Recovery from hip surgery could take nine months.

Recovery from hip surgery could take a year.

You can guess which of these three options I chose to pursue. Surgery was supposed to be in October so I'd have ample time to be ready for prime adventure season beginning in late May. Having it bumped to January meant the recovery schedule would have to be a bit more rushed, but still not out of the realm of possibility.

I set several very specific goals. One of them was a strong desire to return to one of my favorite places when the road was clear of snow. It's a magical time in the backcountry in late spring and early summer. You can walk on water. You don't need trails. You can glissade down steep slopes and kick steps back up. It's wonderful.

As soon as the road was clear I headed out. Honestly, it might have been a little early, but if you don't test your body how will you really know?

The climb from the trailhead was pure strugglebus. My hip felt fine, but my thighs ached and my lungs burned. I stopped to catch my breath a lot. Tinkham was constantly darting ahead and coming back to see what was wrong.

Climbing the infamous Gully of Doom isn't great in summer, but with snow it's downright dangerous. Tink's built-in crampons let her scamper up and back down without a problem. I was a lot slower with my artificial spikes and axe. As usual, all became right with the world when we got onto the ridge.

There were no tracks in the well consolidated snow so we marched in pretty much a straight line to the top of the descent gully. While the Gully of Doom is full of... well... doom, this gully was pure joy. I glissaded 500 feet to the bottom and was strongly tempted to climb back up to do it again.

The lakes that fill the basin were just starting to melt out, but still walkable as long as we avoided the meltwater pools along the shore. We were early enough we could visit the three bonsai-like trees on their island before retracing out steps.

At the top of the descent gully I again thought about the glissade, but decided I'd be pushing my hip enough for one day just heading back to the trailhead. The hard snow in the Gully of Doom had me worried and I figured it was better to tackle it without another 500 feet of climbing on my legs. As it was, I downclimbed the Gully and didn't even try to slide for fear I'd lose control.

So CHECK, one of my recovery goals was met and it was only mid June. Everything was looking great until...

(Just kidding. It was great and writing this a month later there haven't been any setbacks. Fingers crossed it keeps going that way and I didn't just jinx it.)