We were graced with our first snow of the season December 1st.  It was like mother nature was getting into the Christmas spirit with us.  Fluffy snow fell all through December and we woke up to a completely white Christmas. It was magical.  Our house in the valley had over 3 feet of snow by the 2nd week in January.  While the temperature stayed low, the snow kept falling and falling.  February rolled around and what is usually a dreary, blandish month marked by the melting snow exposing the dead grass beneath it, the month was still quiet white with no sign of change.  Now I’m thankful for the snow.  Good snow pack in the mountains means fewer fires in the summer.  However, the novelty of bundling up in multiple layers to go hike or run or even get to the car was wearing off.  It is now the 2nd week of March and in the last 4 days we’ve gotten at least 10 inches of snow followed by rain, followed by snow.  I’m soggy to say the least.

I rock climbed when I was in high school but since having kids had not had time.  I wanted to get back into that and get my kids climbing too.  Its a great whole body exercise and they love climbing trees so I figured they would take to this quickly, which they did!  My kids were restless too so I found an indoor bouldering gym in the valley!! I signed the kids up for lessons and found my old climbing shoes.  The first time we went, the kids had fun and left with blistered hands, I left being brutally reminded how old and out of shape I am.  The last few weeks have been awesome.  We go Mondays for the kids lessons and as I’ve climbed more and began training my upper body have greatly improved as well.  The kids love it so much we go at least one other time during the week that isn’t a lesson night.  I’ve been so impressed with my kids perseverance, determination and hard work when climbing.So let it continue to snow, we will be hiding in the bouldering gym until spring decides to arrive!

We did it!! The weather held for a bit and we were able to get out for a night up Bass Crk.  We packed up and got to the trail head around 10 am.

We decided to camp at the beaver pond up Bass crk.  Its not a super far hike (2.1 miles) but we wanted to be close enough to the trail head if something happened we could get out fairly quick.  Its pretty steep up Bass crk and we changed about 1000 ft in elevation.  We made good time and got to work setting up camp.

 

 

 

There had been campers up here last weekend and they had a pretty good spot for a tent stamped out but we had to expand it a bit for my tent.  We had a great time using our snow shoes to scrape and stomp out the spot for the tent. As I got the tent set up my friend got the fire spot cleared out.  The campers before us had brought over a bunch of green trees that we had to move out of the way of the fire pit. Once we got camp set up we decided to hike a ways up the trail.  I wanted to check out the falls where I’d been ice climbing a few weeks before.

On the way we found a small trail that veered off to the right and decided to follow that for a bit.  We thought we were just following a game trail but found a research game camera instead.  Those poor researchers are going to have fun when they see our silly faces on there.  After pretending to be wildlife we continued up to the falls

There were more cracks in the falls this week.  I didn’t get up to where we had climbed.  You could see where there had been snow and ice falling from that canyon and didn’t want to get hit.  You could hear water falling behind the ice and see it streaming down the rocks by the falls.

On the way down we found a LIVE spider in the snow.

After that terrifying encounter with wildlife we made our way back to camp. We stopped and collected wood and moss to start a fire on the way back. We worked HARD on that fire.  I brought those fire starters again but we had to use 5 of them. We got it going but due to how wet the wood was we had to go back out and try to find dead trees that weren’t too covered in snow or wet. My friend is awesome at finding good fire wood in the snow.  She says to look for trees that are dead and standing but grey.  That’s a good sign for dry wood.  Also she says that if the tree has “bonus branches” it’s a super good find. You can use the branches for kindling.  Here’s the fire queen with her awesome fire!

We boiled water and mixed up our MREs and had a nice dinner by the fire.  Here is where we made a mistake that had us up in the middle of the night but I’ll get to that later.

Our fire resources exhausted not too long after dark.  We were warm and full from our yummy dinners.  Even though it wasn’t too late we figured we’d be up early since my friend had dinner with her aunt the next day and we needed to be back in time.  After some tent selfies we hit the hay.

