Posted by Mychal Manie:

The mountains of the West are pretty with little haze to obstruct. The hike to lost creek was nice and the effort was moderate. It was decided to hike (almost vertical) from the flat plain to the top of a nearby jutting rock. The view was spectacular after the panting ceased.

"Hey... I have a great idea. Why don't we just camp out up here? The low will only be around 40'F up in the mountains and we all have 0'F bags."

...uhhh... sure...

Storm fronts in the rockies are always quick and decisive in their determination to dump rain, snow, sleet, or hail. It was the last of these weathers options that was selected for our indoctrination. Adequate cover would have been nice. This life experience was analgous to standing out in the middle of a fairway while 100 golfers simultaneously tee off.

Dark (the sky) and pummeling (the hail) were the conditions. The solutions provided for our dilemma were sparse as one side of the rock looked over ther valley, 1/2 mile straight down (this route would be referred to as "air hiking"); the other side was a good 20 ft drop if you can't find the hand holds. The hail soon subsided and my scalp felt like a serious "rolfing" session had been done.

We learned many things on our trip:

1) Finding handholds in a hail storm isn't the easiest thing. 2) Sleeping bags aren't as padded as you might think. 3) A noose rope is a good item for stupid ideas from people. 4) Aspirin is a good thing to have in your backpack.

Hiking Trip Reports