Capturing the Art of Nature
Snowshoeing on Airplane Creek FSR
My last time out on the snowshoes was last season on this road, so I thought it fitting to head back here to start this season.
Category
Serendipitous Discoveries
2009
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It being earlier in the season than the previous time we were here, I wasn't expecting to get as far up the road by vehicle as we did last year. But I was determined to get as far as we could go before starting our hiking. So it came as no surprise though still a bit of a letdown to find we were stopped about 300 meters from the start of the road! We didn't quite get up the initial steep hill! So after viewing the situation where we stopped inching forward I decided it was best to just back down and park along the Foley Creek FSR which is level at the point the Airplane Creek FSR branches off.
Unfortunately, backing down the hill was a bit more problematic than we had expected and soon we were off to the side and quite stuck. We couldn't move up or further down. So we started the process of digging out the truck enough to get the chains on the tires and clearing out the snow piled up under the truck. This took the better part of an hour to complete, but once we had 3 of the tires chained we were able to rock the truck out of its rut and back onto the main part of the road where we were able to put the last chain on. We then carefully backed down the slope to the level area. This time we had decent traction and no longer slipped off the road.
Once parked, we set up the cross-band repeater radio that I use for hiking safety. The deep snow made it a challenge for finding suitable anchor points for the guys ropes. So we just kept the height to a minimum. Then we were off on our footed adventure. Just past where we were stopped in the truck there is an side-road to an area the usually becomes the drop-off point for ATV's and as I hadn't been in it before we decided to see what it might offer. We were surprised to find that the road continues past a small berme and right over the actual Airplane Creek via a heavily decayed bridge. The road continued on up the slope to parallel Foley Creek. Since it was a new area to me we decided to keep going and see what we would find.
The snow was fairly deep and made for slow going but the snowshoes worked well and we had a good time making our way up the road. We unfortunately didn't get high enough to get to some good viewpoints and had to make do with partially obscured views of two different peaks. After a couple of kilometers of hiking in the snow, we reached a southern exposed stretch of the road which was bare, so we ended up hiking the final third of our hike carrying our snowshoes. By the time we reached deep snow again the wind had picked up and the temperature was dropping so we decided to stop at that point, capture a few shots and then head back. The return trip went so much faster as we were almost skiing down the slope!
Once back to the truck we packed up the ham radio and were soon ready to depart. We were quite relieved to find the truck take off and get onto the road with no problem. I really didn't want to have to dig it out again! So it was a pleasant hike though a bit lacking in photo ops.