Earlier, I mentioned a mistake and around midnight I woke up THIRSTY.  I reached for my water bottle and it was empty.  Then I got to thinking that I had another but it was out by the fire and I had used the water in it to make our dinners….. I bundled up and got my flashlight to go out and  get it and lo and behold it was about a quarter full.  I took a few sips and have rarely been that thankful for water.  I took the rest back for my friend.  We finished off that little bit and tried to go back to sleep.  About half an hour later I had to pee.  My friend wasn’t sleeping either and we both were still super thirsty.  We got up, got my stove out, rounded up all our water bottles and pot and headed out to find a good patch of snow away from camp to get snow to melt.  It turns out it takes a lot of snow to fill one water bottle AND it takes a long time to get water to boil when its 10 degrees out.  Also, you end up with pine needles and other crud in your water no matter how ‘clean’ it looks when you’re gathering it.  We picked out what we could and then used our french press coffee mugs to filter out the rest.  That worked great!!  The screens on the french press got all the crud out.  We let the water cool a bit after boiling it but I have never enjoyed warm water as much as I did that night.  We boiled enough water for our two water bottles and went back to bed.  Lesson learned, Make sure you have your water situation taken care of  BEFORE bed!!

We pulled our sleeping bags over our heads and crashed. We vented the tent and didn’t have the condensation problem this time.  We put space blankets under our pads and that helped keep the heat in as well.  We used the same sleeping bags as when we camped in my yard.  We slept with our snow pants, sweatshirt, had and socks and stayed warm.  When I poked my head out expecting it to be dark, the sun was fully risen.  We’d slept till 9:10 am!!

Good morning, hows my hair?

We popped hand warmers in our boots to warm them up and finished taking selfies. Once our boots were warm we got up and started making coffee.

As we were enjoying our coffee my friend checked to make see what time dinner at her aunt’s was.  Turns out dinners at 3:00 pm!!  It’s about 10 am now and we have at least an hour of tearing down camp, 45 mins to the truck, then the time it takes to drive home and get cleaned up and drive the hour out to her aunts house.  We kicked it into high gear and got going.

We had great trip!  We survived and found things to do different next time.  I think each trip will get better and each time will present different challenges we’ll have to adapt to.

 

Good news she got to dinner by 3:00 pm.

Well, we tried out our gear in my back yard at the end of December and were hoping to get out into the woods within a week or two for another camp trip. Well, the weather didn’t cooperate for a few weeks.  There was a sub-zero spell that made us hesitant to stay out all night.  I knew we could survive but -20 degrees Fahrenheit didn’t sound fun.  So we practiced.  We made lists of things we needed, packed our bags to make them as efficient as possible and went on hikes with our full packs to train.  We tried not to double up on gear if we could help it.  I had a cook stove, she had the compact saw etc.  We seem to be very good at having what the other doesn’t.  Our camp out in my yard helped us when packing for this trip.  We realized we needed to vent the tent to avoid condensation that turned to ice, having a space blanket below use was a must, and putting hand warmers in our boots before we put them on in the morning would keep our feet so much warmer.  I’ve done this before but as I’m super into efficiency I stuff my sleeping bag into a dry bag for two reasons, one  if my pack gets wet my sleeping bag will still be dry, and two  once camp is set up I use the dry bag to put our food in at night and suspend it in a tree to keep it our of reach of bears or other hungry critters.

So we packed up and layered up and went out to enjoy our day in 0 degree weather.  This time we went up Kootenai Crk.

We got up to the trail head and decide we would try to fish for a bit.  Finding a bit of creek that wasn’t frozen over we cautiously made our way down.  We couldn’t get too close to the edge because we weren’t sure where the shore ended and the ice started. We didn’t catch anything, turns out the hook becomes an ice sickle pretty quick in this weather.

