Stuck in the snow after Mt. Democrat

O MAN, on May 6th we got DESTROYED by snow. We did a repeat hike of Democrat, started with the goal of getting the four peaks in the Alma four pack.

Some quick stats about the hike:

Saturday, May 6, 2017, 6:31 AM MDT Distance: 5.4 miles Duration: 7 hours, 51 minutes, and 57 seconds Average Speed: 0.7 mph Minimum Elevation: 11490 feet Maximum Elevation: 14117 feet Total climb: 2785 feet Total descent: 2786 feet

It was a beautiful, easy hike, with a tragically challenging trip from the trailhead to the paved road.

As you can see tons of snow in May when we did the hike, created for a really fun climb, but hard to follow the trail.

Besides for a few rocky outcroppings there was snow all the way to the top.

The higher we got the warmer it ended up being so we shead a few layers for a large portion of the hike, and just put our jackets on for the trip to the summit.

There was even enough snow in sections that, we tried our hand at sledding. Mike even brought some space blankets we used as a barrior to try and speed up the process, it worked pretty well.

The real drama of the trip was when we got back to the car…

We got buried pretty deep in the snow.

We tried shoveling, using other cars to pull, if it wasn’t for bad luck we wouldn’t’ have had any luck at all. Another SUV that tried to make it to the trail head got stuck, and a Jeep Wrangler that was trying to help got stuck.

After about 6 or so hours it got dark so we bummed a ride back to the cabin, and set up for the night.

In the morning we got a tow from Taz that we were actually able to make it out.

BONUS Timelapse of the day before: