Lamoille Lake Trails

Thursday, we ate at the Stockmens again (tasty chef's salad for me, steak sandwich for Tom). Up early on Friday, we headed back for the next map hike, the "Lamoille Lake Trails." This is another "easy to moderate" trail that wore me out! It was a little more difficult to identify the trail, as there was some flooding and washed out areas due to snow melt, and this trail had two routes--one for horses, one for hikers. We tried to start on the hiker's trail, but ended up on the horse trail, since it was more reliable and didn't keep disappearing. Again, the elevation was about 9,700 feet, with a 900 ft gain.

There was an additional problem: snow. There were large snow packs along the entire trail. They were very soft in places, and you could fall into melted areas if you didn't walk carefully.

This hike started out deceptively easy, with a nice clear path--which shortly completely disappeared, and we found ourselves clambering across a hillside of rocks and boulders. We finally found a trace we could follow, and waded through waterfalls and rivulets to keep moving uphill. To me, the scary part that I didn't like was the snow. I wished I had my nanospikes with me, because I have very poor skills walking on icy slush. Thank goodness I had my walking stick with a very strong deep pointy end. The snow was particularly scary because of the areas where it had melted underneath, but you couldn't see that, so if you stepped in the wrong spot, you would fall through; you would just fall a few feet, but it was still unpleasant.

Finally, when we reached a high plateau, I took a rest while Tom continued on across the snow fields. This snow was even scarier, because it had a pink tinge to it (like blood). We decided it was probably pollen or something, but it still looked ominous.