We continued up the trail for a few miles and decided to make a fire.  I had made fire starters out of egg cartons, dryer lint and paraffin wax.  We busted out the compact saw and downed a standing dead tree. What an adventure that was! We got the tree down and sawed into shorter lengths and my hiking buddy got the flames going.  Those fire starters are awesome! We used two to get the fire going.  We made coffee  and ate skittles while we were there and had a nice break.

Even with the fire going we got chilly after a bit. Our hair was even frozen. We packed up and headed home, even though we didn’t camp we had a great day! By the time we got back to the truck it was -11 degrees Fahrenheit!  bbrrrrrrrr

 

 

I have not posted anything in awhile to the great dismay of my Georgia bestie.  However, I have not been idle.  I have had a great many adventures so sit down and get ready for some fun up Bass Crk!  I’ve posted pictures of the falls up Bass creek and as luck would have it someone who ice climbs up there saw them on facebook and offered to take me along!!  I could barely contain my excitement in the two weeks before we went.  It had been bitter cold for most of January, but the week leading up to the climb the temperature started to creep towards the 30’s which was concerning for the ice stability.

 

The morning of the climb was warm and snowing big fluffy flakes.  I met my guide and one of his friends at the trailhead and we started the 3 mile hike back to the falls.  It was pleasant, quick hike and before I knew it we were standing at the base of the falls.  The warm weather had caused some damage to the main falls and they decided we would steer clear of it.  They picked a smaller fall to the right that they had climbed a few weeks before.

We left most of our gear at an overhang below the falls and started up.  I didn’t realize how steep it really was going up and how grateful I was to have my poles for stability.  I found a small overhang next to where they were belaying.  It was my hide out for when ice fell which I learned happened quite often and would hurt immensely if hit. Which I found out later in the day……

I have a background in rock climbing and found ice climbing to be similar.  It’s almost easier in that you get to put your ax where ever you want.  Your hand holds aren’t limited for the most part.  I loved the axes and the the large spikes of the cramp-ons.  They use large screws to anchor into the ice as they climb.  It was fun to watch the first ascent,  the rhythm of hand, hand, foot, foot and a pause for putting in a new screw.  Ice would cascade down as the climber went up.  Looking up you could see when pieces were coming and take cover.  Both my guides climbed and  while I had insisted that I was along as an observer only since this was my first time out, I was offered the chance to actually climb and jumped on it.  As I didn’t have any climbing gear of my own I was graciously lent boots, axes and a harness.  I switched boots,  got harnessed up and started up!!

I began a bit below where the guys had because it was sloped a little less.  It turns out it was a lot harder to get the ax into the ice than I thought it would be.  I had to really swing and put a lot into it to get it to stick.  Kicking in my boots was no problem though.

I made it about 1/2 way to the top before my hands were completely frozen.  I also didn’t realize how cold they would get.  My guide said it was because I was holding on to the axes too tight while I climbed.  I was holding on to the axes super tight though because I was terrified of dropping one.  If I had dropped one it could have hit some one or it would be very dangerous to go out on the snow field to retrieve it.  They don’t let you have a leash for your axes either because if you fall and the ax is attached it could stab you.  So tightly I held on to the detriment of my fingers.  It took quite a while for my hands to regain normal feeling and it was a painful process but totally worth it!

My guides climbed a couple more times before we called it a day.  It was during one of these climbs that I got hit in the back with a piece of ice.  They had told me to always be looking up and it was a good thing I was.  I saw that piece of ice coming and had just enough time to get my head down.  I’m glad I did because if that sucker had hit my face I would have had to be carried off the mountain.  I had a sore shoulder for a few days but that won’t stop me from going again.

When we arrived that morning you could hear water falling behind the big falls, by the time we left you could see water running over the big falls and on the rocks around them.  It was getting warm.  The next week was even warmer. I went up 2 days later and there were even bigger cracks in the falls and it sounded like rice crispies, snap crackle and popping.  We seem to have had the last climb of the season up Bass Crk. I am so happy I got to be a part it!