Overnight I had burned some propane in the Alto furnace. It was unseasonably cool, a few degrees above freezing outside. Inside it was room temperature.
The cloud ceiling had risen a few thousand feet. The mountains above the tree line had become visible. I walked west on the old forestry road which had been transformed into a hiking path. When I was a teenager we car camped beside that road anywhere we pleased. I can't remember cars passing. At night we would sit around the campfire with the soles of our shoes smoking and our backs freezing cold.
My plan was to hike up Nahahi Ridge as far as I could, then maybe scramble a bit.
When I began the climb the rising sun broke through under the clouds.
The prospect for a good day was not assured (looking south). East, left, towards the sun was where the weather usually goes.
There was no place dry, no place to sit and rest.
I always am a bit leery crossing alpine meadows even when there are no grisly signs like overturned stones and logs grubbing and, more obviously, the smell of them.
I took the rubber boots off the metal tips of my trek poles.
In the meadow, out of the forest, on the path across the top of the meadows, I could see Nahahi ridge. I could see that the trail went to the small cliff face on the ridge and followed it down to where the trees grew through it.
I wrote another Flash panorama of East S.E. to South so that you could get a feel for the lay and slope of that land where the Elbow river valley narrows at the cliffs of the serious snow capped mountains.
Go ahead, click on it!
On the east side of the cliff trail...
It started to sprinkle.
On the west side of Nahahi Ridge looking south into the Elbow gorge the clouds descended, it became dark, and started raining.
I expected snow. It was cold enough.
Back in the forest down in the valley, the trees were lovin' it. All across the continent the new growth on the plants was brilliant lime copious green.
It was only about noon. I collapsed back into bed. I'd been hiking since 5.
