Cold and Sunburn

It's ironic that something as cold as snow is so good at causing sunburn. This weekend, I went backpacking with my Dad. It was really exciting since I haven't been in the back country since 2003. This short trip was similarly short, only two nights (we'd planned on 3), and, well, it snowed. Oh, and I got really sunburned.

Fortunately we knew it might snow, and were prepared for bad weather. Dad and I had been watching the weather forecasts for days, watching a cold front develop and move slowly south through California. Multiple trips to REI and raiding the winter ski supplies brought us mostly up to snuff. All in all, we were prepared for an adventure.

We drove up Saturday to Bishop and picked up our permit and bear can before continuing to the cabin in Mammoth. We stayed one night there to acclimate and stay warm. We were encouraged that it was mostly dry in Mammoth. There had been barely any snow, and Saturday dawned mostly clear and slightly damp. It hadn't snowed over night at all.

So we hopped into our car and drove to the trail head (picking up a good friend of Dad's on the way), where we found it was quite cloudy and snowy. Apparently Mammoth had been skipped for higher climes further south. We started hiking at South Lake, and went trudging off into a winter wonderland. Despite the fact that the Aspens had barely begun turning in the Bishop Creek drainage, it looked and felt exactly like winter. Snow crunched underfoot and drifted gently in front of us in a sparse white veil. At low elevations, the snow was only accumulating slowly. It wasn't melting at all, but it was snowing so slowly that there was only a couple of inches on and around the trail.

After lunch, however, we started encountering occasional gusts of wind and the snow was intensifying. We started sinking deeper into the tracks as the trail left the constant cover of trees. We encountered a group of hikers who'd come over Bishop Pass earlier. They said the snow lay thick on the switchbacks, and that they were glad to be getting out of the back country. It had snowed on them the last two nights in a row, and the knapsack pass they'd come through before Bishop Pass was hazardous because the boulders were all covered in snow. Soon after talking to them, we began postholing our way up through deeper and deeper snow while the dark clouds showed no sign of clearing. This despite the original forecast being that the storm was to clear Saturday afternoon.

I started to think this might not be so bright, and Dad was thinking the same thing, besides starting to feel the effects of thinning air and having to lift our feet higher and higher all the time. We stopped at Bishop Lake to see if we'd have a chance to make the pass today. After a moment of rest, it started to snow in earnest, big flakes falling quickly and densely. This was becoming a real winter storm, and we elected to set up camp immediately. We did so, and Joe headed back down the mountain to warmth.

We ended up staying there for both nights, and leaving one night early. The second day was partly cloudy, but warm, and some of the thinner areas melted. We day-hiked the pass, which was fun. Without packs, with warm boots and gaiters, the hike wasn't so bad. We were the first over it that day, and about 20 people followed after us in our tracks. That left pools of thawed water along the route, which I imagine froze over night to make an interesting path for people coming up the next day.

Both nights were cold. I shivered on and off both nights, and didn't get much sleep all together. My insulite pad was just not warm enough. The second night, we used clothes to keep me warmer underneath my bag, and that was somewhat successful. I was able to get warm more often, and was overall more comfortable. Dad slept very well the second night.

The second morning we woke to find Bishop Lake frozen. The entire lake was covered with a layer of ice that was up to 5/8" thick. It was a nice day, though. We ended up packing up and hiking home at my urging more than Dad's. I was terribly sunburned from the hike over the pass, and we were just so close to the trail head that I just didn't want to spend another day in the sun and a night in the cold. Besides, I was missing Libby! Our hike down was great. We took a detour to Ruwau Lake via a cross country route that gave us some fun route-finding in the snowy hills. The lower areas were in the process of thawing, and the smells of trees, dust and sage occasionally met our noses. The trail was the wettest I've ever seen a Sierra trail. It was really muddy and slushy as the snow melted away. We only encountered dry dust within a mile or so from the trail-head, as we began wandering down through Aspens and the rocky slopes above South Lake. We reached the car, hopped in, and drove straight home. And that was the end of our backpack trip.

Here's to hoping for next year.