I (3rd Monty) just got back from a weekend in Sacramento. coaching high school Awana kids.   It was awesome!   Our kids totally outdid themselves in everything they entered, from music to Bible quiz, to AwanaGames competition.   We are so proud of them!

Driving to Sacramento, with a carful of kids, I was dealing with heavy rain for much of the way, that made it sometimes even hard to see on the freeway.  The signs about having to put chains on your car to cross the Sierras up ahead were all lit up.  Oh joy.   That means another big dumping of snow we have to get through in a few months!    Next morning, all the clouds were gone, there was a cloudless sky, and the Sierras on the horizon were totally white.   Most of our highschooler’s families were planning to “head for fun in the snow”  right after the AwanaGames finished up.

Well, maybe White Beard and I will be having  “fun in the snow”, too, this year.  Hmmmm.  So, I thought I’d lay out what we do about cold weather (and snow).   The key to being comfortable on the trail in the cold is LAYERS.  We have our basic hiking clothes, of pants and shirt, but when a cool breeze blows, we may add a layer of the top only from polyester long underwear.   That usually takes care of things quite well, but if it is colder yet, we have lightweight fleece jackets to put on, and fleece mittens and fleece hats.   If it gets colder still,  I put on my raingear, and that does it.   Once I have that many layers, I have never been cold, as long as I keep hiking and don’t sit around very long.  

Snow on the PCT can vary from bits and patches to totally burying everything.   Depending on the time of day, it can be hard, icy and scary or so soft that you posthole.   When I KNOW there will be nasty snow (like near Tahquitz Peak or on Fuller Ridge or Mt. Baden-Powell or the High Sierra) I like to have an ice axe just in case.   But trek poles usually handle it pretty well.  I get out the ice axe when things are steep and icy.  Sometimes, like at Sonora Pass, we looked at a steep icy snowfield and said “I don’t think so!” about trying to cross it.  We scrambled down AROUND it instead.   You don’t want to mess with really steep icy snow.  Just last year,  Bill and I were preparing to go up ‘n over Old Army Pass, south of Mt. Whitney, when another hiker we met warned us, “Don’t try to cross the snowfield at the top of the pass.   A lady DIED up there yesterday, trying to do it.   When you get to the snowfield, shinny up the rock chute right next to it.”   Well, we did “shinny up” and avoided the steep snow, though the “shinny” part was totally terrifying for me.  Bill just chugged right up it, but I’m height-challenged.  I ended up taking off my pack, climbing up a bit, then reaching back down to haul my pack up before going on.   I did that enough times, and finally reached the top.

When the snow isn’t icy, and is nice to walk on, but the hillside is steep,  Bill often goes ahead of me and then I can just step in his footprints. 

Postholing is no fun.   Snowshoes of course would pretty much solve the problem, and we do use snowshoes for snow camping,  but for the PCT,  they are too heavy to be worthwhile.   But I have hiked in snow without snowshoes, and  done my share of postholing, and all I can say is,  “You just deal with it.”

Route-finding in lots of snow is “fun”, if you have enough time and enough food so that if you are lost for awhile you are OK.    If the snow is not too deep, you can look for sawed/cut logs (very good indicators of “trail here!”).  If the snow is deep enough to cover the logs,  you can look UP for signs of branches that have been trimmed off above the trail to allow horses to pass through.  Of course, if you have decent weather (meaning, you are not dealing with rain and clouds) and landmarks, you can figure things out that way, too.  When Bill and I were in a puzzlement about where the trail went to under the snow, we would fan out (staying within shouting distance, of course) to hunt for it.  Usually one or the other of us would find it that way.    And if you are hiking along and it starts SNOWING, actually that’s not a problem at all, as long as you can make out the trail.   Even a foot or more of snow on the ground–no problem!  

But if you are on the PCT, hiking in snow, one thing is for sure.  You CAN’T camp on the snow, not with the lightweight equipment PCT hikers carry.   The snow is just too cold.   When we snow camp, we bring SEVERAL insulating, closed cell foam sleeping pads to insulate us from the cold snow we are sleeping on.  One is not enough.  On the PCT, you have got to find some clear ground to camp on, even if it’s a flat rock.   Several times in 2005, we had a bit of a tough time finding a snowfree campsite, but always found something, usually in a grove of trees.

So far it’s been a very cold, very rainy spring here in California.   We will see what that translates into once we are on the PCT.   I have a feeling it may be colder than usual in general this year.  (Gee, back when I was younger, the fear-mongers were pushing the idea that “Oh, no!  We are going into another Ice Age!”   That  got replaced with “Oh, no!  Global warming!”  and now it’s Oh, no! Climate change!”   What will be next?  Anybody got any new scary slogans?