If you can't beat them, join 'em! This was my motto today. I had two choices based on the weather reports. I could hike in torrential rain storms with thunder likely, or I could go to the mountains and hike in blizzards with thunder likely. The mountains were calling, much to the great joy of the wolf. As we drove east on Hwy 84 through the Gorge toward Mt. Hood, the rain was so intense that I had to turn my windshield wipers on high. Even with that, when I would pass a Semi-truck, I couldn't see at all. "Well, this really makes me feel like jumping out of the warm truck and hiking today!" I said to no one in particular. But at least today I had forced myself to swap out CDs in my truck because my mood couldn't take any more blackness. So we were listening to the sound track from the 1980's movie Footloose. It got to my favorite Bonnie Tyler song, "Holding out for a hero", and I was warming up to finding joy once again, despite the weather. As I was singing with the lyrics, we turned south onto Hwy 35 along the east side of the mountain.
The rain turned to snow as we climbed higher in elevation and neared the mountain. By the time we got to the new trailhead we were going to explore, the snow was so deep that I barely made it up the off ramp to the parking area. I questioned my sanity about refusing to carry tire chains figuring my off road tires and 4wd were enough. We geared up quickly as the wind was wickedly fierce as soon as I opened my truck doors. It blew powder all around, swirling down the back of my neck and into the truck as I hurriedly got my snow boots laced and snow shoes strapped on. Nova started to shiver before I even got her out of the truck. We hit the trail, when a sinking panic came over me.
Just as we were walking away from the truck, I looked at Josie and asked her where her backpack was. She stared up at me with innocent eyes. We walked back to the truck to double check. Sure enough, I had packed that doggie pack, but somehow it never made it to the rig. I quickly ticked through the list in my mind of what was in that pack. It had both the girl's collapsible dog bowls (good thing I hadn't packed soup today I thought). It had their special favorite hiking dog food. It had my dry bag for my gun. It had the spare 1/2 liter of water. It had the poop bags if I wanted to carry instead of bury. Then what really hit me.....it had all my maps and trail info for this brand new trail system we were on. UGH! Well, the only saving grace I had, was that, as usual, I had really studied the maps before leaving. So realistically I knew I had most of the trail system already memorized. I promised the girls I would share all of my lunch with them and give them extra dinner tonight when we got home. So back to the trail we went, minus one backpack with gear. After only about a half mile of strong winds, the sky got dark and I knew more snow was about to hit. Novaleigh knew it too!
But as Nova and I were bracing for the impact of the pending snowstorm, Josie started to smile from ear to ear. You just can't get a happier arctic wolf!
But then she of course had to really show the snow how much she loved it. She has two main ways to do this, either rolling on her back in the powder or this very strange thing she does:
She will hold her head under the snow until I think she has surely suffocated. When we get caught in an avalanche, I want her to teach me how she does this!
As we climbed higher, Josie gave me the warning that something was coming toward us from farther up the trail. I looked hard and didn't see anything at first. Then I caught movement through the trees on the trail up ahead. Those were legs heading in our direction and they were fairly far off still. I suddenly had a terrible idea, but one that I could not stop if I had tried. So for those of you who have been reading my stories, you have probably figured out that I am a hermit at heart who loves to be alone. I don't need or really enjoy the company of most humans. Although I will admit the people I meet deep in on tough trails are probably my favorites. They are nature lovers and generally down to earth folks who can talk hiking for days. That is about the only topic I like myself! Anyway, my favorite hikes are those where I never see another human. So when I knew this was a person heading our way down the skinny track through the snow covered trees, I had an opportunity to have a little fun at their expense.
In the deep snow with the darkening skies Josie looked downright savage. Since she didn't have her backpack on, and her fur and snow were mostly covering her harness, I knew she looked all wolf. I left her standing in the center of the trail intensely staring toward the human coming toward us. Nova and I stepped back behind a tree enveloped in snow. We were still tied to each other of course, but there would be no way this person would see that line between Josie and myself. Nova and I covered our mouths so they couldn't hear the snickering. As the man got closer, the swishing of his cross country skies was all we heard. I knew the wolf would stand her ground. Then we heard the man came to a hard and abrupt stop as soon as he cleared the corner and was in full view of Josie. She didn't move a muscle. She didn't blink. She stared him down like any good predator should. It was perfection. I am pretty sure the man peed himself just a little. But then I stepped out as if I had been otherwise engaged in something and didn't realize he was there. He was so relieved to see me! I am sure that I looked like the Cheshire grinning cat up to no good. I just couldn't hide my laughter long. But then I felt a little bad as I realized this was not some young buck skier. This man was probably in his 70's and had a long grey beard. If he had been wearing red, I surely would have thought I had run into Santa Claus at the North Pole. "Well, we are all getting coal in our stockings this year!" I said to the girls as we continued up the trail laughing and happy we hadn't given him a heart attack. I wanted to give the wolf a high five, but she was busy plodding through the snow in lead position to see what kind of trouble we could get into next.
