Bill Moore - May 18

Patrol 14 made a trip up Bill Moore Lake on May 18th. Joining us on this run was Bill, Gary, Daryl and David, Sam, Jaime and Cecilia, Joe, CJ and Dan. The day started off fairly cool with brief snow showers on the way up to the trailhead and at the air-down area. After airing down, we headed up the trail. The trail was dry through the early switchbacks and the chute. At the top of the chute, we met some vehicles coming down. They indicated they did not make it very far and were giving up. As they indicated, shortly after the chute we ran into a lot of snow. Gary was taking the lead, and his YJ made excellent progress past the Miller Creek cut-off and up to the camp spot at which the trail turns right and goes up the hill. The snow varied between completely covering the trail for 100's of feet to brief drifts. Sam quickly discovered that it was necessary to air down in order to make it up through the snow drifts.

We were able to make it up to the camp site, but it was challenging and a slow climb at times. Near the campsite, there was a drift across the trail. We thought it would be too tempting to drive around this drift, creating an illegal bypass, so we built a small deterrent using some fallen trees. Please remember to "Stay the Trail."

After this work, we were all ready for some lunch and relaxing for a bit. After lunch, we decided to take a few tries of varying people attempting to make it up the hill. It proved to be more challenging than any of us were capable of overcoming, and CJ even became high centered and needed a tug to get back out of the snow.

After this "fun in the snow," we decided to head back down. As we were heading back down, the group decided to see how far up the Miller Creek trail we could get, and due to various people backing up and turning around, Daryl took the lead. Daryl was able to make some progress through a lot of pounding away at various drifts heading up, and the snow became pretty deep at times.

 

Surprisingly, the heavy JKU just kept pounding away at the snow and was eventually able to get to the clearing at the top. The entire group was able to make it up the trail without too many issues behind the JKU.

At the top, we all lined up to take a picture and enjoyed a break from the snow.

Without knowing what we might run into, we decided to continue down the trail towards Red Elephant and Empire loop. Unfortunately, it did not take long before we ran into another snow drift across the trail. 

This is a pretty gnarly snow drift, as the tree on the left side created a pretty deep hole off the top of the drift. At this point, it was getting pretty late into the afternoon, so we decided to head back down the mountain. On the way down, the trail was already starting to ice up, and we had a couple of issues. After some digging, we were able to get everyone down the mountain safely, aired up and headed back to town. Overall, it was a great day on the trail, but we want to remind everyone that there is a LOT of snow up there, and it is tempting to bypass some of these drifts. Please remember to ALWAYS "Stay the Trail!"