Sunrise opened up July 1st so off we went. When they said the road was open, somehow I assumed that the trails would be a little more free of snow but as we drove up the switch backs to reach the top parking lot, we found snow was everywhere.
Piles and piles in fact.
There is a trail just to my right that goes down the embankment to seven different lakes, but on this day, you would have needed skis to get there. The first lake was visible and quite frozen over. Save this one for another day.
The mountain just behind Mark (sitting on the tailgate) has a trail that follows it's peaks and goes a couple miles. We've walked it. But not on this day. Wow, there was a lot of snow, so we drove back down the windy road to check out the trails in the river basin as they did not appear to be covered with snow. As we headed down, we found there had been a rock slide resulting in a tree falling on the road just in the 15 minutes or so after we had passed.
We didn't have to walk too far in on the trail we chose to find out the snow was simply hiding from the main road. We also didn't go too far before finding bear scat either.
A good majority of our 4 mile trek looked like this. Thankfully, the grade wasn't steep and there wasn't a cliff for me to worry about falling off of.
For whatever reason, Mark though my "Mom" in CT would find me hiking through snow in summer clothes humorous. We did pass some people outfitted for snow who warned us that as we went forward, the snow was really melting fast and the lady had actually fallen through several feet. She pointed to my bare legs and said I wouldn't be having much fun if that happened.
Just so we're clear, Mark was dressed similarly. It was close to 80 degrees out.
I didn't fall through any snow but decided instead to just sit in it to cool off. If I didn't have all the gear on, I would have laid down. It was absolutely refreshing, like when our wood stove has made the front room 95 degrees so we open all the windows and doors to let in the icy breeze. I love that!
Hiking through snow was like hiking through sand. Slow going up, quick going down. I figured I might ski back down the hill, or more likely, slide on my butt (or fall) but actually, I walked down just fine. My trekking poles have made me very independent and I was pleasantly surprised and thrilled with how easy it was. My knee even managed to behave.
We hiked two miles up to get to this waterfall which isn't as stunning in picture as it was in sound. It was huge and a nice place to stop before turning back. We would have liked to go a bit farther up, but another set of hikers met us on this corner and said it wasn't worth the effort. (They were in shorts too!)
Pull up a rock and have a seat. The waterfall is on the left of this picture, Mark's right.
This is the Wonderland Trail, which in it's entirety is about 92 miles around the volcano. This part hooks up to Summerland, a meadow, which when flowering, is stunning to see. The first two miles of this will be simple and fast minus snow. We stopped on the first switch back which looked to be angling up a bit more steeply than that which we had just walked but compared to the Palisades, nothing big. This trail is on the list of ones to return to most likely in September because this area hasn't even seen spring yet.
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