So in my First Winter Camping post I mentioned we were moving to phase 2 of winter camping, actually hiking up and camping. We’ll that didn’t happen this past weekend. We have had a week of sub-zero temps and Saturday was no exception. We made the call to hold off on camping and I think we made right choice. We have limited experience and both felt safer camping in warmer temps. We were not idle though!! Strapping on our snowshoes and bundling up we braved the -5° weather and had a great day hike!

 

 

 

 

 

 

We started up Bass crk around 11 am enjoyed the crisp day. 2 miles up we came to a Beaver pond that was mostly frozen over. We scouted a camping spot for next weekend and found a super sweet spot.

 

We continued on another mile until we reached ‘The Big Rock’ as I call it. It is one of my favorite features of Bass crk. It stands alone and I’ve often wondered how it made its way to the creek crossing. So I present….

 

The Big Rock was happy to see us as well and tried to steal my friend’s hat!

Once we escaped from the clingy rock we decided to try to make it back to the ice falls. I’ve been up to the falls in the early spring but never at this time of year. We picked our path and headed off trail for a trek though waist deep snow. Our snowshoes helped but it was still slow going as we broke a fresh path through the woods. We climbed, scrambled, and laughed our way up to the falls.

This is as close as we got to the falls. We could hear the water running under the ice and it got rather steep going down to the base of the falls. We didn’t feel comfortable getting closer when we didn’t know where the ice of the stream started. I turned around from the falls and this was my view!!

The views were amazing and the company good but the fading light forced us to turn around and head for home. While we didn’t roll down the hill like we expected, we did slide quite a bit and I only fell on my butt once. Not too bad!

By the time we got to the truck we were pretty chilly, but excited that we made it up to the beautiful falls! We will try the camping this upcoming weekend when the temperature is more favorable. Stay tuned!!