Sally and I got an early start (6:15 AM) yesterday in the hopes of making it to the Oaks Restaurant for burgers before they closed at 2:30 PM. If you want a massage, save your money and just drive up the dirt road to the Forsee Creek TH.
Only ran into a few patches of snow below 9 K. When the trail reaches the edge of the ridge, we left the trail and followed the ridge up to Anderson Flat (this is my winter snowshoe route). There were still patches of snow about a foot deep and we had to make our way through tightly spaced dead trees.
We were enjoying lunch (breakfast?) on the summit of Anderson peak by 9:40 AM and felt confident that we'd easily reach the Oaks before closing time. Ha, ha. Woman plans, nature laughes. As we descended, we were having an animated conversation and suddenly noticed that we were traversing along the side of steep ridge without trees. Uh oh, this doesn't look familiar. Sally consulted her GPS and couldn't find our track, even when she zoomed out, though we appeared to be near a trail
Hmm...
Climbed up to the top of the ridge, which had rocks reminding me of Shield's Peak. Backtracked to the area just below Anderson flat and started descending down the ridge. Soon discovered that although we were going in the right direction, we were on the wrong ridge. Sheesh
We could see our ridge to the west. It looked to sketchy to cross the gully, so we climbed back up and traversed around the gully over to the correct ridge.
Sally was calm and mellow, whereas I was angry and upset over the failure of my internal GPS. I've done this route both with and without snow, but something about the mixture of snow and dirt messed with my navigating skills. Once on the right ridge, it was a matter of negotiating the dead trees, snow and dead fall. The snow had softened up enough that we occaisonally post-holled halfway up to our knees. Breaking through the icy crust and banging our shins in the process was frustrating and painful.
It was a relief to finally rejoin the trail. I couldn't believe how long the descent took -- I thought going down was faster than going up
Finally reached Sally's car and left the TH at 2:07. While we were bouncing down the dirt road, I was frantically trying to locate the phone number for the Oaks on my iPhone. Called the number and heard "You have reached a number that has been disconnected." Seriosuly? Located another number -- success!
The folks at the Oaks were wonderful as always and had our burgers ready when we walked in just minutes before 2:30 PM. Fortunately, other folks were still finishing up, so our arrival wasn't too inconvenient. We inhaled the burgers and were back at the Mill Creek Ranger Station at 3:15 PM. The final cherry on the cake of the day was the traffic from Loma Linda to Riverside
Sally and I joked about the reason for the bad Karma. I mean, heck, I'd left my usual blood sacrifice at several places. Then realization struck -- I had not appeased the mountain spirits by toasting Anderson peak with a drink of Glenfiddich single malt from my flask
Miles of smiles,
Ellen