As we climbed higher, I realized that the trees had icicles hanging from their branches beneath the snow. Whoa! It must be a lot colder than I thought! This was like snow hiking in January, not the middle of April. I couldn't believe my own eyes. But I didn't feel cold at all, except my hands if I took my gloves off for any period of time. Then the old familiar pains of frost bite would start in on my thumbs almost immediately. I clearly have a circulation problem, I thought. It is always my thumbs....especially the left one first!! But I curled my other fingers around them and kept on hiking. I never took my snowshoes off the entire day. Normally I will try to switch over to just crampons at some point as the hiking is faster and easier that way. But I kept seeing the girls post-holing deeply and knew that I had to keep the larger snowshoes on. Nova hates post-holing and kept trying to walk on the backs of my snowshoes. But Josie loved it. She would be hiking along and suddenly sink up to her shoulders and belly with no warning and then turn and smile at me. Only she could love such a thing!
I was wearing my new favorite running snowshoes for this trip. Unlike most snowshoes, these did not have any metal bars or big spikes. They are like a curved, lightweight foam that are more slender and fit naturally to your stride. They stay on even after miles and miles and my favorite thing about them is that they don't collect the balls of snow beneath your heels that have to constantly be cleaned out. The only disadvantage, is that without the built in spikes like my sport climbing snowshoes, they are not the best at steep ascents. But they were perfect for today's outing. Although I will admit that once we hit about 8 miles in them, my right ankle was rubbing painfully from the extra strapping. I tried to loosen some of the straps to no avail.
As we turned down a new path that I had memorized from the maps at home in Josie's pack, the sky became even darker. It was hard to believe it was mid-day and not evening from how the sky looked around us!
The light snow that had been falling up until this point turned into a ferocious blizzard. It hit us like a wall and was so intense that the flakes were actually going up my nose and even choking the back of my throat if I tried to open my mouth at all. I pulled my stocking cap and hood tight around my face and zipped up every zipper I could find. I pulled my gaiters up higher and tightened their straps. We kept our heads down and kept climbing. No one else was on the trail. At one point I turned to look behind us and was shocked to see that our prints in the snow were being obliterated as soon as we left them. The snow was falling that hard. Then as the wind whipped up the powder around us, it left a smooth surface over those filled in prints. It was as if we had never existed. We were being wiped out and I was watching it happen. I was reminded of the lyrics once again from my favorite song of the month, Paint it Black. "I'll fade away and not have to face the facts. Its not easy facing up when your whole world is black." How true that felt as I watched all evidence of us fading away before me. This was truly the strangest sensation and it made me want to keep going forward forever and never turn back. I suppose life is like that. We need to keep looking forward and not spend too much time dwelling on our pasts.
Eventually we came to a warning sign that made me happy. I like the most difficult paths! Now we are singing my song I thought! But then I remembered I had read on some of these back country trails the avalanche danger is very real and there were lots of warnings about going into those areas. But since I didn't have my maps with me, I couldn't be sure if this particular trail was that path of doom I had read about. Oh, well....up we go!! Josie can hold her breath in the snow at least!
The trail most certainly became steeper and was clinging onto a snowy cliff-side as it wound through deep forest. The trees were so weighted down with snow, that it was hard to believe more branches weren't breaking. Especially when strong wind gusts would blow through. Sometimes when the wind hit us so fiercely, we had to stop and push our heads down further, closing our eyes from the snow being forced in a swirling twister around us. There were a couple times when we all came to an abrupt halt wondering if that was thunder we heard. It just felt so unreal that this was a spring snow hike! But Josie found a comfy little snow couch to chill out on along the trail.
So while she was lounging in the snow, I decided to drop my pack and pull out my thermos of hot cocoa. It seemed like the perfect moment! Then I had to explain to the girls that while I did promise to share my food with them, I couldn't give them any of this as it was chocolate. Josie said a prayer to the thermos that she could have some after all. I told her that she should be the ThruDark Wolf Ambassador to the USA.
