Prairie Mountain Winter Summit Hike - Larry approaching the snow-capped summit
The weather forecast was iffy, and we considered hiking another day. THANK GOODNESS we went, because it was a perfect day's hike: not too hot, not too cold; a little breeze to keep things fresh; and a trail with snow nicely packed down, but not icy. It was a bit unusual for us, because we could see from the cloud movement there were big winds afoot, but this time, they were from the north, and we were completely sheltered from them the entire hike. An odd thing happened as well. Early, we met a fellow descending on a mountain bike. He looked a little worried, because he lost track of his dog Cypress. When we returned to the trailhead, we saw that his car was gone, so we're assuming there was a happy ending to his story. Total return distance, 7.4 km's, total elevation gain, 706 m's, moving time, 2 hrs, 27 minutes; total time, 3 hrs, 17 minutes.
Prairie Mountain Winter Summit Hike - Larry approaching the snow-capped summit
The weather forecast was iffy, and we considered hiking another day. THANK GOODNESS we went, because it was a perfect day's hike: not too hot, not too cold; a little breeze to keep things fresh; and a trail with snow nicely packed down, but not icy. It was a bit unusual for us, because we could see from the cloud movement there were big winds afoot, but this time, they were from the north, and we were completely sheltered from them the entire hike. An odd thing happened as well. Early, we met a fellow descending on a mountain bike. He looked a little worried, because he lost track of his dog Cypress. When we returned to the trailhead, we saw that his car was gone, so we're assuming there was a happy ending to his story. Total return distance, 7.4 km's, total elevation gain, 706 m's, moving time, 2 hrs, 27 minutes; total time, 3 hrs, 17 minutes.