February 22, 2019
Trails: Glen Boulder
One step at a time. That was our mantra breaking trail on Friday. The snow was deeeeep, the pitch was steeeeeep and we were making veeerrrryyy slow progress. The higher we climbed, the deeper the snow. We finally called it after breaking trail for about 4 hours. We were close to tree line, probably a tenth of a mile or so — which would easily have taken another 40 minutes. But we were done.
I’m a goal-oriented person, but yesterday I had to make a different choice. It was clear from the very beginning, when we had to climb up the massive snowbank to get to the unplowed trailhead that it wasn’t going to be an easy day. And 60 seconds into our hike we knew no one had been on the Glen Boulder Trail for quite some time and that we’d be breaking trail all day. We knew we weren’t going to reach our redlining goal of getting to the intersection of the Boott Spur Trail on the shoulder of Washington. But we didn’t focus on that. Instead we just put our best efforts into the next step and the next breath without letting the difficulty of it all get into our heads. When we finally decided to turn around, we did so not in defeat but in relief and joy. As we headed back down, we honored our efforts by really letting in the beautiful sight of this trail we had created with our own snowshoed feet.