Friday, September 28, 2007

I survived the Dawson-Pitamakan hike

The hike was certainly an adventure and a memorable hike. This is one hike I won't forget! Fantastic scenery! I agree that this is one of the top hikes in the Park. Lots of snow! I believe I hiked 19.4 miles as I took a side trip to No-Name Lake.

It was pretty dark at the end of the hike and hard to see the trail. The stars were coming out and the mountains were going into silhouette. While this hike was a mile less than our recent Gunsight Pass hike, this hike took an hour longer to do than the Gunsight Pass hike.

I had to break trail through the snow along cliffs. That was slow going as the drop - if I screwed up - was a thousand or more feet.  Many times I had to trust the trail was underneath the snow.

In the middle of the snow/cliff trail breaking Sue Ann lost it due to fear but thankfully she didn't totally lose it as no one had a cell phone to call 911 to have her airlifted out - not that a cell phone would work where we were. She had no choice but to continue on and she did recover.

My shoes and feet were still wet from the hike when I got home.

I never got home until almost 10:30 pm. After only 5 hours sleep prior to the hike, and all the miles hiked and elevation gained and lost, I was so ready for bed.  I went to bed almost immediately.

I have 279 photos from the hike to sort through to delete bad photos and duplicates.  Here are a few photos to wet your appetite...

Photo 1: the easy part of the trail. One would think the north side of the mountain would have the most snow, but that was not the case this day.

Photo 2: NW side of Mt Morgan. Do you see the trail?


Photo 1: looking the other direction part of the way across the NW side of Mt Morgan.
Photo 2: the SW part of Mt Morgan. Do you see the trail?

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