Got my Sparks Mr. Chomps yesterday, and my Ignition II’s last week. Today was the time to try them out. Idiot step number one, forgot to remove the pin guide, so the crampons would not be used today. Idiot step number two, forgot my camera at home (today is my daughter’s 3rd birthday and I have that camera staged by the presents that I laid out right after she left with mom to daycare). Village Idiot status verified with step number three, allow a local ultralight snowshoer/hiker/mountaineer to tell me that I could never do a route that he just rocked on his slowshoes.

Hence I parked at Whiskey Bend road next to the Lake Mills Dam and began to dry hike up to Hurricane Hill, a mere task from 600′ up to 5600′. I started with the ranger’s report that the snowline was at about 2000′ with it getting deep fast above that. The same report said there was a bit of past storm windfall from the past two winters. A “BIT” ended up being about 100 freaking trees across every angle of the trail. I finally found a route that forced me to hike up, over, under and around a ton of trees and brush. The approximate 5000′ of elevation gained by hike, verts (worked perfectly with the Sparks Ignitions II’s) and then skinning.

This Village Idiot got it done, but holy shit this was the stupidest and toughest thing I have done this year. I’m trying to attach my route. Red is hiking up and down, blue is riding and the black dotted areas were where I found so many trees I could build a development of log cabins.

Total props to those of you that do this type of trip every time you go out. I’m dehydrated (only brough two liters of water…idiot step #4) and I’m sure that my fat out of shape ass will be hurting forever.

Too bad I left that darn camera, the vistas were fantastic, possibly perfect at times today. I could see just about every peak and valley in the area from near the top of Hurricane Hill. Note to self, stop associating with ego filled ultralight ultrafit snowshoers, they give you very bad ideas.

Oh, freezing level was really high the last couple of days. Snow was soft and mushy down low, corn in the middle and not too darn bad on top. This was a fairly south facing area and still is holding quite a bit of snow. A few pinwheels were kicked off and spotted spontaneously rolling down, but everything I was on seemed stable and I did not notice any sluffing or slides the whole day.