Walking in a Winter Wonderland

I bought some new toys today. As mentioned in an earlier post, I've been itching for some outdoor activity lately. So, I had planned on going snowshoeing today. I was going to just rent a pair of snowshoes from Outdoors Unlimited, but over breakfast at the Village Inn (a chicken portabella skillet) I talked myself into just buying a pair. I figured that this was something that I could see myself really getting into and there was no sense paying a rental fee today if I was just going to end up buying a pair in a couple of weeks. Although, now that I think about it, in a couple of weeks I'm going to be in Hawaii and shouldn't have much need for snowshoes :)

Anyway, so I stopped by Copeland Sports in Orem and picked up a pair of Atlas Snowshoes. I'm kind of an impulse shopper. I didn't do any research ahead time. They looked like a good pair of snowhoes, so I bought them. I'm sure that if I was to go online, I could find them for half the price that I paid for them at Copeland, but then I wouldn't have had them to go hiking today.

I had done a little bit of research on a good place to go snowshoeing. I found an article in the Salt Lake Tribune (it was actually a weekly feature called "Short Hike of the Week") that detailed a short hike in City Creek Canyon. The article began with the phrase, "Dust off your snowshoes", and featured a picture of two hikers trudging through the snow on snowshoes. "Perfect", I thought to msyelf. I probably could have found someplace closer, but this was a surefire bet. I mean they had a picture and everything :)

Well, after an hour of driving up to North Salt Lake, I finally arrived at the trailhead... and was shocked and appalled by the lack of snow on the ground. The picture in the article had lied to me! Sure I could have worn my brand new showshoes in 2 inches of light and sparse snow, but I probably would have looked pretty foolish. Not one to be discouraged easily, I decided to go with plan 2.

Plan 2 was to head to the trailhead of my favorite summer hike, Stuart Falls just above Aspen Grove. I had no idea whether or not this trail was even accessible over the winter. But I figured that I would hike as far up the trail as I could and turn back if things started to get too hairy. I was pleasantly surprised when I got to the trailhead and discovered that there were plenty of snowshoe tracks already in the snow. I should have come here first and saved myself an hour of driving back and forth to Salt Lake.

I learned a valuable lesson on my hike today. Wearing jeans to go snowshoeing; yeah, that's not a good idea. About half an hour into the hike my pant legs were completely soaked from the snow that was being kicked up by my showshoes. Shortly after that they had frozen solid. I was a little worried that I might get too cold on the hike, but it was a pretty warm day so I decided to press on anyway.

The hike was totally worth nearly freezing to death. When I finally got to Stuart Falls, I just stood and looked at the waterfall, and looked at snow covered mountains towering above it, and I thought to myself, "There is so much beauty in this world". I know it sounds corny or like I line that I stole from the movie "American Beauty" but it was a genuine thought. A second later I also thought, "Life kicks ass". Thinking those two thoughts are the reason that I love the outdoors.



Unfortunately, the above photo was the only one that I was able to take before the batteries ran out on my camera. The ironic thing was that I had actually made a special stop at a 7-11 to buy batteries for the camera before I went hiking. They really would have come in handy had I not accidently left them in the car at the trailhead. I am actually thinking about going back tomorrow and doing the hike again. If I do, I'll make sure to take plenty of photos.