I found a flat spot at the trailhead parking lot and laid down in the back of my car for a nice evening’s sleep and looked up at the sky and saw the stars shining bright.
I awoke early to a breakfast of orange juice and a handful of mini blueberry muffins and by 6:30 I was on the trail.
Usually I have a tough time getting started as my legs are a bit tired and the first mile or so is typically a struggle. Well today was no different, actually it was quite a bit worse. My legs felt really weak and fatigued like I had already hiked 14 miles in wet snow. I pressed on looking forward to the first junction of the trail. After 30 minutes I was wondering where the junction was for the Jungle Creek Trail. I knew there was heavy blow down right at the junction, but I had been there recently and figured I recognize the area. With my fatigue and light rain that was starting to fall I was seriously considering heading back to my car and driving home. After crossing the creek a few more times I realized that I’d already passed Jungle Creek Trail and knowing that part was behind me I slowly started to regain my “second wind” if you will, or in this case my first.
The trail started to switchback up the side of the valley and I soon started hitting patches of snow. By the time I reached the ridgeline the snow was steady and the winds had picked up too. The rain fluctuated between light sprinkles and a steady drizzle, thank goodness I had brought some rain gear!
Once at the junction for the Koppen Mt Trail I had thought about heading back down as I was cold and a bit wet. I took a short break under a tree and had a small snack and found some Gore Tex gloves in my pack and started to warm up enough to make me decide to press onward toward the summit. The snow wasn’t soft enough for my snowshoes and some of the side hill traversing would have made them more of a hindrance then anything else anyway. Up and down the ridgeline I went until I was finally below the summit block. The winds were strong and the rain was a steady light drizzle. I dropped my pack under a tree and headed up with my poles and small camcorder.
Scrambling over loose rock and snow patches I finally reached the summit and all of her winds! The summit itself was free of snow and I quickly found the summit register. I found that I was the first person to sign it for 2010 I stayed up there for about 2 minutes then headed back down for my pack and the trip back down to the car. The snow was marginally softer but I opted to not use my snowshoes anyway.
By now my feet were rather wet, not cold, but I could feel water squishing around and I couldn’t wait to get to my car and get my feet dry once again. As I descended through the snow and to the “dry” trail, my thoughts turned to the missed intersection with the Jungle Creek Trail. I wondered what I could do to make it harder to miss this crucial junction despite not having any tools to help clear the debris. Once I got to the area I first tried to bend some branches out of the way but that effort was futile as they would always snap back into place even when I tried to hold them back with something.
I decided to try and break as many of the branches as I could even though I knew that some trail crew would be along soon to clear them. Forty five minutes later I had cleared many of the branches and made one of the signs visible from the trail and I felt good about the work that I had done. Oh, I forgot to mention that as I started to clear debris the sun started to shine and the clouds were clearing. Just my luck… oh well, I had done a good thing on the trail and it felt good.
A short time later I found myself back at my car and relieved my feet of my wet boots and socks. It was only 12:30pm and I had summited a 6000 foot peak and did my part to help maintain a trail, it felt good and I drove back to the freeway with my sunglasses on feeling good about myself.
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