My Everest II

A couple weeks after my first attack on the Little Black, I was going to give it another shot. This time I had the company of my beautiful wife, Erica and her co-worker our good friend, Scot.

We headed on the same route, hiking along the ridges. The snow had melted quite a bit since I had been up here a couple weeks earlier. Most of the trail was dry but there were significant portions that were soggy. It was along the wet parts of the trail that we found out Erica’s boots had lost their water repellency. She avoided walking through the puddles. But wherever the moisture touched her boots, they turned turned dark brown from their normally light dusty shade of brown.

The trail became snowbound as we reached the higher elevations of the upper slope. Because the weather was warmer, the snow was wet, dense and slushy. We still sank in quite a bit but our footwear would get wetter with every step.

I saw a snow-free slope about 50 yards to the south so we post-holed our way across. Erica’s boots were completely wet by now. The water wasn’t soaking all the way through yet. It was only a matter of time until her socks would start absorbing water so we decided to hike to the snow line and call it a day.

It was a beautiful, clear day although a bit windy (Erica classifies it as way too windy). Still got about 8 miles under our belt. Scot and I were reminded how good it is to have the world as our toilet as Erica wasn’t able to relieve her bladder all day. Lucky for us there had been a funeral at the mormon church next to the trailhead and she was able to run inside and pee before they locked up.