Keeping cool on the Keep Cool trail

The forest on the Keep Cool trail

Twelve Senior Trailblazers met at the Senior Center on a Thursday with plenty of rain in the forecast. Our regularly scheduled hike was to head down south and a 65-mile (one way) drive, but nobody was all that excited about driving all that distance to walk in the rain. So, instead, we decided to hike up the Keep Cool trail. We've done it many times before, and a good deal of the trail is in the trees, which would keep us out of the direct rain. We started out in patchy sunshine and quite a few clouds, but no rain.

Crossing the meadow

At about two miles, we broke out into the meadow, following the trail up to a lookout spot where we usually stop for lunch. You can see it a little bit in the clouds, but we still had no rain, even though the clouds had thickened to keep us from having a view. (For comparison, look at this post, which was our first hike with Doug, who is now a seasoned Trailblazer.) We didn't mind much, since it wasn't raining and we had been expecting some downpours.

Rich, Bob, Dave, Peggy, Carol, Doug, Susan, and Al

This is not the entire group, but we stopped for a minute and I couldn't resist this picture. You can tell a lot from it: we are NOT wearing our rain gear, it's pretty warm, and we have gained almost all of the elevation at this point. Just a bit more, maybe another 500 feet before lunch.

Snow near our lunch spot

And what did we see as we climbed a little higher? Snow, fresh snow! Obviously the rain we had at lower elevations was descending in the form of snow up here. This is above 5,000 feet, more than 2,000 feet higher than our starting point. Time to stop and have our lunch. We also put on more clothes, since it wasn't anywhere near warm.

Settling down to have some lunch

As we started to eat our lunch, a few of the others went down to the nearest tarn (mountain lake) and one of our most avid swimmers, Rich, decided to take a dip! I wasn't there to capture it in all its glory, but I heard from Doug and Susan that it was spectacular. For some reason nobody joined him.

Carol took this of me with my new hat

On Saturday, I used my old rain hat for the first time in awhile, and then I seem to have lost it. I've looked high and low and it is not to be found, so yesterday I bought myself a new Seattle Sombrero. I found one with a purple top, which I like very much, and here you can see how it looks. It got a workout, since the fat snowflakes began to fall at about this point, and we continued to have precipitation for the remainder of the hike. Mind you, it was just a little bit, nothing like what we expected to face, so nobody really minded.

Fall colors, a little misty rain on our return trip

This is an out-and-back hike, so once we finished our lunch and wanted to warm up a little, we retraced our steps. It's pretty steep in places, and many of us managed to slip and fall on the return, but no real damage was done. Once we reached the cars, we had covered somewhere between five and six miles, with a fair amount of elevation gain, but we all had a pretty wonderful day, lots of fun, exercise, and great company. Now that I'm home, I can hear the rain outside, but it was never like that in the High Country today. We lucked out, that's for sure!
:-)