White Pine/Red Pine

Up Little Cottonwood Canyon is the White Pine wilderness.  It is filled with lakes, water falls and great hidden places to ski out of bounds in the winter and awesome hikes in the summer.  Being early spring and Chris and I needing our first hike of the season we set off for Bells Canyon only to find the parking lot full.  So we pressed eastward and on ward to the White Pine lot. 

We got there to find plenty of parking and the trail looked good so we grabbed our packs, set the GPS and headed out.  We found ourselves hiking in  along a wet and snowy path with unbelievable views and the sounds of the melting snow flowing into a crashing river of snow melt.

As we arrived at the turn to Red Pine, we made the choice to continue to White Pine given its western exposure we hoped to have  clear trail.  We went about 3/4 of a mile only to run into very soft deep snow blocking our way.   We  were  joined by a group of hikers that told us they were involved in a world wide project "Snow = H2O"  It seemed redundant to me , but whatever floats your boat.  Their goal is to have similar groups  all over the world taking photos and posting them to Twitter all at the same time. The idea is to show  low snow pack conditions and bring awareness to global climate conditions.  After seeing that this also involved partaking of cool barley beverages pulled out of a near by snow bank it was clear this was also a great reason to hike and drink beer.  All in the  name of saving the planet and preventing global warming.  I get it now! Barley is a renewable resource which is good for you and the planet.  It takes snow to replenish the water supply and it goes without saying it takes H20 to make beer.  There is a connection!  And a strong one at that! Some might say it would be a sad day if global warming stared to have a negative impact world wide beer production. Keep up the good work! They looked to be enjoying the themselves we wished them a good day and headed back.



When we arrived back at the turn to Red Pine we looked at the snow covered trail and noticed it was frozen and off we went toward Red Pine.  We pushed our way on top of the frozen snow.  What a blast!  Who knew!  The north facing slope stayed cold and the snow frozen allowing us passage.  We pressed on for about two miles.  The trail at this point became impassable because of the drifts and without our snow shoes and darkness setting in, we headed back.

What a kick!  This was Awesome!  We got to get our first training hike in for Whitney in the frozen snow, covered over 4 miles and  baged greater than 3,000 total vertical feet of hiking (up and down)!  We are making plans for next week!  More to come! Stay tuned!