My Trails

3/5/14 – 152 miles.
Todays hiking was the reverse of yesterday with a little excitement thrown in. I got cold in the night and broke out my emergency blanket, which had deteriorated from years of carrying it around, and ended up being a clear piece of plastic. I got it spreed over me inside my sleeping bag, finally, and it warmed me up until morning. I crawled out a little later than usual with it being so cold and snowy and had a hot breakfast to warm up. By the time I got on the trail it was almost 8am.

The trail was very confusing when I left Manning Camp but I managed to find the AZT amidst several side trails. The guide book labels trails differently than the park does so it wasn’t long before I took the wrong turn. To make matters worse, the trail climbs another 600′ past the camp and right onto more snow. It started out with just a couple inches, but as I climbed higher and worked my way towards the north side of the mountains, it became 4″ and then 6″ deep. When I discovered my error, I had gone a half mile out of my way. I returned to the marker where I turned wrong and noticed someone had scratched AZT with an arrow in the right direction. I guess I’m not the only one to make the wrong turn. I’m pretty sure they want you to use a GPS.

When I finally started down the north face of the Rincons, I ran into more problems. The snow had thawed and frozen back into a sheet of glass. Sometimes I would break through with a bone crushing jar and sometimes it was so hard and slippery that my boots wouldn’t even make a mark. On several, long switchbacks, the snow was drifted across the trail in a smooth, glacier like accumulation with the path filled in with frozen snow. The only way to get across those areas was to kick foot steps into the snow and go slow. It wasn’t just the fear of falling because a couple places had dropoffs of a hundred feet. Who knew I would need an ice axe on the AZT!

I didn’t go too far today. I am camped only a few miles from the Redington highway. I just made a detour of one mile to get water. When I got back to the trail there was a nice camping spot so I am settled in for the night. This will be 4000′ lower than last night so it should be a lot warmer.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 7th, 2014 at 5:10 pm and is filed under AZT Hike. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.