Epic Hike, Part 1

Saturday, Mosch and I drove up to Fraser, about 70 miles away and on the other side of the continental divide, for an innocent hike - a ramble, really. We wanted to cover the same territory we had snowshoed several times this winter, and Mosch wanted to look for a grate he had lost. The plan was to eat some great New York pizza (at De Antonio's, the best I've ever had, and I don't think that's just the altitude talking) and hike for two or three hours.

I make maps for a living (when I'm not shuffling papers), and occasionally I get to use this power for my own purposes, so here is the map I made of my hike. This started with a scanned-in version of a very nice National Geographic topo/trail map we have of this area, which I tied to geographical coordinates, and to which I periodically add points from our GPS device. (The map will expand if you click on it.)

On this map, the red car symbol is for the parking lot, where we started. The red line is the path we took. The contour lines are 40' apart, and every point along the same contour line is at the same altitude. I posted a few altitude values at significant points.

Things started off pretty well. We left the parking area (proceeding southwest, or clockwise as you look at the map) and followed a trail that seemed pretty close to where our old snowshoe trail had been. (Needless to say, when you hike on top of 6' of snow, you can't see where the trails are, but we're somewhat familiar with these woods.) We had plenty of water and gear - my pack was 8 lbs, which is a fair weight for a day hike - but we didn't bring snacks since we had just eaten pizza.

More in Part 2...