Well I am going to tell you something that is rather surprising. You might want to be sitting down for this one. I can hardly believe it myself, but I have to admit that I didn't love this week's hike. I know! Crazy, right? There really wasn't a good reason not to love it. In fact as I was hiking out and giving myself a good stern talking to, I counted all the reasons I should have loved the day, but I just didn't. I have finally decided that I have the right to not love a hike though. It is okay and I can live another day admitting it.
Things started out remarkably well. In fact I didn't know if I was driving in my trail truck or riding the Polar Express on the way up the forest service roads. Shortly after we saw our first snow along the side of the road, we came around a bend and had to slam on the brakes. All over the road were dozens of elk. Huge, beautiful elk. There were dozens more along each side of the road. They were everywhere and I had never seen so many in one place in my life. They all just stared at us. The boy elk, the girl elk, the little ones and the big ones.....they stared at us, without moving. It was just like the scene from the Christmas movie Polar Express when the train had to stop on the tracks for a huge herd. All I wanted to do was jump out of my truck and run up to the first one so I could wrap my arms around his huge fuzzy neck and give him a good hug. But I couldn't get out of the truck without the Wolf on my heels. In fact, she was trying to find her way through my windshield so she could run them down. "No, Josie," I told her, "we are not chasing any elk today. This is a look and don't touch moment for us both I suppose." We sat there for a long time just enjoying the scene unfolding before our eyes. I kept an eye on my rear-view mirror to make sure I wasn't going to get hit from behind if someone barreled around the corner after us. But luckily no one did. I started to wonder if I was going to have to pull the Wolf's tail to make her howl in order to get the beasts to move, but they slowly started to part to each side of my truck on their own. We cautiously continued on the tracks in front of us waving our best princess waves to the elk as we did. I had a huge smile on my face the entire time! What a way to start the day I thought!
We were heading for a snow park today. In fact there are three snow parks in about a 3 mile radius of one another and they all have interconnected trail systems. I had read that there were over 25 miles of cross country ski trails up in this area, but I had never been there before. In deep snow, these are groomed and only for skiers. (Don't get me started on the need to groom trails. Can that really be counted as a true sport or adventure if you have to have your trail groomed and can't share it with others?) But we had not yet reached deep snow or groomed trail status, so figured this was our one shot to do a little snow shoeing before the skiers got in there with their long tracks. Being the last hike before Christmas, I knew we had to be in the white stuff today.
Most of the 25 miles of ski trails were on forest service roads with a few short trail connections mixed in. This is nice in winter because it means the paths are gentle and wide and easy to follow through forests in snow when you might otherwise lose your way. We started out at the third and final snow park and we were the only vehicle at any of the three trailheads. Looked like we would have the forest to ourselves I thought with deep pleasure as we hit the trail.
I had brought my snow shoes with me, but when I realized the snow was not really deep enough to warrant them, I decided to hike with just crampons over my snow boots. The snow was super hard and crunchy, coated in quite a layer of ice. So the spikes would be needed to give me traction especially with both girls pulling against me on the trails. Before long, we crossed a small creek and then started to hike in earnest. With each step I was sinking into the snow anywhere from 2-6 inches. Not bad, but I could immediately feel new muscles being used as my body adjusted to it. We had to slow our pace from our normal half run we do, but not significantly.
In the beginning, the trails were incredibly well marked. There were signs everywhere telling me which way was the easy path, the moderate path and the most difficult. There were blue diamonds all along to mark the way and keep us on target. Of course I had decided to pull the longest and most difficult loop at just over 12 miles today. You can see that both Nova and the blue diamond markers (look to the tree on the right) were matching today.
The girls were so incredibly excited that I let Nova off leash so they could play in the snow without getting tangled. I so wished I could trust the Wolf enough to let her do the same, but knew if she caught wind of a forest creature, I would never see her again. So on leash she stayed. This meant that when Nova got into full zoomie mode and raced past us over and over again, that Josie about took me off my feet several times since she was tied to me. I worked hard to stand my ground and prepare for the impact each time. You can see they were having a great time regardless.
