Day 7

Day 7

April 26, 2014

Hike Out Snake Gulch to Cars

Today's route stats:

Distance: 8.5 miles

Elevation Gain: 900 feet

Elevation Loss: 0 feet

It began to rain during the night, and it got pretty cold too. We awoke to thick, low-hanging clouds. We were amazed at how the weather had changed so radically overnight. But it still wasn't raining, so we weren't very concerned. Bert, Ben and Decker left camp about 20 minutes before Rob and I. A few minutes after we began hiking, it started to snow. Lightly at first, then very heavy. And it was very cold. I put on all my clothes and rain gear but was still cold, especially my hands. I had fleece gloves, but they didn't help much. So I got out extra pair of socks (dirty) and pulled them over my gloves. Eventually my hands warmed up. But the hiking was pretty miserable.


Snowstorm in Snake Gulch.	Rock Art in Snake Gulch.

The snow was several inches deep at one point. We didn't get much of a chance to look at all the spectacular rock art in the area. This was very disappointing since this was one of the major reasons for hiking all the way to Snake Gulch. Oh well, there is always next time.

By the time we got back Rob's truck, the snow had pretty much stopped. Now we had to drive all the way to Sowats to get my 4Runner. The roads were pretty sloppy, but we got there without much difficulty. Rob followed me back to Jacob Lake, where we went our separate ways.

There was still the issue of retrieving our cache buckets. There was no way Rob was going to do it today, but we figured one of us could retrieve them in the next 6 months or so. As it turned out, Rob made a trip out there a couple of months later and picked up the buckets.

I drove to Winslow where I checked into a motel for the night. I was so tired that I just could not go any farther.