Fifteen tents in camp and who’s the last to leave? It’s not a trick question. There were only 2 women in camp last night and everyone is well aware that Ivy is always faster than us. Since women are slower than men in most/all ways (this is not a controversial statement to start an argument, just a simple fact—deal with it) we were the last ones out. It wasn’t because we were waiting on my pack to be finished packing. I even went over and started talking to the only guy left in camp, Daniel (not that Daniel), trying to slow him down so we’d have a chance. It almost worked. We walked out right behind him.
We didn’t hit any snow until almost 200 yards down the trail. We should have stopped and put on our spikes, but we saw Daniel just ahead of us flying over the snow packs without any problem. I gallantly let Bunny lead (she actually prefers to have me behind her and I’m afraid to have her out of my sight, I never know if she’ll push me from behind forgetting that we don’t have life insurance). As long as we didn’t look down the slopes, everything was fine. If I looked down, I got a feeling of vertigo. Probably not the best phobia to have at 8400’ elevation.
After about a mile of this, we turned a corner and could see nothing but white as far as the eye could see. It’s not really that bad, I have glaucoma and am extremely near-sighted so maybe it wasn’t all that far. Nonetheless, I suggested we stop and put on our micro-spikes. The change in our speed was noticeably faster. We went from a 40 minute mile to a 38 minute mile. It was like we were flying. We even caught up with Daniel in another half mile. Never mind that he was stopped for a snack.
We started seeing day hikers after a while and they weren’t wearing anything on their feet (other than shoes and socks—no spikes). They told us it was snowy all the way to the saddle junction but then the trail heading down into town was clear for the most part. We thought we’d be able to keep up with Daniel since we were wearing spikes and he wasn’t. We were wrong. When he started heading down at the junction, we told him to let people in our tramily know we had survived the 4 mile walk in the snow and ice and we’d eventually make it to town. Even though this was all snow and ice today, it was still much better than the over 5000’ of elevation gain we had yesterday.
It was a beautiful clear day on a Saturday so there were lots of people out. We ran into well over 50 people climbing the trail to the saddle junction. What they were going to do once they made it to the top and all the snow, I had no idea. For a slight change of pace, I tried talking to several of the people we passed. I know this is a little out of character for me, but I’m trying to come out of my shell a bit.
When we did make it to the bottom, we ran into the sheriff and a deputy out on scare patrol. They tried to tell us to skip Fullers Ridge when we go back out because they almost had to go rescue a couple of girls who lost the trail in all the snow. From the looks of one of the guys, I’m not sure he had ever ventured further from his car than the donut shop, but I could be mistaken. I’m sure it was all muscle in front.
I tried to yogi a ride to town out of them but they weren’t going for it. They kept telling me our lodge was not far at all, especially compared to what we had already hiked. Two and a half not trail miles is about two and a half more miles than I like to hike when off 5he trail. We thought we’d try walk8ng and a generous person would offer us a ride. After a half mile, we could see we couldn’t rely upon the generosity of strangers and decided to use our thumbs. Also, to no avail. It took us an hour to walk all the way into town.
As usual, we were the last to arrive. Everyone else had already taken showers and offered to wait for us to do the same. Insisted, almost, but Bunny was ready to eat. When Bunny is hungry, that means now! She turns into a killer bunny with huge nasty teeth. The only thing that will stop her is a holy hand grenade or food. We chose the food as the easier option since we had forgotten the launch sequence.
We kind of went separate ways for a bit after lunch with Bunny insisting upon a visit to the grocery store for breakfast fixing and beer. (Surely everyone has had beer on corn flakes at least once in their lives.) We also contacted Andy and Jayne once the beast was tamed to let them know we are in town. We had met them on our 3rd or 4th day on the trail and have been communicating with them. We were hoping that they might join us for another section of trail, but the timing didn’t quite work for them right now, but they are going to come up and spend some time with us tomorrow.
We got caught up with everyone’s day at lunch. Ivy had taken a small spill (which we saw the slide marks in the snow) and then put on her spikes after the fall. It was actually her fall streak that had inspired us to don ours. Wolf had made it safely across the snow without incident only to step over some rocks on the trail into town and twist his ankle. It was swollen but didn’t appear to have anything majorly wrong. Kevin is young. He had no problems at all. He was first in town and headed straight to the bakery for food while the rest of us caught up.
After my forced shopping trip, we headed back to the house. To everyone’s relief, we showered and did laundry. Wolf and Kevin went out and bought fixings for nachos with ice cream for dessert. Between the nachos, ice cream, and beer, we watched TV and forgot all about going out for supper. Can you imagine—thru-hikers making due with only two meals in a day?
EFG
Episode #7 of our trail odyssey