I was laughing out loud as the girls were panting hard from their play. We were certainly not making our usual quiet entrance into the forests today! As I got Nova back on her leash, we continued up the trail and soon came to a four way junction. I read the signs and headed to my left. This soon started a maze of trail connections. We couldn't leave one blue diamond without being able to see another up ahead. The trail was clearly well loved and well labeled! Pretty soon we came to a river and this time we were going to turn right off the most popular trail system. I could feel this change immediately. The first thing I noticed was that the path was not as wide and was much bumpier, indicating downed trees and branches under the snow. Then I noticed that the blue diamonds marking our way were now farther and farther apart (soon to disappear) and the wooden signs with trail names had completely vanished. I didn't know this trail system, but had a map that I pulled out to check a few times as we were clearly going to be making a lot of turns. Pretty soon I was convinced this trail was made to just make a person feel lost and force you to circle around and around. We went left, right, left, left, left.....on and on it went. I had the strongest premonition that we were not really going anywhere but in circles. In fact the blue diamonds started to have arrows on them as more trails were coming in to connect to the path we were on. I figured I would just follow them and see what happened. It wasn't long before the thought crossed my mind that if we could not do this hike as a loop, we would never find our way back out the way we were coming in.
We were enjoying the crisp, cold air as we post holed our way along the paths. Suddenly I froze staring down at the ground. Josie had become wild and I could see why. Since we left the truck we had not seen a single human track. There had been elk, deer, bunny and squirrel tracks in the virgin snow. But no human ones. Yet shockingly, right in front of me, were several prints that looked like a human was walking without shoes on. I could count all five toes and there was no boot traction in the space beneath the foot. Whoever this was, he had rather wide feet I thought! My mind raced knowing that a human didn't just drop out of the sky in this spot to walk around without their boots or socks on. The tracks came from the forest. My next sensible thought made me squeal with delight. It has to be Bigfoot!!!! I have finally found him!!! But then I realized that I was being stupid. As my brain continued to solve the mystery of what we were seeing, I realized my body was suddenly covered in goosebumps. This was not the big guy, these were bear prints. They were not the normal front foot tracks that are so recognizable. These were back foot prints of a bear. I had heard that people often find rear bear prints and mistake them for Bigfoot. While I have seen front bear tracks many times, this was my first time to find the rear foot. The thought made me look up and scan the forest around us just in case our friend was loitering around.
We followed his tracks and could see he was sticking to the trail for some distance. These were not super fresh prints, and could easily be several days old, but Josie was beside herself pouncing on each track and shoving her nose deep into them to pull the scent into her very soul. She was pulling incredibly hard against me and had lost the ability to hear my voice. She was in full savage Wolf tracking mode now. As we followed along, a new thought jumped into my mind. "Wait a minute. It is the end of December. Why is this guy not sleeping?" I asked the girls out loud, my voice echoing off the mossy trees around us. I looked harder to see if I could see front foot prints of this bear to confirm its identity. Josie was messing up all the tracks around me in her desperation to find this creature, so it was becoming more difficult. The most obvious tracks were all rear feet. So the question came back to me. Was this a bear out of hibernation in December, who was mostly walking on his hind legs and would surely be rather desperate and hungry, or was this Bigfoot?? I will never know I suppose as despite our best tracking, we did not find him. I tried real hard to capture a print on film for you, but between the degrading prints in the ice, the sun and shadows playing through the trees and Nova and Josie pouncing all over, I struggled to get one good print left that really showed all five toes. This was the best I could capture, alas. I can assure you they were much better in person before the wolf ran through them all.
It took almost a mile before Josie settled down and gave up on the idea of finding the creature who left the prints. She gets excited over most any print, but I had never seen her quite like that before...even when we were face to face with that black bear this last spring. Even Nova was worked up. Their senses were clearly communicating something to them and I wished I knew what it was. Just as they started to simmer down, we came upon cougar prints and it started up all over again. Josie really wants herself a big cat! She was pulling hard against me as I was trying to move faster while post holing in the snow. My spikes were starting to stick into the ice more now that temperatures seemed to drop, so it was a struggle.
Pretty soon though we came upon something else. I was about to learn how much fun Josie has and I couldn't believe it took me so long to realize the joy in this new game! We had just turned a hard left onto a new road. Now I have to say, I didn't really know if we should go right or left as there were no signs at all on this road that the trail we were on T-boned. But my instincts said to go left. So left we went. There was a large section where the snow had melted and left mostly ice tracks along the road. Nova and I started out walking to the side of the ice, while Josie walked up the middle pouncing with all she was worth to break through the ice. I quickly realized that as she broke through, there was strangely no water underneath. There was just a big dry gap under the ice. I smiled and joined Josie in her game of ice breaking.
