Thu Jun 7, 2018 @ 01:39

Well, here we are. Finally in some serious Mountains.

We were both a bit nervous coming into this section (I was much worse than Bourbon, no surprises there!) . There was a huge altitude gain, new gear (we both carried an ice axe and micro spikes in) and the element of "the unknown snow". Reports ranged from "it was worse than the bootheel, we thought we might die at least 12 times" to "there no snow, it isn't that bad".

I can report both these statements are somewhat true. Days one and two we did a respectable 16 and 21 miles respectively. Which says more than it doesn't about the snow conditions- if there was any more snow there is no way we could have done a 21 mile day. There were a few blowdowns (trees fallen across the trail) but because we mostly stayed above treeline it wasn't too bad. We camped beside Dipping lakes the first night (very buggy at the more southern lake but beautiful at the northern one).

Mostly we just walked or postholed over short patches of snow and generally felt pretty breathless because of the altitude. We also just enjoyed the heck out of the views. It is so pretty up there!