Oh where to begin…. Its been quite an adventure today. Sleep on the bus was pretty nice, bundled up on the couch with Mercedes. We woke up and had some hot gruel (oatmeal, brown sugar and crasins) and set out toward the ranger station to get an update on the weather and ask about best places to hike. We had pretty much decided to climb twin sisters but were acquiring a permit for the next day’s overnight back packing trip. The ranger had some interesting information… to be discussed later, just remember we did talk to the ranger and ask his opinion.
Twin sister is a double peak at 11,428 feet. It’s on the far eastern edge of Rocky Mountain National Park. We parked at the trail head and headed up full of excitement. About 10 min into the trip we hit snow. The snow would then continue for most of the trip. The snow in the bottom 3rd of the mountain was compact and not too bad, so we continued on, slow, but steady and full of laughter. 2/3s of the way up the snow got less compact, about 2-3ft deep and Mercedes and I fell even farther behind Sean and Andrew who were way up ahead of us. But the sun came out as got up above the clouds and it became a beautiful day. The view up above the clouds was 
amazing. We even climbed a tree at one point to take a break and enjoy the scenery. The top third of the climb was almost all rocks. It reminded me of the “astro –crag” in the old Nickelodeon game show Guts. It was a scramble climb up the side of the mountain where we ran into Sean and Andrew basking (more like burning) in the sunlight at the wester
n peak of the Twin Sisters. It was unbelievably beautiful. You could see Longs peak (Rocky Mountains’ 14er) and a bunch of other snow capped mountains to the west. The sun was shining, and no wind, probably about 60 degrees up there. We took off our wet shoes and enjoyed a late lunch just lying out on the rocks. Apparently Andrew won’t eat apples unless someone cuts them for him. So, being the mom of the trip, I sat on top of the mountain cutting his apple with my pocket knife and fed it to him… what a princess!
Going down the mountain was a different adventure. For as long as we could we played “the snow is lava” and tried to jump from rock to rock avoiding all the snow we could. Apparently while we were up above the clouds it snowed, a lot. So there was an extra couple of feet of snow, making it very difficult and slow to get down. Mercedes and I had the greatest idea- lets sled down. On what? Our raincoats. It was a lot of fun. Because it was all fresh snow, the first person had to make a track forcing there way through, but the 2nd person got a great ride. It was a BLAST. But…. We kinda lost the trail. Upon yelling the “woot” call and the boys responding, we knew they were far to our left. So, no more sliding down the mountain, we had to walk through the woods, through tons of snow, half rolling, half full body craws anything to stop sinking into the snow and get us to the boys. We did finally catch up, and were on some kind of trail where the snow was only about a foot deep. Sean started running/ prancing through the snow to jump over as much as possible, we joined, all of us making fools of ourselves as Andrew just laughed behind us. It got pretty steep, and there were lots of cut-backs in the trail, so Mercedes and I of course started sledding again. So much fun. But we were so wet, and covered in snow. Sean got some good videos of it.
At some point, after a long sled, the trail didn’t come back. We kept thinking it would cut back, but it didn’t. We could still hear the boys, they were yelling off to the right so we started walking that way. After walking right a long ways, we couldn’t hear the boys calling anymore. We kept going right, through the snow and trees, but couldn’t find the trail nor hear the boys. We did here the road somewhere far below (we were in some think fog at this point). So we decided if we could just get to the road, we could find the trail head where the bus was parked. So off we went, down, and still rightish. We ran into some fences, some old logger gravel roads which led us to some private farm. We came across some tractors, then some horses, 
and then a sign that
said “Windy River Ranch. Yall come back.” 
We laughed as we hit the main road. We were pretty sure the bus was off to the right and started walking that way. We were very tired, very wet, and hungry. So we decided we could get there faster if we just hitch hiked. So out our thumbs went to passing cars. Some people looked at us like we were crazy, others waved, one even gave us a thumbs up right back at us. Not too much later one girl about our age, Rachel, pulled over in her truck and offered us a ride. She was a camp counselor right up the road and told us we weren’t far from the twin Sisters trail head. She drove us about half a mile and there was our Club House, in all its 
green and yellow glory. Never was I so happy to see that bus. We jumped on and immediately changed into dry clothes and got under some blankets. Alex was already on board and he made us some hot chocolate, so good. After about 25 min Sean and Andrew strolled up to the bus with adventures of their own to share. We became dubbed the “lost girls” from that point forward. Ooppsss!
Wendy: Are there [lost] girls too?
ReplyDeletePeter: Girls are much to clever to fall out of their stroller.