It was a completely different experience than I’ve ever hiked here. I know I’ve written about this park before but this was a new one. It was a relatively warm day as was forecasted; though it still flurried that day.

The path up was a sheet of ice and unless you had invested in crampons, you had a treacherous initial walk up. That was the case in the parts of the trail that didn’t have much sunlight. I slid a few times nervously but was fortunate to find just enough spots on the side of the path to make my way up, albeit quite slowly.

Due to the past week’s snowfall then the warmer weather toward the weekend, the paths were in a shape I hadn’t seen before, basically small lakes where normally one would walk. Completing the loop was almost not even possible. I had to bushwhack through bushes upstream from the normal crossing sure to the increased flow toward and over the waterfall. I had no interest in getting soaked. Therefore, in order to cross, I had to get control of my nerves and leap across two rocks just barely out of the water that I couldn’t even test to determine they wouldn’t move. However, in this case my stubbornness and determination not to backtrack the several miles back from which I came paid off and I made it across. There was some scratches and bruising that came from having to make my own trail.

A fellow hiker decided to forge it and got soaked in the process. It’s safe to say I was much happier in my decision.

See below for some examples of the conditions encountered.

-Chris & Ola