I’ve been a little MIA lately, but I blame it on Colton and I graduating and planning all our summer trips. And I’ve also flown to two sides of the U.S. and the other side of the world in the past three months, and the thought about organizing all those pictures and typing up posts can be rather daunting sometimes. 🙂

This past winter, as I’ve stated before, was a very warm winter. So we were surprised when a while ago, (like February, to be precise), a hike up Elephant Rock at night… with only headlamps… just after my aunt had told us about the time my cousin got stalked by a cougar… quickly turned icy. We brought along our trusty Autumn-dog for protection. Or more for ‘if-she-starts-booking-it-down-the-trail-start-running-too’. She’s a pansy and wouldn’t protect us from anything. It was kinda creepy to see her little glowing eyes in front of us on the trail. Anyways. It was so icy that we were basically hiking in place in some sections, grabbing onto any available branches to pull us a little further up the trail.Icy Elephant Rock1 Icy Elephant Rock2A little ways up the trail there is a teepee made of large sticks, most likely from some scouting group or bored teenagers. But it’s pretty impressive! Usually it takes 20 minutes to hike up that far if you’re just moseying along, but with all the ice it took more than twice that long. And that’s as far as we made it!Icy Elephant Rock3 Icy Elephant Rock4 Icy Elephant Rock5 Icy Elephant Rock6

The way down was even more treacherous, and even though we only walked like two feet we were all tired by the end of it. Guess we shouldn’t hike up an icy trail without an ice axe or something.Icy Elephant Rock7