After an uneasy night of battling the crazy mule deer we awoke at Hodges Lake to find everything still intact. It was an unusually overcast morning and slightly on the chili side. Like normal, we packed up our backpacks and headed out on the trail around 0800. We headed over the ridges confining Hodges Lake and back down into Cross Creek Valley. The scenery was just as beautiful and normal (((picture))). Today we would finish up the Cross Creek Valley and end up at a decent sized lake (the head waters of cross creek) know as Blodget. The hike was not far but the elevation gain would be significant.
We hiked at a good pace for about an hour when we came across some old abandoned log cabins and the ruins of what appeared to be an old processing station left over from the mining days. We breaked here for breakfast (more oatmeal, joy) and explored the buildings. After our half hour stop, we returned to the trail up the valley.
As we approached the valley end, we could see some low elevation snow on a north facing mountain. We dropped our packs and headed up the “hill” to play in the snow. What looked to be about a 100 yard hike with a 50 ft elevation gain, turned out to be more like a ½ mile hike and a 200 foot elevation gain, man I really suck a judging distance in the mountains.
Rob enjoying the snow in July.
When we finally arrived, we did the usual, threw snowballs at each other, pissed our names in the snow and sat around in it, and then it was back down the hill to retrieve our packs.
Once we dawned our sacks, it was up the mountain to Blodget lake, our final destination for the day. Again, what looked like a 500 yard hike with a 100 ft. elevation gain, turned into a mile long trek up a 500 ft. elevation increase.
Blodget Lake and a gloomy sky...
Upon summit and site of the secluded lake it began to rain, by this point we were getting use to the site of rain, it had rained everyday so far since we’ve been in the mountains. The rain came and we set beside the lake in ponchos watching for fish. Unfortunately, there were no fish, or an end to the rain in sight. As we sat there patiently, it began to hail….bummer.
Looking at the hail accumulation at our feet.
A break in the weather allowed us to quickly put up the tent (Rob’s luxury item) and affix a tarp to it extending the capacity, and then it started raining again. Beings how we had nothing else better to do, we cracked into the first of our booze stash. For an hour or two we passed our battery acid concoction (Battery acid = Everclear, water, extremely concentrated lemonade) around. For some reason, I ended up making no since and a real fool out of myself. I have my suspicions that Danny and Rob were not drinking their shares. We ate some potato soup (sans trout) and passed out, some my literally than others, all snuggled up as heterosexually as we could in the two man tent.
More pics from day four at web.umr.edu/~dmwbnd
No comments:
Post a Comment