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Showing posts from December, 2017

A Hyalite Adventure

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The plowed road ended in a large parking lot. The cleared expanse was more reminiscent of a suburban Walmart than of a backcountry trailhead. That was where we'd been told to park my low-suspension wannabe-sports-car and start hiking. But the road went on further: no longer plowed, but well traveled all the same. Tempted by the prospect of saving an hour's walk - each way - I drove on with barely a second thought. And for the first couple hundred metres continuing seemed like a reasonable course of action. Other than the deep drifts just beside the tracks, the hard-packed snow beneath the tires didn't feel all that different from the plowed road we'd left behind. But then the ruts got deeper, and the undercarriage started dragging on the ridge between them. At first it was only an occasional touch, but soon we were scraping loudly along the bottom. Juan and I exchanged worried looks. We could well imagine how this adventure could end: in the car getting hopelessly