Planned on making it to the summit today. However, there was alot more snow than we anticipated. Pete and I did not bring snowshoes, while Karen and Perry did. I didn't figure we would even need them, turns out I was wrong. It was also really cold and windy. One of the coldest hikes I have done. 13 degrees when we left the car. I have started a hike when it was -1 degrees, but for some reason this hike seemed colder.
Initially the there was about 4 inches of snow on the trail, with more as we got higher up. We were having trouble keeping our feet warm. We made it to Mt Surprise at about 2.5 miles in, which took about 2.5 hours. We pretty much could not go any further since we were up to our waists in snow at this point and with no snowshoes, we were pretty much out of luck. We decided to bag it and go back since there was no way we were going to make it to the summit in any reasonable amount of time.
Only took us 45 minute to get down though. We were a bit disappointed at not making the summit, but it was at least nice to be out in the mountains. We'll get up there next time.
