

We've got a hotel room which stinks, mostly due to my socks and shoes. We keep all the shoes in the room closet, which has a door. Did I mention that we decided to take a zero here? We weren't even supposed to stop here, but after the physically demanding time we had, we decided it would be good. Plus we got in late and would have needed to get an early start to make the miles to the next site. (A 'zero' is short for a zero-mile day, a day when there's no hiking at all. Zeros are when I get lots of chores done, rest my body, and get to know my fellow hikers a little better. It means two nights off the trail.) Apple Pie and I shared a bed.
- posted by Monkey Mind @ 9:36 PM