A Crazy Hike

This post starts like most of the ones I have written. Paige, Jonah, and I decided we would go geocaching. So I picked a spot to go and we headed out. The weather wasn't bad, it was a little cold and overcast, but it is winter, so what would you expect? Anyway, I picked what looked on the map to be a small hike, about 1 mile in, so I figured even with the trail not being direct it would be a maximum of 2 miles in and 2 out. We could do that, right? Plus there were 3 geocaches on the way, and another if we wanted to go just a little bit further.

Everything was going good. Jonah was really happy to be outside. He ran up the trail with Paige following after him. I had to walk pretty fast to keep up. As we were going we saw a little snow here and there on the side of the trail. Not a big deal though. After about a half mile of running we got to our first stop. The problem was when we stopped I realized there was now a little more than a little snow. The trail was still all dirt, but the rest of the ground was about half green and half white. Luckily, we were able to find the geocache though, and we were feeling pretty good. Jonah was now tired from the running and asked that I carry him. I had prepared for this also, and had our Ergo with us, so no big deal. Anyway, as we kept going the snow seemed to get thicker, and a split tree for a bridge over a creek was covered in ice also. Paige walked slowly but perfectly across this, and I felt proud, and again overlooked the amount of snow around us.

It was about this time that we found a small cave on the side of the trail. Jonah loved it!!! I am pretty sure his favorite animal right now is a bat (although the skunk and opossum are close seconds) and he wanted to fly into the cave and to live there.

Once we got hiking again Jonah wanted to walk for a little bit, but when the snow started to completely cover the trail, he wanted to be carried again. By the GPS we were really close to the next Geocache and Paige was excited. However, this was the part of the trail that climbed the most, so it was actually quite a ways further. We kept going though, because the GPS said we were close...

Once we finally got to the second Geocache I finally realized how much snow we were in. I could not find the cache at all. As a matter of fact, everywhere I stepped trying to just get close, my leg would sink in at least a foot of snow. I knew we were close though, because I had read the hint on the site where I downloaded the coordinates, and it mentioned being at the base of a fallen tree. I could see the fallen tree, I just couldn't dig very well to the base of it. Remember, we didn't intend to go hiking in the snow, so we didn't have gloves or snow pants or hats or really most of the stuff we should have had as it turns out. We did have coats though, so that was good.

Paige was upset with me when I gave up looking. She really wanted to find 4 caches. So far we had only found 1 and I has already told her we would not go the extra trail looking for the 4th, so she was now down to only the possibility of 2. Jonah was ready to go back as he was getting cold. We was on my back and not moving, so he was the only one cold. The trail was more or less a loop and we were close to the mid point. My GPS now read 3.8 miles, and 900 feet elevation gain.

So here was the problem. We were 3.8 miles in, the trail wasn't that long, but all the extra walking around looking for the caches, and playing in the cave, etc. added up. We were up quite a ways so going down shouldn't be as hard. However, it was now 3:30 and gets dark at about 4:30 this time of the year. But Paige really wanted to try for the final cache. Well if you don't know, I would do almost anything for my baby girl, so I put Jonah in the backpack and we kept going. The final cache was at the peak of this hill and then we would go back down the trail around the other side of the loop. This picture is just a little way along after I made the decision to keep going, notice how high the snow is on the sides of the trail. Oh yeah, we haven't seen the dirt for a while now...

When we finally made it to the peak, I kind of laughed at myself. There was of course even more snow there than at the last cache. I guess I was hoping it would be under some tree canvas or something and not so snow covered. In any case I barely looked at all, it was pointless. Paige actually understood, which was cool. But now a real problem was developing. It was getting dark. It was 3:50 and we were still almost as far from the car as we had been all day. Just for reference it was around 1:30 when we started our adventure. We were 1200 feet higher than where we started and had hiked 4.38 miles. The furthest Paige had ever gone before was 4 miles so this was already a new record. So we started down. I asked Paige to go a little faster but to also be carefully, she was walking on the snow in her regular shoes. To top it all off, this was the point when Jonah decided he had had enough, and we starting to lose it and cry.

After about 10 minutes I noticed my phone had reception so I called Julie to tell her we were on the way back and that I would take us all out for dinner to celebrate Paige's longest hike to date. I didn't mention that we were still almost at the top. Anyway, you won't believe this, it started to snow. Not just a little either, it really started to snow hard.

So we finally made it to the car, at about 4:35. I was totally impressed with how quickly we came down. The trail was completely covered with snow except for the last mile. It was completely dark, our car was the last in the parking lot, and we had just hiked 6.2 miles. It snowed about 4 inches in the next 3 hours at our house, I am sure it was more where we were hiking. Totally crazy, but totally fun. I think Paige still wants to go again; Jonah not so much, but he will soon.