This trip was originally spurred by Shug's trip of his Snowbank Lake Trail Loop video. Three good friends and I attempted it last year in early November, we got surprise snow.. about 4-6 inches of it. You can read about last years trip on my friends blog here; Part 1: http://goo.gl/dnpPqO Part 2: http://goo.gl/kQggfj
So this year the same three friends and I all set out for redemption. Here is my video of Day 1 on the trail:
Here are some notes I wrote at the end of our first day;
We thought we were going to hike around 13 miles today to get to our first campsite. It turned out to only be about 8 miles or so. We found the site from Shug's YouTube video. It was Newfound Bay - I have never been to a better BWCA campsite. It is large although there are not many tent pads there are about 3 separate areas. Torry and I have setup next to each other, him in a hammock and myself in my solo tent right on the cliff overlooking the bay, it's awesome. Next through a patch of cedars is the main camp cooking area and it's not very level at all but it's really nice. And then Rob and Cooper found a tent pad on another cliff overlooking a stream or creek leading into the bay. We averaged almost a 3 mile and hour pace today and at some points seemed like a jog it was awesome and my body feels great although I'm worried I brought only just enough food, I calorie bonked at the end of the day. The trail was extremely varied where portions would be very up and down and others would be cruising rollers. It must have rained here the previous night because everything was wet and thus so was I. I was wet up to my thighs most of the day. I wore my Cascadia trail runners and so my feet were wet as well. I got kinda nervous as they got squishy for a while. I was nervous of blisters but they appear to be just fine. I think next time I need GORETEX boots, waterproof socks for camp or camp shoes for sure. There were some amazing views and snowbank lake is much larger than we saw last year. We skipped bringing a hatchet and that seemed to be a mistake as the wet wood was somewhat difficult to get going once me made camp. We made due so I'll have to really think about it tough next time. The silky saw turned out to be fantastic. My new kovea stove worked great as did the zpacks bear bagging kit. I waited until bed to journal and now I'm kinda nervous that I missed something so maybe I'll try to log things through out the day. Anyways it was a great day with great friends.
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