After losing the trail up Beus Canyon last week after only 2 miles, we wanted to take another stab at it this weekend. Revenge on Beus. Beus II. Beus the sequel... you get the point. We expected that several people would have already plowed a path along the trail to the summit, and we would be able to practically skip up the trail while whistling our favorite show tunes. Turns out one set of footprints plowed through the snow about a quarter mile further than we went last week, and then we were back on our own. The trail was still pretty easy to follow, but not so easy to move along.
 |
| Sam going around one of many bends up the canyon |
Sam had more energy in the tank this week and did most of the plowing. The snow was pretty shallow for the first 3 miles, but then at about 7200', we reached the unmelted snowpack from the last several storms. It went from 6 inches of powder to 18 inches of crusted snow over the course of about a quarter mile. We put on the snow shoes and kept plowing ahead, but at a much... much slower rate.
 |
| Me climbing out on the rock for a nice view, by which I mean photo-opp |
The snowshoes would have been great if not for all the shrub branches that kept tripping us. We debated on taking off the snowshoes again, but after a few steps of sinking down to our knees without them, we kept trekking with them on. The moving would have been about the same speed either way, but with the snowsnoes, we at least keep our hands and knees dry. We realized that our hopes of summiting Mt. Ogden were fading quickly.
 |
| Me attempting to plow for a while. In the snowshoes, I was sinking about 6-8 inches each step. |
No comments:
Post a Comment