Exploration was the name of the game for this hike. We had never been to this area on Mt. Adams and decided to try it in the winter. There is truly a maze of trails and closed forest service roads going every direction imaginable out here. I started to feel like we should be leaving bread crumbs as we veered off from one trail to another all day. I did my best to keep track, especially when we went off trail for a couple of miles aimlessly post-holing through the wilderness. The weather was just about perfect. Low 40's, mostly blue skies, powdery snow still. It was a great winter day!
I had both my snowshoes and boot spikes with me, but chose to mostly hike in spikes and kept my snowshoes strapped to my back. The trails out here allow for snow mobiles so they had essentially groomed the main trails. Because of this, post-holing was not a big issue if you stayed on trail. I love these conditions because I can go a lot faster and be more comfortable without the snowshoes! Plus it gives Josie one less thing to pounce on when she is feeling feisty! As we were following a forest service road, we came across a sign announcing that we were only a couple miles away from some Ice Caves. I had heard about Ice Caves near this area, but had never visited them. "Well, why not," I said to the girls. "Let's go check these things out". But the problem was finding them. We searched a mile radius at length and were becoming convinced that the caves must be buried in snow. I didn't know anything about them or have a map showing me where they were, so we were just hopefully exploring. I was fearful that we might drop through snow into the caves at this rate and never get out! But eventually we came across a hole in the ground.
It was not a very large hole and when we slide down to it, found boulders mostly blocking the entire entrance. You would have to shimmy in on your stomach to get in that thing I realized! I wouldn't even be able to go in with my pack on me. The dogs were both very interested in that hole, but I told them that I wasn't going in that thing!! There must be another way. Surely this is not the entrance to the Great Ice Caves of Mount Adams! So we kept looking and suddenly came upon a sign mostly buried in snow.
Now, I knew we were close!! But the sign said we needed hard hats. Oh well, I thought, I did not pack one of those as I was not planning on doing any caving today anyway! We went around the corner from the sign and found the true entrance to the Ice Caves. What we discovered was a staircase leading to the bottom of the cave with huge icicles hanging down everywhere inside. The staircase was covered in snow and the snow was covered in ice. Nova took the first look to assess the situation.
We debated our options. If we went into the cave alone in winter, a lot could happen. As per usual, no one had a clue where we were. We might not be able to get back up the ice. The railings might help us, but they were coated in thick ice. I had my boot spikes, but no ice axe for climbing. I did have several flashlights, so wasn't worried about that. The three of us looked at each other for a few tense and silent moments. Finally I said to the girls, "How many times in your life can you glissade down a staircase into a cave? We have to do this!" I told the girls that I was going to go first this time and they would have to follow. I kept my pack on and got in position at the top of the stairs. As I released myself, the slide was a LOT faster than I anticipated! That is super icy I thought!! Mid way down I reached out for the rail on my right side and hooked my elbow around it to slow our descent. I about ripped my arm out of my socket, but was able to stop. Shortly thereafter, BOOM, Josie rammed into my back. Then, BOOM, Nova rammed into her. I laughed nervously, but was happy to have slowed us down. Okay, this is not what I envisioned. But I let go again and away we went plunging into the bottom of that icy dungeon. We all got to our feet and found we could hardly stand (even with my spikes on!) due to the thick ice coating every surface from top to bottom.
I turned on a single small flashlight that I keep on my pack's chest strap. It was like nothing happened. I looked into the beam to see if it was even working. It was, but the darkness of the cave swallowed that light up whole! "Huh." I said out loud. That's weird. I pulled out a second flashlight and turned it on next to the first. Still nothing. I couldn't penetrate the darkness with my small torches. I had 4 more lights in my pack....but they were all small. At this point, I thought about a friend of mine who does a lot of caving and uses giant lights. He would be so ashamed of me right now was all I could think. But we explored as best we could. We had to give up pretty quickly though just due to the ice beneath our feet. We kept falling every time we tried to move much. When we started the climb back up the snowy staircase, Josie had the same idea as I did. We better pray we can ascend this!
We clearly did make that climb out together and continued our day of snow hiking. That was a fun diversion I told the girls! Shortly after leaving the cave, we came across the only other hiker we would see all day. He was snowshoeing towards the caves and did not initially see us. Josie spotted him early and let me know of course. She was walking in front of me and I got the great pleasure of seeing this man's face when he first saw that wolf move around a tree toward him. He quickly froze in place, his lower jaw dropped open and his hands went out to his sides in that stunned moment when he thought he was about to be eaten by a wolf. Every time I see this reaction in people, I can't help but to laugh. It doesn't take people long to quickly see that the wolf is wearing a backpack, and is tied to a human and another dog wearing clothing. But their initial reaction, especially on a wild snowy trail in deep wilderness, is pure panic. Often times people tell me they thought they were dead. I always smile and say "I know, I saw." But this tough bearded mountain man who saw his life flash before the wolf's eyes, chatted with me about why I was not wearing my snowshoes and what the cave entrance was like. I gave him all the advice I could about getting in and out of those caves before carrying on.
After a few more miles, we came across a sign telling us there was a cabin in the woods. Well, we have to go find that I thought. So this time we took off cross country for 2 miles to find the old Guard Station. This cabin was originally built in 1926 and later completely restored. Just when I thought we would never find it, we climbed a small hill and there she was! Sadly she was locked up tight so we would not be spending the night in her.
We were growing weary and I wondered why. We had only gone about 8 miles, which is not far for us. But then I reminded myself that we had explored a cave, been post-holing on and off and I had not eaten anything but a spoonful of peanut butter before leaving the house that morning. It was about 3:30 in the afternoon. "Well, we better figure out a place to eat," I told the girls. It had started to snow and rain on and off and I was hoping for some sort of cover to stand in for our break. We didn't have to look long as just around the corner from the old Guard Station was a free standing log A-frame shelter! It felt sunken, but that was just due to the snow around it. We climbed down inside, perfectly sheltered from the snow and rain and even found a little bench to put our packs on. The perfect place to eat our hot soup I thought! This was turning into a wonderful day!
Nova even posed in the open windows of our lunch shelter. We felt a little like we were buried in snow, but it was the quintessential mountain shelter for us and kept us well protected from the elements while we ate hot vegetable soup from our thermos. None of us had been drinking much this day, so I knew we all needed some good hot broth in us.
As we were hiking out, I decided to have a conversation with Josie about trying to be more photogenic. She has an issue with looking into the camera. When I pull that camera out, Nova starts to pose. She will tilt her head and pop her ears up, moving into position to show off whatever outfit of the day she is wearing. But Josie, on the other hand, starts to look everywhere but the camera. It has made it a lot harder to get cute shots when she does this. We also discussed trying to soften her look with the flowers I put on her neck that morning. She really took this conversation to heart and when I stopped to take the next picture, she showed me what she could do. Well done Josie Lynne! Now if I can just get you both to tilt your heads at the same time!
As we covered our final miles out to the truck, I was sad about one thing from this wonderful day. On our last snow hike, I had experienced a low enough level of hypothermia to feel that violent burning sensation that makes you need to take all your clothes off. This was the second time that had happened to me and I really wanted to know what my core body temperature has to get to in order to feel this way. So I had packed a thermometer in the go bag in my truck. However, as we snow hiked out this particular evening I realized that I was never cold at all during the day. It was not cold enough to suffer like I sometimes do on winter hikes. I was never shivering. I didn't battle frost bite at all, and I never felt either too hot or too cold all day. So much for seeing my core temp I thought sadly. I did realize it was rather ridiculous that I was disappointed in not freezing during the day, but I really wanted to experiment with my core temp a bit! When I got to the truck and started to load the girls and drop my gear, I figured I might as well just check. Curiosity killed the cat for sure! Thankfully, there was no one else around to see me standing by my open truck door with a thermometer in my mouth. When the tell-tale beeping went off, I held that stick up to the dome light in my truck. What I saw, made me freeze. Then I grabbed a flashlight from my console to look again. Yup, that thermometer was telling me I was 92 degrees. I turned it off and then tried again. Over and over I retook my temperature. I couldn't believe it. If I was 92 degrees and didn't feel a thing, what must my core temp have been when I was actually suffering and getting nakey?? I think we all know where this is going. My newest winter obsession will be seeing how low it can go! It is not often that at 48 years of age you can find a new talent! Dramatic core body temperature oscillations is apparently my super power.
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