view of and from out campsite
Matthew being a badass
One evening we wandered along some boulders and just jumped on stuff that looked fun, wasn't in mountainproject.com or anything
Me attempting to be a badass lol
rattlesnake!! First time we saw one in two years
Ok, time for the Epic Adventure! We planned a 6 day backpacking trip along Paiute pass, down into evolution valley and up over Lamarck col on a not maintained trail. A total of about 44 miles. Not many are out in the woods here yet due to the snow so we had limited knowledge of how the conditions would be beforehand. We had a good talk with the rangers in town before heading off. We packed our cramp-ons, ice axes(well Matthew had a homemade alpine stock because... it's Matthew), and snow shoes. Because we would be sleeping at high elevation I also packed a blow up mat to sleep on, it was so much warmer! On to the trip...
Day 1 at the start of the trail, we are so happy and have not idea what we are about to get ourselves into.
Once we reached about 9,500' we started to hit the patchy snow spots, at first we got way with just shoes but eventually we put on the snow shoes as there became more snow and less trail
rest stop by a lake before doing Paiute pass
working our way across the pass, in cramp on and using my ice axe. This gave me courage for Lamarck which we were told would be harder. The angle was not bad and it felt pretty comfy... I just tried not to look down at where I might fall. We climbed 2,000' that day.
After the pass we made it to a river and a flat spot for camping out. This is the next morning before heading out. It got cold but I was toasty that night. Matthew had it a little worse. He was sleeping in a wool poncho and alpaca fur, which is pretty warm but he was only sleeping on top of a thin cotton canvas cloth he treated to waterproof and a thin foam mat. He's crazy but it works, he didn't lose a any toes. In the morning our shoes were frozen. All the snow conditions, even with waterproof shoes, we had wet feet. Matthew's boots were worse than mine, they had a thick layer of ice on the outside. In the morning we found a nice flatish rock to sit on and soak up some warmth from the sun while we made breakfast.
Day 2 started with cramp ons because the snow was still frozen on top. As the day went on it got slushier and we swapped to snow shoes and eventually just our shoes.
This day was full of gorgeous views as we worked out way down into Evolution valley
This is one of about 5 crossings we did. We were warned by the rangers about the crossing, this was the worst one on this day and it was really not that bad.
The trail down was Rough. I mean we are seasoned hikers, we have been doing this for 2 years and it was hard! We did about 10 miles and were wiped out! We dropped from about 10,800' to 8,000' that day, the trail was very rocky.. it's a good thing we have strong ankles, but our knees were getting sore.
Not sure you can really make out the depth in this shot but thought it was a good one of the river with a mountain in the background
End of day 2
We crossed this bridge over the river and camped only about 100 feet past it in a nice shady spot. This was the best night, it was warm and dry.. only one we got. Since we were by the river and it was warm we took the opportunity to do a quick wash and dried out our wet socks and shoes.
Day 3 we thought would be easy, we found that every time we thought something would be easy it invariably was not. The big payoff, aside from feeling accomplished and not dying, were the views.
It's pretty neat to be hiking along in 60 degree weather and see this.
more amazing views
The trail started to get rough before this crossing. The difficulty was the snow covering the trail and making it hard to find our way. We are very grateful for gps. The whole day was also a slow climb. That part wasn't bad, but post holing through snow sucks, we didn't have our cramp ons or snow shoes yet because you have to walk on a lot of trail still inbetween and you start ruining them that way... we did a lot of it anyway but tried to minimize how much. Anywho this was the WORST crossing of the trip. Look at that photo again, do you see how wide that river is? Ok, now think about the fact that the water in that river is made up of snow melt, think of that temperature while doing this crossing. I went for it first because I was going in shoes and Matthew's crazy butt did it barefoot. I was doing well at first, and gradually the cold started to settle into my bones. By the time I made it to the other side I was taking some deep heaving breaths and once out of the water I screamed... twice. I had to take off my socks and shoes and let the blood run back into my all white toes. Matthew made it across barefoot, was uncomfortable once he made it to the other side... but never was on the verge of tears, not fair.
Lunch break by the river, we laid out our socks and shoes every time to let our feet breath and go from drenched to damp.
Another pretty view before we made camp. The map we had claimed there was a campsite not far past this spot... it was just a bunch of rocks and limited dry spots. We found a decent site... full of horse poop.. that was the decent site. It was dryish and flatish. I gave in that evening and took some vitamin i (ibuprofen) before bed. I was really sore that day and had a headache. Our packs were the heaviest they've ever been with the extra winter gear and this was on the the longest trips we've ever done, so more weight from the extra food. Based on how we felt this day we decided to break up the mileage. We ended this day shorter than we were initially planning. The next day we just going to be 3-4 miles, but all climbing up about 1,500'. We figured it would be our 'easy' day... and it mostly was.
Pretty views as we climbed.
