Off The Beaten Path

Whether you lose it, or just step off it, sometimes you find yourself off the beaten path.

In this case we lost the trail near the top of the mountain. At first we pressed on navigating with map & compass, but it was just too hard. We postholled in waist deep snow for an hour before we decided to turn back. By the time we found a dry spot to make camp we were totally exhausted. We had to melt snow for water, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't start a fire.

When you see huge trees in the backcountry, sometimes you feel compelled to stand next to them. These are giant Western Red Cedars and my Uncle Steve and I both jumped off the trail to check them out.

Some of you might recognize this picture as the old header to my blog. When you hike on the beach there is no trail, but getting lost is not much of a concern. In this case we were travelling north. As long as we kept the Pacific to our left we knew we were heading in the right direction.

Its a lot easier to travel cross country in the desert because there isn't much blocking your view. On this hike we were almost always within line of sight to our jeep parked just off a dirt road, and when we couldn't see the jeep, we could still see the road.