Hike #2 2021

January 2, 2021

Following our somewhat uneventful hike yesterday where our views were virtually non-existent, we chose a trail that offers 360 degree views to make up for it. We arrived at the trailhead 20 minutes earlier than expected thanks to smooth sailing on the highway, which can be unusual during ski season. Since we got to the trailhead before 7am, the sun had not risen yet and the moon still illuminated the sky. We slowly gathered our gear and put the dogs shoes on and were out on the trail before the sun had a chance to come over the mountains. It was a chilly 8 degrees out with clear skies and little wind, though this changed as we hiked out of the trees.

This trail consists of lots of uphill to get to an alpine lake. We’ve never done this trail in the winter time so we were looking forward to seeing what the mountains look like covered in snow. The first and last mile are some of the steeper sections of the trail, but the farther we hiked up the better the views became.

Maxi and Zeus wore their bandanas from @nomadic.tails for this hike.

After hiking a half mile or so, the sun began to rise and lit up the tops of the surrounding mountains. Unfortunately, with the sun came the wind. We were fairly protected when we were in the trees, but could see how strong the wind was when we looked at the mountain tops. We knew once out of the trees it would get gusty. See the picture below.

At around 3 miles in Scott noticed Zeus was missing one of his back booties. Since I wasn’t sure how deep the snow would become as we reached the top I decided to jog back down the trail to find it (instead of picking it up on our way back down). I thought it might just be around the last corner, but it ended up being a good half mile back down the trail. I’m glad I found it because the snow did in fact get deep higher up, it’s just funny how neither Scott or I saw it come off.

By this point the wind had really picked up as you can see from the snow blowing off the mountains in the pictures below. Though we didn’t have much shelter from the gusts, it helped cool us down from the elevation gain we had just done. This was also where the trail ended up disappearing. Up to this point the trail had been nice and compacted and easy to follow, but because of the wind up here, thick layers of snow had covered the trail and also created big snow banks. Though we had planned to reach the lake, it would be exhausting for both humans and dogs to break trail for another half mile in these conditions, so we opted to hike up a little farther to one of the overlooks.

Right after this spot the snow started to get deep. So deep I was post-holing through the snow up to my thighs and having to pull myself out. It’s times like these that we wished we had snowshoes, but because 95% of the trail was compacted they would have just been extra weight to carry anyway.

Though Zeus doesn’t mind hopping through deep snow, it exhausts Maxi quickly so while Scott held onto the dogs, I made my way up and down the trail to the overlook so that the dogs could make it up with ease. Fortunately it did get more compacted again once we reached our picture taking location.

Just behind Zeus’s head is where the lake is. It looked totally frozen over and covered in snow.

Also please enjoy the pictures below of Maxi rubbing his face in the snow, adding to his already very frozen beard.

This was the view looking back down the trail.

What goes up must come down, right? These pictures don’t do it justice for how steep some of the inclines were, but we were able to slide down them on our boots (boot ski if you will) with a little pull from the dogs.

Look at Maxi’s very frozen beard.

We hiked 8.22 miles with 2,006 feet of elevation gain to reach an elevation of 12,000 feet.