6.5 Miles of Hell

To start off on thursday my brother and sister-in-law dropped my nephews off at our place for us to watch for a little bit while they went to an appointment, thats not the hell part. We don't really have a lot for a 5 and 2 1/2 year old to do so we put them on the wii. They had a lot of fun bowling and after each turn Zach, the 2 1/2 year old would yell "strike" and get excited. When they were done with bowling they decided to box and that was so funny. Between watching them and laughing I got some video.

Then on Friday Jeff, Ross and I were going to go to Bryce canyon to camp and hike. We have been wanting to do a winter camp out and we were hoping to be able to combine it with snowshoeing but that didn't work. They didn't have enough snow and wasn't supposed to get snow for a couple of days. On our way out of town I decided to stop and get Ross some hiking boots for his safety. Last year we did some camping and then went hiking in Arches and there was some snow and all Ross had was his skater shoes with no traction and, well, that was intersting. Oh wait. . . . . I have a picture of it.So, to keep my husband alive I got him some boots with good traction on the bottom.

It was about 8:30 when we got into the camp ground at Bryce and it was pretty cold. We did hit some hairy weather on I-70 on the way down but when we got to the camp ground the sky was pretty clear and there was a really cool halo around the moon. We just set up camp, the guys had some hot dogs and then we went to bed, we didn't have wood to make a fire and it was too cold to just stand around with out a fire. Last year we discovered the best thing for winter camping. You take like 2 or 3 of the hand warmers, heat those up and put them in your sleeping bag, one at the foot, one between the knees and one up top. With those I stay warm, and usually I get cold easy. It makes winter camping possible.

This is camp before bed. And below is camp after we woke up.

You can't see it but its snowing still. We were told it wouldn't snow. It was so cold when we finally got up. We went in search of a pavillion to cook breakfast under cause it was so cold, windy and snowy. We couldn't find one so just ended up on a picknick table at the trailhead of where we were going to hike. When we were cleaning up breakfast Ross was taking a bag to the dumpster and slipped on some ice and ended up on his back. It was like in the cartoons when someone slips and end up in the air verticle before landing on their back. Luckily he didn't hit his head and when he got his wind back was ok. Jeff and I had been playing on the ice before and thought Ross knew it was there, a big sheet of thick ice with a layer of snow on it.

After breakfast was cleaned up we headed out for a hike. I was feeling ambitious because my workouts had been pretty good so I figured ok, lets do the whole thing, 6.5 miles. What I didn't factor in was the 10 pounds of clothing I was wearing. It was so cold. I had long johns, ski pants, sweatshirt, coat and boots on, at the gym its some thin pants and shirt and light running shoes. And the fact that half the trail was covered in snow didn't help either, made it very difficult and slippery. I was dead after 2 miles and just wanted to be done. The bad part was we hadn't done this part of the trail before and it was hard to follow the trail so we had no idea how far we had yet to go. The scenery however was beautiful, I love the red rock with the white snow.

I have never been so excited to get to the parking lot as I was after this hike. I think I just need to get into much better shape.