We had a nice late fall storm blow through Thursday and Friday. When it finally cleared it revealed snow-covered peaks! Ellen asked if I was interested in hiking with her and Jessa up the Miller Canyon trail today and I agreed, not knowing how deep the snow was or how long we would be on the trail. I opted to take Zeke on this hike as he's great in the snow. We met at 7:15am at the Miller Canyon trail head parking lot and took off. It was still very cold in the shade. Zeke was excited to be on the trail and ran back and forth between the front (Jessa) and the rear (me).
"We should put a GPS on that dog to see how far he actually goes!" said Jessa. Zeke kept that up for four miles. When we reached the bath tub he slowed down a lot and stayed behind me.
I had a hard time getting into the hike. I haven't been hiking as much as I had been, and I know I need to maintain my conditioning. Today I kept thinking about the upcoming scandal at the shelter again, and the town council meeting that I'm sure will be another media scandal. My mind couldn't stop thinking about it all. I was the slowest of the three, but Ellen and Jessa always took breaks to wait for me.
There wasn't as much snow on the ground as I expected. The first mile was snow-free. Then I noticed powdered frost a mile on the trail, which turned to a light coating of snow. The heaviest sections were those in the shade, but the snow never covered my Kayland boots. I'm estimating three to five inches of snow at most, and many sections seemed to have some melting by the time we came down.
My feet and hands were warm in my triple layer of tops. I wore my wide-brim hat which kept my head warm but not my ears. I had on brown ski pants which perhaps were frivolous as Jessa wore jeans and was quite fine. My Kayland boots are stiff but kept me warm and provided traction.
The sun finally got over the mountains to bring light in at 8:41am as we were three miles up. That helped get us energized, but the many shaded sections were more than the sun, which didn't help the photographs until we were on the Crest Trail.
We got to the bath tub at 10:33am where I took my first snack break with Zeke. The bath tub water was cold and clear, with the usual pine needles on the bottom of the tub. Zeke didn't show much interest in drinking. I had carried two gallons of water with me for the two of us and he probably didn't more than a pint today.
It was a bit chilly here higher up. We were still 2.5 miles from the peak and even though the grade now was not so extreme, I still had to take short breaks. Jessa and Ellen took off at the peak trail and when I got to the peak at 12:21pm I couldn't find them. They had found a wind-free boulder to hide behind and eat lunch that was off the trail and out of sight.
I was there for ten minutes on that blustery peak wondering where they were. I had to hold on to my hat as that wind blew! Four soldiers came up and wanted me to take their picture of them holding the US flag. I happily obliged. It's the 72nd anniversary of Pearl Harbor today, and I found it befitting that these four soldiers from B Co, 305th MI BN would want to showcase the flag.
We all were anxious to get off that blustery peak, though. The soldiers ran down, we were much slower, but we did meet them near the peak trail intersection where they ate lunch before running past us again. The guys had flattened whatever snow there was for us.
Ellen had stopped several times on the hike to either take layers off or add new ones. I never took anything off. I unzipped my outer wind breaker and my wool zipper sweater. The wind chill did me in, and as long as there was snow below us, we were cold. Once we left the snow level, things warmed up and I even took off my gloves.
Zeke did very well today. He did surprisingly well on the distance since he doesn't normally go on hikes, but away from Sadie and Minnie he does quite well UNTIL he sees other people approaching and especially with another dog. A father-son duo past us as we rested near the creek on our way down, with their young hound which they adopted from the Benson shelter a few months ago. I quickly put Zeke on a leash. Zeke barked at the dog, the dogs sniffed, and all was fine.
We got back to the cars at 3:45pm. My right knee and left ankle are going to be hurting tomorrow. When I got home at 4pm Kevin was doing the finishing touches on a full chicken dinner, and even Eric joined in when he got home from work.
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