5.5 miles of hiking • 500' elevation gain • 1 night
My friend Kevin & I tried to cross-country 5.5 miles through untouched powder to Thomas Lake in Indian Heaven, couldn't find our way across a creek for almost a mile, climbed a hill too steep to be enjoyable while mashing through two feet of powder, figured out the dumb navigational mistake we had made straight from the trailhead (taking trail 150 southwest instead of road 3053 southeast because it seemed like the obvious route and so we didn't consult the map/compass), and eventually settled in for the night less than halfway from our goal in a beautiful clearing we stumbled across.
It was both of our first times camping in truly winter conditions, and with the forecasted low at 6º and three feet of snow underfoot, it was definitely wintery. We compacted a large platform, flattened it out, let it set, set up our shelter, dug an entryway, and collected a large amount of standing dead wood in the immediate area for a fire that ended up burning over 5 hours.
It was cold. Our avacado froze, as did our hard boiled eggs for breakfast. Our gas canisters hardly worked. Our fingers hardly worked, for that matter. In the morning, I woke up with a layer of snow between my sleeping bag and my bivy sack. Little snow trees were dangling like cobwebs above our faces from breath in the morning. The siberian husky that came with us, Miko, opted to sleep outside the tarp and woke up covered in frost and just shook it off. Tough mother...
Blue skies both days, and so beautiful getting to explore still woods without a trail.
Awesome.
