Wednesday, January 12, was a record snowfall for Connecticut. According to official reports, North Haven, just across the street, got 30 inches of snow. We surely got over 2 feet on top of what we had.
When we went out into our yard that afternoon, it wasn't easy to get around. Sadie had a hard time hopping from foot hole to foot hole and ended up spraining her tail. So between Sadie's need for rest, the impossibly deep snow, and my overdoing it on the previous snowshoe adventure, I haven't gotten up on the trails until yesterday.
Some time around 3 PM, Pat & I decided to go for a hike and take Sadie. Our assumption was that enough people had now walked on the snow that we didn't need snowshoes. It was a reasonable assumption, for the most part.
On the way up to the Yellow trail, I suggested that maybe we could do a segment from Red Circle to Red Triangle. Pat said she wasn't really prepared, that her boots fit better with a second pair of socks but that she would have done that if I had told her my idea before we left.
When we got to the Yellow lookout, she had agreed to continue down yellow to the Red Triangle and then out to the road where one of the girls would pick us up. The snow was so deep that people had made a trail alongside the new stairway that was built for an Eagle project.
We stayed in the trodden path and called Emily when we reached the Red Triangle. We assumed it would be an easy walk down to the road. Here's where all our assumptions went awry.
About half-way down, we saw that the footprints that we had been following decided to abandon the Red Triangle and head west towards the entrance of the park. We saw Emily pull up on the road below and decided to just crash through the deep snow down the remainder of the Red Triangle trail.
We made it but we were white from the knees down. Sadie managed to leap from foot hole to foot hole and we all were glad for the ride home.
"After the Big One" obviously refers to the huge snowstorm we endured. However, this hike was on the anniversary date of my personal "big one", the day a year ago that I experienced Cardiac Arrest and was revived by CPR performed by a man who at that point was a total stranger to me.
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