St. Mary's Falls

I left the house at 6:20am and headed over to pick up Eric.  We were in the Gold Camp Drive parking lot at 7:20.  We were the first ones on the trail this morning.  It was cold and windy when we started.    It stayed that way until we got off the road and caught the trail head.

I put my MicroSpikes (http://www.pogu-spikes.com/) on once we hit the tunnel.  This is the first time I used them.  There was quit a bit of ice still on the trail and we had a light dusting this morning.  Eric didn’t put his on until we reach the top and figured he better have them on for the descent.

Saw some rabbit tracks but no rabbits.  We did come across several chipmunks chattering away up in the trees.  One chipmunk was running up the trail with a big pine cone in his mouth.

We managed to get six miles in round trip.  We climbed 1,401ft with an average moving time of 2.3/MPH.   Total hiking time was two hours and forty minuets.   I did manage to snag a couple of pictures today and have included them.

We reached the top of the falls at about 8:40am.   We thought about having our sandwiches but with the wind blowing it was to cold to stop moving.  The falls were covered with ice.  I ventured out a little ways but didn’t go to far.

We worked our way back down moving at a pretty good pace.  On the way down we ran into two other hikers working there way up.

Happy Hiking!