Mats Roing
New member
After seeing some good friends at Barnes Field in the morning I started from Highland Center up Crawford Path towards Monroe....nice trail to Pierce......
then half-way to Eisenhover I realized (as Timmus eloquently puts it) this is going to be a b*tch......it was hard enough to navigate in the wind between Pierce and Ike so I decided to turn around and head towards Jackson......it was somewhat easy to make it to Mizpah Spring Hut.....then I was happily seeing a broken out trail towards Jackson....shake and bake
......maybe 0.4 miles from Mizpah the trail-breakers turned around and I decided to give it a shot to find the way on my own.....
Of course I used my short 22-inch shoes....there were like 15 cars by Jackson TH in the morning so I was sure some people would do the loop over to Pierce.... wrestling through snow-laden trees and got lost many times.....turned around twice actually but something inside told me I could do it so decided to go for it anyway...I had enough water and food for a few extra hours out there. Lots of blow-downs and heavily snow-laden branches made it difficult to see much. Finally at one point it was totally impossible to tell where the trail went and I just took a bearing and winged it. It was good it was day-light also so didn't really need a compass. Sometimes Jackson was visible between trees. I tried to stay relatively high on the ridge....eating pink Himalayan salt every so often to prevent leg cramps.....it was hard work and I had also broken out Flume Slide trail uphill the day before. Only one hip-deep spruce trap which took a couple of minutes to get out of.
I found a little more open woods and imagined Jackson got closer....and suddenly I saw a couple of sets of bog bridges across a swampy area...shake and bake And on the other side I saw a single set of bare-boot foot steps......it seemed to be a somewhat lost hiker trying to get back to Jackson......I was happy to be able to follow something other than my instinct for a while. The foot-steps in front of me sank deep once in a while.....my guess was that the individual who made the foot steps hadn't been yodeling all the time......The terrain started to get steeper and I took another strategic break since I figured I would need some strength to quickly traverse over in a jet-stream type of environment. The Kahtoola's had good grip even on the icy sections. After visiting the sunny and windy summit area and went down the steep section into the woods.......and saw a human being for the first time in the last three hours......and once down by the car at the TH I decided to call it a day and fully enjoyed the three sandwiches I had in a cooler in the car.......trail breaking is like being a pimp - it's hard work but someone's gotta do it
Swedish terrorist on Pierce:
then half-way to Eisenhover I realized (as Timmus eloquently puts it) this is going to be a b*tch......it was hard enough to navigate in the wind between Pierce and Ike so I decided to turn around and head towards Jackson......it was somewhat easy to make it to Mizpah Spring Hut.....then I was happily seeing a broken out trail towards Jackson....shake and bake
......maybe 0.4 miles from Mizpah the trail-breakers turned around and I decided to give it a shot to find the way on my own.....Of course I used my short 22-inch shoes....there were like 15 cars by Jackson TH in the morning so I was sure some people would do the loop over to Pierce.... wrestling through snow-laden trees and got lost many times.....turned around twice actually but something inside told me I could do it so decided to go for it anyway...I had enough water and food for a few extra hours out there. Lots of blow-downs and heavily snow-laden branches made it difficult to see much. Finally at one point it was totally impossible to tell where the trail went and I just took a bearing and winged it. It was good it was day-light also so didn't really need a compass. Sometimes Jackson was visible between trees. I tried to stay relatively high on the ridge....eating pink Himalayan salt every so often to prevent leg cramps.....it was hard work and I had also broken out Flume Slide trail uphill the day before. Only one hip-deep spruce trap which took a couple of minutes to get out of.
I found a little more open woods and imagined Jackson got closer....and suddenly I saw a couple of sets of bog bridges across a swampy area...shake and bake
And on the other side I saw a single set of bare-boot foot steps......it seemed to be a somewhat lost hiker trying to get back to Jackson......I was happy to be able to follow something other than my instinct for a while. The foot-steps in front of me sank deep once in a while.....my guess was that the individual who made the foot steps hadn't been yodeling all the time......The terrain started to get steeper and I took another strategic break since I figured I would need some strength to quickly traverse over in a jet-stream type of environment. The Kahtoola's had good grip even on the icy sections. After visiting the sunny and windy summit area and went down the steep section into the woods.......and saw a human being for the first time in the last three hours......and once down by the car at the TH I decided to call it a day and fully enjoyed the three sandwiches I had in a cooler in the car.......trail breaking is like being a pimp - it's hard work but someone's gotta do it Swedish terrorist on Pierce:
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