Day 3
9 miles, 577ft gain/2985ft loss, fitbit steps: 23,572. After a not so restful sleep, we crawl out of our tents, and into the swarms of skeeters that were hungrily waiting for breakfast to get up…Those and lots of cloud cover. Which is OK, since we’re gonna be hoofin’ it to get out of here early so we can try and beat the traffic out over I-90 home…Yeah, right…Even though we would make it back to the trail head around 11:00am, we still ran into a stop and go back up on the freeway, about 12 miles east of Easton, all the way to about a mile past the pass…
“…it was only slightly humorous to realize that we had it remembered wrong…”
Breakfast and coffee downed, we hit the trail around 7:30, and begin our trudge back to the car under gradually thinning clouds. It’s funny, because we were thinking the whole time yesterday, that it was mostly going to be an all downhill march back to the car…So, when we hit a few long stretches of uphill, it was only slightly humorous to realize that we had it remembered wrong. It seems easy to forget sometimes on the way in on fresh legs when you’re going downhill, that its not flat like you thought you remembered…
Constant cloud cover gives way to spotty clouds, and when we reach the one lone snowfield that covers the trail, we take the time to cool off again by making snow angels and short runs of sliding on our butts, all serving to cool us off some, after an unrelenting death march to get this far. We have kept a steady 2.5 to 3 mile and hour pace to cover ground as quickly as possible, so the cold snow is refreshing…
“…Especially when you’re in that trail trance state…”
The return trip to the car is uneventful, save for a grouse leaping up out of the trailside brush, which can literally make you change your drawers because the loud noise of flapping wings and a large dark shape springing up right in front of your face, can make you think for an instant that you’ve been had…Done…Game over…Especially when you’re in that trail trance state, mind wandering, thinking about just putting one foot in front of the other to get home…We don’t even stop to take many pictures, as we’ve already seen it before.
All in all, a good trek, and definitely a lot of miles to cover for a season beginning hike. However, I’m not sure I’ll ever repeat this one; you have to cover a lot of miles just to get to open views, and even at that, all the interesting mountains and terrain are a long ways off. You expend a lot of effort for a little reward. And, the blamed bugs…We always know that hiking in June and July are horrendous for biting insects, and this hike is no exception…There were times that we were surrounded in clouds of mosquitoes, biting flies, and horseflies. Just thinking about it now, makes me itch…