A Lucky Day
I was in a hurry. I pulled together my hiking gear, dog leash, bear spray, pack, and hiking poles, closed-up the back of the truck and struck out on the path.
Above me was the source of excitement. The setting sun created the urgency. The last two weeks of gray freezing days fueled the frenzy.
Three weeks of unrelenting cold drizzle had given over to overcast days just below freezing. The trails here erupted in frenzies of ice crystals extruding through the soil as they expanded. They were cast along the trails like jewels and crunched so loudly that one’s presence must have been heard a mile away.
The light, however, was dull and flat during the shortening winter days. Dry and lifeless the forest looked more like mediocre computer graphics than reality and this is what kills any joy of photography.
Today though, Mollie and I were heading home and I recognized how it could be different up there on the mountain and we detoured to the trailhead. The mountains were shrouded in cloud and the trees I could see were flocked in white. This could be interesting.
All I had was my phone. The days were so dull recently I stopped carrying my camera. It didn’t matter. I could be up there with the possibility of magic and capturing always takes a backseat to experience.
Trouble was, I had about two hours before the trail became so dark as to be hazardous. Mollie and I pushed hard up the slope. She stopped for a much needed drink of ‘wild-water’ as we call it, at the first switchback. Then a steady press upward to the ceiling of white above us.
We would climb 1,300 feet over two miles in the next hour. The clouds thinned as we approached and they drifted towards the east and I could feel the effect slipping away.
Finally we approached the edge where the green firs gave way to the white laced outlines of the forest. Thin white needles of ice drifted down on faint puffs of air. There was a scintillating feeling and sound but perhaps it was just my tinnitus acting up. As we climbed it accumulated like snow on the path.
Then we were fully in it. All the trees were etched and outlined in this thin frost and ice. I have experienced hoar frost before and this was surely the same but it seemed a distant cousin as it was lighter and more delicate. It sprang up from the branches and twigs like spiky armour and yet was so thin as to not suffer the slightest breeze.
My efforts up to this point left me hot and sweaty under my clothes. I was throwing off so much heat and the frost so delicate I felt that my thermal aura might suddenly drive off the frost from the neighboring trees. It was after all, just a few degrees below freezing here.
Checking the time I reckoned on continuing up until an hour had elapsed since the start of our ascent. I had my phone and tried to artlessly capture the moment. The lightening sky and thinning clouds worried me that a warmer breeze would blow across the mountain and erase the magic.
I wanted to ascend higher but good sense said not to chance it. I have picked my way down this trail in the dusk and it is slow careful work.
Doug Morse
Mollie and I made it back in one piece and along the lower part of the trail found this one hold-over from Autumn. This lucky outing was the tonic for dull times.
