Another Friday hiking post

It's been awhile since I put up a hiking post. Things have been busy and I missed a hike with my buddies last week. This weekend we did what has to be the most adventurous hike yet. We did an overnight backpacking trip into White Pine Lake. The hike is not very steep except for a little at the end just before you reach the lake. And, it's just under four miles in. There is a lovely campground for backpackers around the lake. But, the adventure came from the weather - read on.

We rented packs from the Outdoor Recreation Center at USU and they were great. My hiking buddies left about 3:00, but I was doing my last performance of Carmen until about 5:00, so Bryce was wonderful and agreed to go along with me. He was nervous about it as we were driving up, but he was a great sport about it all.

What a beautiful hike! The wildflowers were in full bloom in the meadows. The evening was cool and pleasant for walking.

When we got to camp it was nearly full dark and the ladies had a wonderful fire going.

We sang laughed, songs and wished we'd packed in some marshmallows. We saw stars and thought that the report of rain during the night couldn't be true. But it was. The night turned out to be cold and wet.

We didn't pack for really cold weather, especially in the bedding department. We set up our new tent (which is really great), and rolled out our blow up camping mats. I had bought some great compressible pillows which turned out to be really comfortable, but we didn't have enough blankets. We spent the night playing spoons trying to keep warm. Every hour or so, one of us would wake the other and say it was time to roll over. I put two more pairs of socks on over mine (thanks Bryce for letting me wear yours!) and my feet were still frozen. During the night it began to rain. We heard it pattering on the roof of the tent. When morning came and it was still raining, we tried to ignore it for awhile, hoping it would stop before we had to break camp, but we weren't sleeping and weren't comfortable and figured that putting on shoes and breaking camp in the rain would probably be warmer than lying there in the tent trying to get warm.

Now, here's the weather adventure. Check out this video taken as we were leaving this morning.

Yep, SNOW in August!

Here it is on the mountain.

And of course that made for wet and muddy feet (these are Bryce's, but all of ours looked as bad.)

Thanks to Nan, we were all prepared with rain gear, even though it made us look pretty funny.

Maybe like a couple of hunchbacks?


The rain and snow stopped when we were about halfway out and by the time we had unloaded our gear into the car, we actually saw a little sun. When we finally arrived back at the parking lot and unloaded our gear, we were glad to be done, but very glad that we had gone. (It didn't take Katie long to get her shoes off!)

From left, Bryce, Laurie, Teresa, JoLynn, Katie, and Nan.

Bryce's comment on the way home in the van - "We don't spend enough time in this canyon."