Snavley Freebirds

I did it! My first ever winter hiking/camping trip. My cousin, Jason, and I hiked into a undeveloped hot springs (can't remember the name of it at the moment). It was a 3 hour drive to the trail head and a 7 mile hike in. It was totally exhausting but completely worth it! We hiked in on Friday (the dogs hauled our gear in on a sled), set up camp, soaked in the hot springs, and slept in a tent at 0 degrees or colder! Woke up Saturday morning, had breakfast, soaked again, talked and napped all afternoon long, and slept another night in the tent. Woke up Sunday and cleaned up camp, hiked back out and drove back into town. It was a fabulous weekend!

I've met my cousin lots of times at the coffee shop for a visit and have visited him at his house and him at mine but we haven't done anything just fun together since we were in high school. It was great to just be with him and get lots of visits in! I learned a lot about camping, especially in winter. This is piddly stuff to him since he has done hundreds of these trips in his lifetime, ones extremely more difficult and longer. One of the last ones he did was for 100 days! He is a true outdoors man!

Here are some pictures. I would have taken more, especially of the hot springs but 0 degrees and lots of steam really isn't conducive to pictures, on top of the fact that you don't soak with clothes on. At 0 degrees you don't want to be messing with trying to take off wet clothes and then trying to get them dry, not to mention that there isn't another person around for miles.

Hiking in. Got the camera out to snap a few pics but that didn't last long at 0 degrees.

Pretty pooped out and we still have 3 miles to go!


Finally make it to the campsite and the dogs are just as tired, or more tired, than I am.

Setting up camp, just made it by dark.

Home safe and sound.