This is Angie struggling in her natural environment
just cool
If you look closely Matthew is at the edge of the river punching through with his alpine stock to get a good spot to refill our water bottles.
At our initial campsite around noon on a nice warm rock enjoying radioactive snow cones! (lime jello on ice) It was a delicious treat. And then..
We noticed this lovely cloud working it's way across the mountains in the distance and went 'oh crap, we are too exposed here'. Our tarp was pitched on the snow... on badly secured. I turned off the phone for the evening so I don't have the photos of how epic the sky got, the clouds kept getting bigger and scarier. While that was happening we backed up everything, moved near a large rock and dug about two feet into the snow, then pitched the tarp over that. I banged my hand against some ice while shoveling snow with my snow shoe...ouch but nothing broken accept a little skin. Our hope was it would just be windy and that would protect us from it, our other hope was no snow. The next day was the big scary day, Lamarck pass which was 12,800' about. The first pass was only 11,400'. And Lamarck was going to be steeper. The clouds ended up just being a scare, no crazy winds and no snow, thank goodness.
Taking down the tarp in the morning. We got up early... for us, it was 6:30am. We wanted the snow to be frozen while going over the pass.
A little messy but it was all ours lol
First order of business on day 4 was to skirt along four lakes. It was absolutely fine, Matthew checked the lake before while we were walking along it... still a bit nerve wracking for me. We did some scrambling over rocks too depending on the situation so the cramp-ons were going on and off.
Then the climb... it was a bunch of switchbacking up the snow in our cramp ons for a good mile... a good steep mile.
Close to the stop we took off the cramp ons and did some class 2 rock climbing to the top.
Looking out over the other side... hard to tell just how steep it is since it just all looks white... it was intimidating and the snow was starting to soften. When we started down the snow was a mix of slushy soft and ice, and you didn't know from one step to the next what you'd get. Thankfully that didn't last long, it was a much shorter decent on this side of the pass.
Joyful and comfy on a much easier section of the decent.
Matthew with the pass in the background. He is wearing sweater sleeves over his knees because he didn't think about the sunburn he would get from being on the snow. Forgot to mention that from day 1. His face and knees (front and back) were pretty red. His lips were the worst and right now are cracked with dried blood... bad. So he cut his sweater sleeves to cover his knees (heh that rhymed) and used a bandana over his face as much as he could.
We made it over the treacherous part and were feeling good with only a mile to get to the normal trail back to the car and then... those snow drifts are covering the trail with a shear drop to the right. Seriously? We considered digging but that would take hours... so then we looked at the map and decided to back track a little and go down the valley.. it didn't look too bad and looked safer than this... you know what they say though about looks, they deceive.
This was the start of the valley we were working down, not bad so far, but you can tell the snow was starting to get soft.
Things got more interesting here, the snow was more slushy and we were post holing in our cramp-ons. Eventually, we made to the rocks in the distance and did some sketchy scrambling. It made Matthew very unhappy since we were scrambling between slushy snow and boulders... big broken leg risk. We considered going up and along a steep cliff to get to the trail, I vetoed that b.s. and said we are going down, put on your snow shoes. We work well together. The snowshoes worked well for a now snowier section, but even those were sliding around on some steep sections we had to go down, so we were switchbacking in snow shoes, a bit tricky. We managed and made it down. The next step was to make it back to the trail somehow. Looking at the map Matthew said we could climb up over this rocky cliff and maybe have to do it one more time to get to the trail... again I vetoed that idea and said we are staying down here and following the river to the lake that then has a nice flatish terrain to the trail. He gave me attitude saying it was going to be rough and I said bring it mofo, it can't be as bad as the Gila in a skirt, I even have on gaitors! Again, Angie was right and following the river wasn't nearly as bad as he thought it would be. It was actually really fun and not too overgrown.
We made it down to this lake and there was actually a trail not on the map that took us from here to the main trail back to the car.
Doing a happy dance once we got to the intersection for the trail back to the car. From here it was about a mile of switchbacks down. Easy breezy. I told him be careful because this is when one of us is going to twist our ankles or something. We didn't.
The end!
This is what the mountains looked like that evening, thank goodness we got out when we did, there was precipitation that night and it was below freezing at 4,000', don't even want to know how bad it was where we were.
I am thankful for so many things. We got very lucky with the weather on this trip. Every day was sunny and gorgeous. We made it across some tricky terrain with only some scraps and sunburn. This trip was a combination of type one and type two fun. Type two is when you are in the moment not having so much fun, but when you think back it's like yeah that was awesome lol It was also a big variety... I mean we had various trail conditions, it was backpacking and mountaineering with a little rock climbing. Again, happy not to also deal with a variety in weather conditions. Once we were back in society we were filled with Elated Exhaustion. We split a pizza that left us hungry, then watched a movie and snacked until we passed out into a deep restful slumber. Now we could really use a shower... as usual.
