Playing in Snow

The day after hiking Mt. Sniktau, we hiked Mt. Royal (in Frisco).  Instead of the clear, blue day we had the day before, it was snowing in the mountains.  The trail was steep and icy in places, and even though it was cold and snowing, we were sweating from the effort.  I somehow managed to lose my camera the day before, so I only snapped a few cellphone pictures of the rest of the trip.

After about 4 hours of that, we had lunch at a great authentic Mexican restaurant in Frisco and headed back to the hotel for a little nap.  We spent the afternoon in Breckenridge wandering around, trying to decide what to do the next day.

We wanted to go snowshoeing, but we'd been getting mixed signals on whether there was enough snow in places to make it worthwhile.  We could have used them at the top of the trail at Mt. Royal, but they weren't needed at the bottom.  We decided to rent them anyway, and the next morning we agreed on hiking Argentine Pass, which starts high and ends at 13,205'.   To get to the trailhead requires traveling about 4 miles on a 4WD road.  It was covered in snow, but there were tracks of vehicles that had gone before us, so we decided to follow.  About halfway there, the snow started getting deeper, and the tracks disappeared.  We continued on, but a few hundred yards later we were stopped in deep snow trying to crest a hill.

It was a narrow road, with no way to turn around, so I backed the Suburban down the hill.  I promptly got stuck, nearly going over the edge into Peru Creek, which ran right beside the trail.  After we dug ourselves out of that mess and got back on the trail, I continued backing down, trying to stay in the tracks we had created coming up.  Instead, I got sucked into a small ditch on the other side of the trail, which abutted a rocky hillside.  It took us quite a bit longer to dig out of that one, and cost us the driver's side mirror in the process.  A few yards beyond that, we found a turnaround spot, and just parked there.

We were now about an hour past our scheduled start time, and still two miles from the trailhead.  With a flight out at 4:00, we were on a very specific timeline.  We donned the snowshoes and started moving.  Instead of doing Argentine Pass, we decided to explore the area around the Pennsylvania Mine, an old ore mine developed around 1879.  There were no other tracks besides ours, so we had to break our own trail in the snow.  The areas of deep drifts were hard work going uphill, and even downhill, but we eventually made it to the mine and back.

We got back to Frisco, packed up, washed the Suburban to make sure we hadn't scratched up the side, and headed to the airport.  A few hours later, I sat in my bed reading lots of bedtime stories to the boys, who were both very happy to see me.  It was a great feeling to see a huge grin on Noah's face as I surprised him coming up the stairs, and Elliot told me he wanted to give me "the biggest hug ever."  It was a fun weekend, but I was also happy to be back with Mandy and the boys.  Mandy, as always, was a trooper - taking care of the boys by herself for four long days.

Top of Mt. Royal

Sunday morning outside our hotel

Oops.  Digging out with a snowshoe.

Heading uphill in deep snow.

Pennsylvania Mine.  This building still has an ore-crushing machine on the top floor.  It looks pretty dangerous at this point.