But then she tried to eat my thermos, showing that it is indeed wolf proof as well as keeping my hot drinks piping hot all day long! My favorite feature of this particular thermos, however, is that I discovered it is slender enough to fit in the cargo pockets of my snow pants. I had never hiked with a thermos in my pants before; but today was a day for anything. Normally, most thermoses are so big and bulky that you only get to them if you take your pack off. So it was surreal to be snowshoeing in a blizzard and able to just pull this out of my pants whenever I felt the need and have a sip of my cocoa as we moved along. I did tell the girls that this might constitute drinking and driving though. I dubbed it princess hiking and figured I could get use to it very easily!
Once we finally reached our destination point of the day, I did pull off my pack again and started to dig around for what food I had to share for the three of us. The girls were so hopeful for their hot soup and special dog food on this cold day. Sorry Ladies.
I dug out a bag of low calorie white cheddar popcorn. Well, let's start with this I said. Who knew dogs would love that so much! We started to play catch with the white puffs in the snow. They found every single one. "Let me see what else will work here" I told them. I don't typically eat a lot when I hike, but always have some sort of random emergency food in the pack. But it wasn't exactly great stuff. What I found next was a 90 calorie pack of stale Pringles. For the record, this constitutes about 6 chips in total. Well two for each of us I thought. The girls were very interested in this strange lunch we were having and couldn't wait to see what else I pulled out of my pack to share. The next item I found was one I was not so sure about. I forgot I had thrown an orange into my side pouch. I couldn't imagine that they would want to share citrus, but then I remembered this funny little dog at my work who loves his daily orange slices! Marty McFly you know who you are! So I tentatively offered up the orange. It was declined by both of my wise ladies.
As soon as I put a slice into my own mouth, I was so thankful that they both declined it! It was heaven on earth! Why is it that food always tastes better outside? But especially an orange in a blizzard! The tangy sweet juice burst forth in my mouth like sunshine in a single bite. I closed my eyes and thought that I could surely die right there in that moment. Then as I slowly savored each slice, I looked around and registered that I was in a stunningly beautiful location. We were on the edge of a ridge overlooking a valley. We had a beautiful forest all around us and were immersed in deep powder. The clouds were moving in and out, up and down in that valley. I had a feeling that across from us would be the peak of Mt. Hood. But I couldn't see anything through the clouds, nor did I have my maps to check this hunch. But as the snow suddenly stopped and little rays of sunshine started to find their way down to us, we decided to stay here awhile to see if the clouds would part and let us see if my hunch was right. It did not take long before blue sky was really peaking out. Josie was as smitten with watching the sky show as I was!
Since we were making ourselves at home here, we all laid down in the snow and even made a few snow angels. Josie dug herself a little bed and curled up to have a nap while we waited. I suddenly appreciated the fact that while I was not in a high mountain meadow immersed in the normal fields of wildflowers of spring, I was enjoying a different kind of beauty. This beauty was just as intense and lovely, albeit much colder. I ended up taking almost 700 photos during this hike, rivaling my best flower hikes or even backpacking trips. So clearly I was loving it! As the sun came out and filtered through the trees around us, I was reminded just how blessed I was!
But then, to top if all off, the clouds that had been encasing the peak of Mt. Hood moved off as if they suddenly had somewhere else to be. My hunch had been correct and it was a private show just for us! Some people like to go to the movies, or the theater. This was the best show on earth this day if you ask me. Mt. Hood revealed herself to me with all her splendor and glory.
Reluctantly we finally packed up our kit again and hit the trail, but not before Josie gave me one final look of absolute love pouring from her soul for today's adventure. She would surely have stayed here forever had I allowed us to. But Nova and my thumbs were both feeling frostbitten again and couldn't stay too much longer. We knew we needed to start the night hike out soon. Things were only going to get colder from here on and I didn't want to take us over the edge tonight. I was honestly still worried that I might not be able to get my truck out of the snow park where I left it. Undoubtedly it was buried by now.
As we left, as if to prove that the mountain show was truly just for us on that ridge, the clouds instantly reappeared blocking out the blue skies and the peak. Snow started to fall once again. What was funny was how as we descended the trail without prints or tracks to show that anyone, including ourselves, had come before, we had sun and snow occurring together at the same time. The beauty and majesty was breath taking! Each snow flake sparkled in the sky. I didn't care if I was wiped out and obliterated any more. I felt that nature has gone on before me and will go on after me. It is just a privilege to be included in it while I walk this earth. God tells me that Heaven will be better than earth. Days like today make that so hard to imagine.
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