I'm a Bear, etc.

Captain's Log: Day 58 - Mile 1588.3

Benjamin Chrobot -

June 9, 2016

The morning was fairly unremarkable. We had a climb up to a ridge line and then cruises along that until we reached the base of Mount Etna midday. Along the way we met two older men doing a section hike and chatted briefly with them about great and trail conditions.

After lunch we began the climb up the mountain. It began with a mile or so of freshly cleared trail, a welcome stretch after many miles of carefully climbing over or around deadfall. Then we began hitting patches of snow. Before long it was all snow and we were climbing up along the spine of the mountain.

We got to the elevation where the trail supposedly diverged to go around the side of the mountain but it looked too steep to walk along and it was a very long slide down if you slipped. Hoping for a better line further up, we kept climbing. Before long we were almost at the summit, hundreds of feet above where the trail went, still with no good looking options. After some deliberation, Loopy decided she just wasn't comfortable with the situation and was going to descend back to the road and hitch into the town of Etna and wait for us to catch up.

Rickets and I decided to climb the last bit to the summit and then come up with our own game plan. We got to the summit to find it clear of snow and stopped briefly to admire the view.

The south face of the mountain was free of snow as we had hoped it would be and the two of us began a slow descent down that face back to the trail below. The way down was very steep and very sandy and we moved carefully creating our own switch backs. It was still faster going than it had been through the snow and we made it down in less than 20 minutes.

To finish up the day we traveled through a burn section that had been completely incinerated. None of the other burns we had walked through had burned as hot as this one had and there was nothing green to be seen, not even fast growing ground vegetation. We camped on the other side of the burn by a creek feeling a little strange about only being the two of us.