A beautiful sunny Sunday afternoon. It was very cold this morning (14 degrees) but it warmed up into the low 30s. I drove up to the Chestnut Road trailhead with little expectations. Pat had said that everything that had melted over the past few days was now frozen solid and hard to walk on without slipping.
I parked in the ice covered parking lot, wondering why the 2 other cars had parked on the street. After I shut off the car and put it in park, I found out why. Even with my foot on the brake, the car was sliding backwards toward the road. So I decided to back it up to speed up the process and leave the back wheels on the dry pavement.
There were only 2 cars at the trailhead before us and one drove up right in front of us. Sadie had barked at them while they were putting on their snowshoes and I finally gave up and we started off. As I started up the trail I quickly determined that I could walk on top of the snow because the trampled path had melted during the warm week and froze solid. When I had to step on the path, the frozen footprints acted as toe holds going uphill or you could dig your heels into the deeper snow.
My intention was to go on the Green trail until the Y/G Crossover past the Red Circle trail and then up the Y/G Crossover, still looking in frozen footprints for the rubber grip that I lost a couple weeks ago. Once I got to where I had come up to before, I was free to hike where I wanted.
So I went back up a little way to the Orange trail and took it up to where it crosses the White trail. Even though it had been cold all day, the sun was warm out on the rocks of the White trail and had melted the snow enough to where the rocks were dry and not ice covered.
I stupidly went past the end of the Green trail, which is what I was looking for, even though I saw the markings on the rocks. I think that I didn't believe it was that close to where I had gotten onto the White trail. After going a little farther and realizing that we were heading downhill and remembering that the Green trail ended on the high section, I called for Sadie and turned back.
Coming down the Green trail was a little scarier in places because you sometimes were forced to step on the frozen path and the risk of falling was greater. But the ease of walking on top of the snow made me want to go farther than I expected to go.
We got back to the Y/G Crossover so we completed the entire Green trail! I went back up the Y/G Crossover but then turned left onto Orange to complete the Orange from the Red Triangle to Chestnut.
Besides the ease of hiking on the top of the snow, you were going by trees with your head a couple of feet higher than it would be without the snow. There weren't many places but sometimes you had to duck under a branch that normally would be well over your head. And every once in a great while, maybe 10 times the whole hike, one foot would crash through the frozen crust and my leg would be in snow sometimes as high as my mid-thigh.
Besides the 3 snowshoers at the start of the hike, we only passed one older lady hiking by herself on the Green trail. At the large map when we arrived back at the trailhead, I saw that the Green trail is 2 miles long so we had hiked at least 4 miles! I was a little tired but very warm and took off my hooded sweatshirt when I got in the car to drive home.
Another great day of hiking on the Giant!
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