I decided to try snowshoeing at the suggestion of a co-worker. Upon checking into whether snowshoe rentals were available on base at Peterson AFB, we were happy to learn that they not only rented snowshoes, but they also offered guided snowshoe trips. That seemed perfect for a bunch of novices like us. As it turned out, the entire roster for today's trip consisted of our family (Victoria could not join us due to an existing obligation.), so we basically had a private driver and coach. Mariano was our guide. He is majoring in Outdoor Recreation at a college in Vermont, and he's here at Peterson on an internship. He may have only been in Colorado for four weeks, but he was a fantastic guide, and we really enjoyed his company (not his driving quite so much).
We arrived at Peterson AFB at the appointed time of 6:45a.m. (the only downside of this adventure) and Mariano issued our snowshoes (one size fits all) and poles and then drove us to Old Monrach Pass. For you Coloradans, that's right next to Monarch Ski Resort. We couldn't have asked for a more beautiful day. I was concerned about being cold, as the high in Monarch was predicted to be only 29 degress. However, as soon as we began our hike, it became clear that I would worry more about overheating than freezing.
We started off on a groomed tail. The snow was packed and easy to walk on . After a few hundred yards, Mariano encouraged us to try walking off the trail on the fresh snow. We stuck our poles into the snow to gage the depth, and we could push our poles all the day down. The snow accumulation was probably 6 or more feet. While we still sank several inches with our snowshoes, there's no doubt we would have sunk past our knees without them. After hiking maybe a half a mile on the trail and getting the hang of walking on the fresh snow, Mariano guided us completely off trail. We were hiking right through the woods, headed to a mountain peak just adjacent to Monarch Ski Resort. Let me summarize snowshoeing in a very simple terms: IT KICKS YOUR BUTT! Wow, was that a workout! I really enjoyed it, but my heart and lungs were working overtime and I was sweating like it was an 80 degree day. And I fell....a lot. It is rather easy to lose your balance while snowshoeing---at least it was for Craig, Hunter Seok Ho and me. Despite the hard work, when we finally summited the mountain, I was glad that Mariano had pushed us. The view was incredible. We took a lunch break on top of a beautiful peak, and then we all eagerly anticipated the DOWN journey. Here's the approach to the summit and the summit itself:
Going down was awesome, although it went too fast. It was so cool to be in pristine, untouched snow on the side of a mountain. We saw cross country skiers and evidence of other folks having passed through the area, but there was still something thrilling about being the first person to plow down through your own little private path of virgin snow. After we were down the mountain, we spent a good half hour hiking fairly horizontally through the woods back toward the van. At this point I was really feeling the fatigue. I pretty much feel once every 100m or so. It was getting harder and harder to lift my feet. I spent a good deal of time wondering how sore I will be tomorrow! When we made it back to the road, I was thrilled to have had the experience, but equally thrilled to be done. All in all we spent about 2.5 hours of actual snowshoeing.
It was great to share this experience with the family. Aubrey and Joshua were amazing. They were like the Energizer bunny - going and going and going. To me the best part of the whole trip was hearing Aubrey, who just a day ago was grossly unhappy being a part of this family, say that this trip reminded her how much she liked our family hiking trips, and that we really need to make an effort to go hiking more often. Wow, that was quite an endorsement.
Josh is already looking at snowshoes on Ebay and Craigslist. He has pretty much mandated that we need to each get a pair so that we can snowshoe more often. I don't think anyone in the family would complain about that. We had a great time today, and I think it was an awesome way to wrap up my 40 new adventures (sniff, sniff).
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