About 30-40% of the trail was under snow, which was very slushy and icy. We had told John, "Oh, we'll see snow, but we won't get very close to it." We were very wrong. We had a lot of snow that day. We got snowed, sleeted, and rained on, but nothing that lasted more than just a couple of minutes. The trail was not too crowded, people passed us every 10-20 minutes or so... There were a couple of spots which were scary, one was a ledge of snow that sloped steeply down to the lake on one side, and another part was so steep and icy that if you lost your footing you would slide on your bottom the whole way back down. We both ended up on our bottoms on the snow once or twice. But it was fun, and Emerald Lake at the end (the ice covered lake) was very beautiful. And COLD!
John did a great job riding in the pack. He walked a little on our downhill trek.
We were about a 1/4 of a mile from the bottom on the way back, when all of the sudden he said "Where's my Bee?" Tony and I just looked at each other... FORTUNATELY, it was only about 1/3 of a mile back, which was low enough on the trail I didn't have to climb through snow to get it! Whew!
We had a great time! It was exactly what I had in mind when I planned the trip, although I didn't think there would be so much snow!
[For some reason, this album is playing in reverse order, and no matter what I do, it plays in this order... so just know that the two pics of John hiking with Tony are the end of the sequence, and Tony standing in front of the lake is the first one... Not that it matters.]
4 comments:
thanks for sharing - those r great pics.....looks like a good trip...mom
Wow! Impressive!
sooooo glad bee (and everyone) made it back safely.
did you have issues with the altitude? i can't hardly breathe at the top of our stairs at about 20 feet above sea level these days!
The first 20-30 minutes were tough for me, but after that I adjusted and did alright, even as we went up in altitude.
I was headache-y the second day we were in Denver, but that was about it. I got out of breath hiking, but that's normal for me.
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