Now what you have to understand is the sound this was making. In places where the ice was thin, it sounded like we were smashing the most delicate of glass sheets. But where the ice was thick, and we really had to jump on it, the huge booming cracks were absolutely addicting. Every bear, cougar or sasquatch within a 5 mile radius surely heard us now! I got the giggles so bad as we crashed through the ice again and again. Before long, I was standing on the side of the road and told the girls...."Okay, listen to this one guys!" and I would cannonball out on top of the ice to break it, while still wearing my pack and all my gear. Josie and I were in full competition mode to see who could make the loudest cracking sounds. Nova was mostly watching us and shaking her head. Yes, I think we can officially say I am addicted to crack now. Check out how thick this ice was though!!!!!
When we looked behind us, I laughed even louder at the trail we were leaving. "Guess you can tell a crazy woman and a wolf came through here." I said to Josie. But she was too busy picking up smaller chunks of ice in her mouth to carry down the trail with us. I will admit that what finally stopped the fun was not when the ice ended. It was when I did a big jump onto the ice to break it and when I fell through, it was not a nice dry gap underneath. I fell directly into a pool of cold water. I can still hear Nova laughing about that one.
We traveled for several miles on the road heading in a westerly direction and had not seen a blue diamond or sign the entire time. I started to question if we had gone the wrong way on this road or missed a turn off. But onward and upward we went. The road was clearly circling the peak we were climbing and at this point, I wanted to see where it went. The weight of anticipation weighed heavy on me as I kept expecting to catch a glimpse of Mt. St. Helens. I knew we were close to her and should have outstanding views if we could get high enough and have the trees part.
We came around a bend in the road and saw a trail veering off to our left. It had a blue diamond marking it and I was thrilled to realize that we had not been heading in the wrong direction this entire time. Clearly this "most difficult" loop was not as well used or signed as the others had been closer to the trailhead. We turned left to start a steeper climb on what was clearly trail and no longer forest service road. This is when things got interesting for sure. I could not help but feel this trail was someone's idea of a joke. It just kept circling round and round. I realized it was exactly like in that Polar Express movie when the train climbed the final peak to the North Pole. We were tightly circling our way up when one of the blue arrows suddenly broke from the mold and pointed off to our left....the wrong direction. I stopped and stared at it. But that is not the direction we clearly need to head if we are going to the north pole I thought! I turned to follow it, but it reached a dead end in deep forest choked with underbrush. We back tracked back to the sign and I realized that someone either turned it on purpose as a joke, or it had fallen and now pointed left instead of straight ahead. Annoying at best.
We passed the marker unable to reach it to correct the issue as blue diamonds are usually set about 10 feet off the ground. In another half mile we found a new arrow telling me we were correct to keep circling the peak. As we reached what felt like the top though, the trail T-boned another path. There were no markers here either. So we went left, but after a short distance it turned into another dead end. Grumbling, we turned around and went the other way. This path shortly turned into a new forest service road shooting us out across the top and onto a new plateau of forest. The criss-crossing maze of paths and roads was starting to make me angry. But when I realized that despite reaching the highest peaks, the trees were not going to release any mountain views today, I became angrier. I knew I should just be content in the beautiful forest, but my heart wanted to see my beloved snow covered mountain against blue skies as the sun was getting ready to set. I tried to focus on the beauty around me instead of letting anger well up inside me to steal my joy.
The sky was darkening and a thick, dense fog was moving upon us. We had a lot of elevation to drop and at least 4 more miles to get back to the truck if I was calculating our location on the loop correctly. As I was assessing my suddenly bitter mood, I had to recognize once again this season that snow hiking takes more out of your body than hiking on bare ground. I was doing just over twelve miles today in snow, but my body was feeling like it was closer to double that. I had woken up this morning with a headache and it had been coming and going on and off through most of the hike. I had been doing my best to ignore the throbbing pain, but for some reason as the sun was setting and temperatures dropping, the pain seemed to spread to the back of my skull, down my neck and into my shoulders. Carrying a heavy winter pack to be well prepared for anything was not helping me feel better. I had to admit that my body was pretty well toasted out. The fact that I was in no mood to eat was not helping me feel better either. In fact, I had to think back about what I had eaten this day. Before leaving home, I had a handful of nuts. On the trail I had pulled a couple pieces of candy from my pack's side pouch. That was it. Now it was close to 6pm at night and I had few calories left to push off of. If I wanted to stop and take my pack off, I had a full thermos of hot soup stowed away in there. But I was in no mood. My mind had convinced myself that I was miserable and hateful and no joy was left in this hike for us. So I didn't want to eat. I was downright crabby. I have never experienced a hike where I felt so disgruntled! I gave the girls extra treats from their treat bag since we weren't stopping for a meal. I just wanted to get to my warm truck and the thermos of hot chocolate that I knew awaited us there. I needed to be off my feet and get the pack off my back.
