I like to say snowshoeing is just like hiking. You know. Walking on a trail in the mountains. It's true, but I sometimes neglect that one little caveat: A mile on snowshoes off trail can feel like two. And elevation gain? That gets multiplied, too. Now of course it's not a perfect function, but you get the general idea.
So of course we decided to climb 3,000 feet on snowshoes as our first significant trip of the year... of the season... since March 2019. Can you see where this is going yet? No? I'll come right out tell you where it didn't go. It didn't go to the top.
We started right at daybreak from a pullout on the plowed road in the forest. The route followed an old road a bit, then a trail, then we headed straight up the hill. On the map it seemed so simple. Perhaps with a boatload more snow it would have been. As it was, the climb was not going to go well.
The snow was firm with just an inch of powder so we relied on the snowshoes more for traction than flotation. Unfortunately, it was a two to three inch ice crust over several feet of granulated snow. That meant even in snowshoes we'd occasionally punch through the top layer. Where it got particularly steep it was particularly hard. Each step would break off another section of the crust and we'd slide back.
Not that this affected Tinkham much. She was light enough to run along the surface barely leaving marks. Eric was similarly blessed. I was not so lucky. Add in a bunch of downed trees from a forest fire several years ago and it was not quick.
Although we were in the forest and the shade most of the day, we got some amazing views at the nearby peaks. Our destination wasn't in the Wilderness, but we could see deep into the protected lands that surrounded us including the highest peak we tackled last year. The sun was bright on the untouched snow of those treeless slopes and it made me dream of returning. Except that was a 5,000 foot climb and we were ending our climb after only 1,500 feet. Sigh. Maybe next weekend. (Actually: Nope.)
After we'd found a nice spot to stop and get a view, we turned for the car. Due to the steepness of the slope we popped off our snowshoes to plunge step down. Except the snow was so deep we were above our knees with each step. And the crust was still too strong to push through horizontally yet too week to support us for glissading. Instead, we kind of scootched down a couple of feet at a time, dodging rocks and trees. It took almost as long as going up.
When the slope mellowed I put my snowshoes back on and chased after Eric who hadn't stopped. He postholed while I floated along the surface. That'll teach you to reject the floaty goodness. And the sore muscles will teach us to assume a snowshoe climb is the same as a hike on a regular trail. Suckers.
