I am glad to have done this hike today. I mean to say I'm glad it's done and over. It's one I heard about a long time ago, and talked about doing it a few times. This morning, the kids got up and dressed quickly, and hubby was keen to go. We planned to be on the trail by 10:30am. I even emailed friends to say so, in case they wanted to meet us. We scurried around getting supplies ready and making sure we had even warm clothing for everyone. Then I took some things to the car, and got cold. Cold feet. Really, I had to go warm them up by the fire, and I mentioned to hubby that maybe it was too cold. Then I don't know what happened....he said he thought it would be fine, and I got frustrated that he didn't hear what I said. I mean really hear me, and my worries about the temperature. We do lots of stuff with the kids that lots of folks wouldn't consider, but generally, I feel we're pretty careful. The temperature was -11, with a windchill of -17, so I wanted to be 100% sure we were fully prepared. Hubby might have been fine to just deal with whatever came our way, whereas I wanted avoid any problems whatsoever - and since that's not even remotely possible, he got frustrated with me. So anyway, this blog is not about communication problems. I just thought it would be nice to share how difficult it can be to get out the door -even the odd time that the kids are being cooperative. So I had a nice warm bath, and then we made up & decided we could, in fact, just go after lunch (which is our more normal time to go for a family hike anyway). Food in the belly and we were on our way to Susie's Lake (start point behind Kent Building supplies in Bayers Lake).
It was very cold in the parking lot.
It's not so easy, but not that hard either, to find the start of this trail. We ended up taking a little longer at the start by parking by the other stores, right beside Kent, instead of parking to the forest side of Kent. It eventually became obvious as to where the trail was going, and we could see where we could have started. There is no signage there either though.
We kept a nice little pace - by necessity. Did I mention it was cold? As it turned out, everyone but me seemed to be dressed warmly. My base layer was polyester which should have been okay, but I think it just gave me a chill. I wish I had worn my favorite warm weather layer of light merino wool. Zach slowed his pace down...he was dressed warmly. I just got more of a chill that I couldn't get rid of.
Hubby and the kids did a little geocaching. We saw the frozen lake with a man and dog walking right across it. Thank goodness, they stayed on top. It was really cold but I wasn't sure enough of the ice condition to let the kids play on it. We headed back up the trail to the turn off to hike a little bit around the lake, but stopped for a snack. We had homemade granola bars. I've been making a ton of homemade granola bars - experimenting with the recipes but they mostly seem to be a hit everytime. Yummy. It was at this point that I put my third layer of pants on, but I was still chilled. We went 100 m up the trail to a geocache, then I told hubby that I had to turn around. I just wasn't feeling safe being this chilled. We got Liam to chase me to help me warm up. We had one small, very small stream to cross over, which we had already gone over, which I had already warned Liam to keep his feet out of the water. He did have boots on, but they were the kind that could still get wet. I turned back to see him put his foot on a big piece of ice that was in the little stream, and his foot went through the ice and into the water. I was frustrated and worried. And I told him, this is exactly how kids drown. Okay, so maybe I shouldn't have said that. It is sort of true...just not in a little tiny stream. We weren't all that far away from the car, but I was scared of his poor little toes getting frozen stiff. He kept reassuring me that he was fine, and I kept telling him to keep running to make sure that his feet wouldn't freeze. We did have extra socks but not extra footwear. I assumed his socks had to be wet as the outside of his boots were very wet, but I didn't want to take them off to inspect because it was so cold. I assumed if he kept running, his feet would stay warm enough. As it turns out, when checked back at the car, his socks were dry - so either they dried from his feet sweating, or they never got wet in the first place. So perhaps, I could have handled the whole situation with a lot more chill (as in relaxed mode) but someone has to do the worrying :)
The best thing is we did get out for our family day hike. It's done. We survived. We all want to go back... sometime, perhaps in another season.
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