June 8, 2016

Waking up was difficult for all three of us - not sure if it was the hard packed ground we were sleeping on, the 5 days of off-trail bedtimes, or a combination of both.

The morning started out with bear tracks and the beginning of the snow we had been warned about. The snow didn't last for too terribly long (this round) and we were back on the real trail before long. Shortly after that I saw Rickets stop and turn around in front of me.

"Mama bear with cubs. Back!"

Our Mike Birbiglia moment had arrived! Less than twenty feet ahead of us was a mama with three cubs. One of them had scampered up a tree while the other two had begun running down the hill. As we retreated we saw the mom run down the hill after the cubs. Upon realizing she was missing one she doubled back collected the last one.

"I'm right here bear. I've applied condiments so I will be less bland"

Confident that they were safely down the hill we set off again making a fair amount of noise just in case. The adrenaline had dissipated by the time we made down to the campground where we saw a camp group. Then a climb back up to the ridge line where I passed a man out backpacking with his pug (amazing those things can breath at 7000 ft...).

Around 11:00am I reached a spot that seemed good for a break and sat down. 10 minutes went by and neither Loopy nor Rickets had caught up. Then 20 minutes. After half an hour I packed up and headed back up the trail running through all my first responder training scenarios. I had been right with them less than an hour before.

I still hadn't seen either of them after 10 minutes of hauling back along the trail. The various scenarios starting shifting from mental exercise to possible reality. Then a saw a blue baseball cap coming around the next bend: Loopy. Apparently they had taken a wrong turn just before I saw the man with the pug and it hadn't become clear until 1.5 miles later.

After a brief break to collect ourselves we moved on to the next spring for lunch. This also turned into a quick nap break. Before beginning our climb up to Marble Pass. This was where we had been told the bad snow started. The climb followed the inside of a bowl around a snowmelt lake and we could see some terrifying snow around the inside of the bowl and were pretty sure we had to cross it.

We got to the top of the climb and thankfully the trail crossed over into a bowl on the other side. This also looked pretty bad but at least the trail went vaguely down instead of straight across. After a short break to mentally ready ourselves we started down. It turned out to be the perfect combination of slope and slushiness and Rickets pulled out his blue pad to sled down and I started skate-skiing down.

At the bottom we had a nice stretch with waterfalls to our right. This also meant the trail was a stream and not a trail, but we were beyond caring having "survived" the bad snow section. Before long we had finished for the day and camped next to a snow melt pond.