Rocky Mountain Raider: Snow Slog

Saturday, January 4, 2014

Snow Slog - SoBo, Bear, Green

Snow Slog - SoBo, Bear, Green

I had planned on running the SoBo > Bear > Green > Bear > SoBo with William today, as he had never done the Skyline run. However, with the snow, we had to change up our plans a bit. We started out from the S. Table trailhead right before 8:00am and there was already 4 inches or more on the trails. We cruzed up Homestead, which had two sets of tracks before we turned and went up Shadow Canyon. No one had been up Shadow yet, and so that turned into a fun session of power hiking in 4-6 inches as we tried to not slide all over the rocks and still stay on the trail. Near the saddle, I saw some bits of blue sky and thought that the storm was breaking up, but I was dead wrong. After sliding our way to the top of SoBo, we cruzed down and made our way over to Bear. Again, no tracks on Bear. The storm at this point decided to pick up steam, and as we went down the West Ridge, the snow really started dumping. We were still in positive spirits, but we were both questioning whether we wanted to go down Shadow. We broke trail up Bear Green all the way, and not until hitting the Ranger trail did we see another set of tracks since the Mesa trail early on. There were two sets - one I figured was Jeff's, and the other was from someone we ran into near the top of Green who was on his way down. The storm was really dumping now, and so we decided to go back down Bear Green and then down Bear Canyon to the Mesa trail. Coming back down, there were sections that had at least a foot of snow or more, as we broke trail down Bear Canyon until near the bottom when we ran into one runner and a couple hikers. I was psyched to finally run into people so that we didn't have to continue to break trail. We turned, and then followed the Mesa trail along until reaching the new Upper Big Bluestem trail, which we opted to go down to check it out. It was fun, fast, and smooth. I think the new re-route is very well done. Finally, after a couple hours of slogging through too much snow, we made it back to the car. Not the best day perhaps for an intro to the Skyline, but I was sure to point out that the next time he does it, it will be easier!