Isaac Whatever

Result: FAIL

We were heading for another hike, but we couldn't get to the parking area because the snow on the roads was too deep, so we came back and went for McClellan Butte, because the trailhead was only about 1/2 mile from the highway.

So we parked the truck and tromped in to the trailhead. Good news: we had some tracks to follow so we didn't get lost in the deep snow. Bad news: some of the tracks were made by skis.

At the trailhead we were unhappy to see that the ski tracks continued up the trail. Oh well, some boot tracks went up too, so we headed on.

After about an hour of tromping along the tracks headed right along an old road. We followed. A half-mile or so along the road we ran into a group of three guys coming back. They were stepping carefully in each other's tracks. We stepped off the trail to let them go by. They turned out to be the guys making the tracks we had been following, and they'd taken a wrong turn along the road.

They were all wearing crazy plastic boots and had ice axes poking out of their packs and they all had either skis or snowshoes and special winter gear and we were standing there in jeans.

So we let them go past and get out of sight around the bend, and we started following again. We made it back to the real trail, and started up, but it didn't take us too much longer to write the hike off as a bad idea. Finally.

Soon after we turned around we met some other guys coming up. These guys were roped together, wearing skintight crazy cold weather extreme suits. We warned them not to follow the road and to instead go straight across. They thanked us, then one of the guys said, "I left a marker back there." I think I responded, "OK, cool."

A marker? WTF?

A bit further down the trail we run into a flag sticking up out of the snow, seemingly at random.

Sheesh.

Now I want to get into really awesome hiking shape and pack some lawnchairs and beer up to the top of one of these things. Then I'll wait at the top and ask the guys who are roped together wearing batman suits if they want a brew.
-Isaac