Imagine you discovered a lake a short distance into the backcountry that produces 20” goldens on a regular basis. You would want to share this location with your friends, but you would avoid posting the name on the internet where search bots can lead the masses to your post thus causing spot burn.
Our destination had a logbook detailing the adventures of many travelers. Often one would read the comment, “Please only share this destination with your best friends.”
I would like to share our adventure with my friends at HST but please don’t post the name of this “backcountry Ritz Carlton”.
We knew the weather would be sketchy so we agreed to take this journey in stages. If at any time either of us wanted to back out we would. The drive in showed that there was plenty new snow. Her 4 WD did an excellent job of getting us to the trailhead.
After a grueling climb busting trail uphill we reached the storm shelter.
This storm shelter proved to be a cozy place to eat lunch.
Then it was back to busting trail. Eventually we reached the weather station.
The snow had been coming down hard all day but we were just over a mile from our destination so we trudged on.
After 8 hours of travel we finally reached our destination.
We lit up the gas stove and began to warm ourselves.
We failed to get the water running so we spent quite a bit of time melting snow. Darkness soon fell over the valley. We then ate our dinner and went to bed.
We were scheduled to leave the following day, Friday the 13th. The weather forecast had called for Friday to be clear. The snow continued to fall. Sometimes the accumulation was over 3” an hour. We decided to do the prudent thing and stay put.
Sport climb up the hill and got half a bar (I wouldn’t know what that meant 10 years ago). She texted her girl who called the USFS and informed them of our decision to stay put. They told her another couple may be arriving that afternoon.
We prepared for guests but they never arrived. I told Sport they probably were not as crazy as us.
The next morning the skies partially cleared and the snow had stopped falling.
It was time to hit the trail. It was quite a work out busting trail uphill.
We met the other couple as we approached the storm shelter. They said it took them hours and hours to reach the shelter so they decided to spend the night there. It turns out they were two crazy college aged kids.
We finally reach the Rubicon which had also been snowed over.
Sport’s car was covered from the storm.
All in all we had a blast!
I hope you enjoyed my post.
-Russ
