Date: March 20-21st, 2021
# Clients: 13
Weather conditions: Partly cloudy with light snow showers day one. Clear, sunny, windless, and hot on day two. Got down to the high teens at night.
Snow conditions: Fresh powder on trees and ground from day before. No bare patches on trail or at Dewey Point.
Issues/Notes: Road closed in the morning due to heavy ice. Water bladder froze. Burned a hole in my down jacket. Tried out new apple pie desert.
The day started out pretty cold and icy. The storm on Friday left the roads covered in a layer of ice and snow. I had planned to arrive at Badger Pass around 0830 to procure permits and sort gear. I found the gate going up to Badger closed. A member of the parks was waiting at the entrance telling everyone that the road was still being cleared and would open once the road was safe. Unfortunately, the road didn’t open until 1030. Fortunately, we had an extra hour of day light due to the time change, so we ended up reaching camp and eating dinner at normal time with a little extra quickness during prep.
The temperature on Saturday didn’t seem to get above freezing. The sun was warm, but the minute a cloud cell passed or we entered the trees the temperature was bitterly cold. As the sun started to set the temperature was noticeably dropping. Before I went to bed I made sure to store my water bladder in my backpack and had it wrapped in some clothing for insulation so it wouldn’t freeze. Unfortunately, the hose froze solid before I could get it all wrapped. I tried to unfreeze it by dipping it in some hot water the next morning, but the instant it came out and I used it, it started to freeze again. I didn’t have a thermometer, but the temperatures were easily below 20F.
In order to stay warm during these cold nights and morning, I wear a heavy duty down parka from Bight. I’ve been extremely satisfied with it since I bought it last year. It was a piece of used clothing from a mountaineering store, so it already had a small patch on the bottom. In the morning, while handing a client hot water for their drink someone noticed down was sticking out of the bottom of my jacket. I looked down and there was a hole about the length of my pinky finger and width of a quarter. I must have leaned over too close to one of the burners at one point. I thought I smelt something burning, haha. It’s easily fixable with some patches.
Since this was going to be the last snowshoe trip of the year and due to the large size of the group I decided to try out a new desert recipe. It called for dehydrated apples, raisins, sugar, water and cinnamon for the “filling”. The original recipe called for bread crumbs for the “crust”, but I found this really good organic gluten free toasted granola with different seeds and nuts at Trader Joes, so I thought that would be a tasty alternative to spice it up. It tasted great, but I cooked too much and didn’t realize how large the apples would rehydrate into so I had a bit extra. I want to try the banana cream pie recipe next.