During the quick descent, I tried to count all my blessings. It had not been raining or overly cold. We encountered the biggest elk herd ever. We had played on and cracked ice. We had tracked either a big bear or bigfoot. Nova had done zoomies and made us laugh over and over. There was not a single human on the trail all day. We had literally been sequestered into a forest with a mix of leafless winter trees where green evergreen boughs filled in the gaps between the barren limbs. It was peaceful and quiet and there was nothing wrong. I should be thankful. Okay, I didn't get a grand mountain view. Okay, we didn't find bigfoot. But there was no real reason that my joy should be gone. I had to assume this was simply due to not feeling well. My body was at the end of itself. Weeks of small body pains compiled with the headache had plagued me enough.
I was brought out of my deep reverie when it became so dark that I needed to turn on my headtorch. Suddenly the tree boughs all around sparkled and shined like a Christmas miracle in the bright light. I pulled up short and just stared at them. It had not been snowing, but suddenly the end of each bough looked as if it had just been flocked. "How??" was the single word I uttered in question. I reached out to touch a bough and realized that the thick fog was clinging to every surface and was freezing into ice. It was magical. God was doing His best to bring me out of my bitter thoughts and show me that I still had something good left on this hike. Something special just for me to enjoy. I looked up through the blackness above me to thank Him and saw a bright half moon smiling down upon us in an open pocket through the fog. The moment is forever burned into my memory.
Once we were only 1.2 miles from the truck, a thought struck me. This final section of the loop paralleled the road to where I had parked. That section of road was paved and plowed. I realized I could get a break from the post holing in the snow and just have an easy walk on the pavement for my final mile if I dropped south through the trees earlier than planned. I couldn't resist and we turned off the path to head to the road. At this time of night, there would likely be no vehicles on the back road. What I had not calculated into this plan however, was what happened when I stepped off the snow and onto the pavement. Both of my feet slid out in different directions taking me into the splits. The pavement was covered in the same icy layer that the tree boughs (and all my clothes) were and I couldn't even stand. (I had taken the spikes off my boots as I can't walk on pavement in long metal spikes).
I hung my head in defeat. There was no way I could walk on this icy road that I couldn't even stand on. How I was going to drive on it was a whole new issue, but I pushed that worry out of my mind only wanting to tackle one crisis at a time. So my final mile back to my truck was done on the side of the road, where the post holing was so much worse due to all the snow the plows had pushed and piled up along the road. "Figures. I just made things worse." I grumbled under my breath as we moved east. I pulled my thermometer out of my pocket to see where things stood before getting that hot chocolate in me. I figured it would be perfect to have a truck drive by as I was walking down the side of the icy road in the middle of no where with my dog, my wolf and a thermometer in my mouth. But God thankfully spared me that final embarrassment. I was down to 92.6 degrees and knew I was dehydrated as sin. Surely hypothermia and dehydration were compounding my physical deterioration and negative attitude.
Clearly this hike has proven to me that despite my greatest efforts, my physical condition can truly affect my mental state. I think this is how the enemy frankly gets us discouraged. He distracts us with his tricks and keeps us from being focused on the true blessings we have in our lives. He gets us overly focused on ourselves and our current condition while losing hope for a future filled with good things. It is our job to fight back and constantly refocus on those good things. We must have faith and hope.
Just as God tells us in Jeremiah 29:11, "I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." That is a promise we can count on. Just like standing under icy flocked evergreens in the darkness was a promise of good things for me. When we are standing on the very edge of ourselves, we must keep going...one foot in front of the other..... and know that better things will come even when our current state is one of misery. I am confident that next week's hike will be better. There is always a mountaintop after a valley and I can't wait to step through that open door next week! Besides the worst day in the wild places is still certainly better than the best day in the city. This was the Christmas gift God was reminding me of. Maybe I didn't hate this hike after all.
Now, just so I don't disappoint you, I will tell you that since it was the hike before Christmas, Nova had a new red snood with us today that would be the envy of any good elf on the Polar Express or the North Pole. Here you go....our gift to you.
Comments