What a great day – drove a desk for 5hrs then jumped on a flight-seeing trip to the Bridge Glacier- what an amazing and remote place to be. Not many people get to hike on here- no roads no trails, just a float plan access onto the Lake that has now been revealed as the glacier recedes. It first formed over 5000 years ago, receded and then formed again about 700 years ago. It's been receding for the last 200 years and is now revealing ancient forests. Dale pointed out a fallen tree that has been carbon dated to 5000 years ago. Wow! Amazing to touch something that predates our own history!
Lumps of ice are carving off the glacier daily and we could see the fresh ones, some upturned to reveal the glacial blue ice that was below the surface. Heading back over downton lake and carpeneter both glacial lakes with blue silt and murky waters then we popped over to Gun Lake which was clear spring water you can see to the depths but its in fact around 200m deep! Wow again! So beautiful.
Straight after this Dale shuttled me up to Taylor Creek trailhead (TH) and pointed me up the Taylor cabin pass- At 2:15pm I set off and I climbed on this logging road for 1hr 45 and found the miners cabin, breaking my chain along the way, which held me back 20 mins of pfaffing!
I found camels pass but decided to carry on up to the High Trail turn off- another 45 mins of climbing, I turned left and swooped down the High Trail through meadows under high alpine mountain views- it was amazing! Then it started to climb and I thought I'd missed the turn off as the trail went on forever. Eventually I got to the Eldorado cabin (the one on the Collective/Roam movie I think). I thought maybe I was lost as no sign of the downhill yet! After an hour hanging around here trying to get a radio signal I got Adrian and confirmed I was in the right location. So on I went.
Eventually at 7:30pm I reached the downhill – no junctions at all quite different to how the map looks- I started heading down for 40 mins of amazing singletrack, roots, switchbacks, dusty shoots, occasional exposed ledges. Unbelievable!
I hit the logging road and almost crashed as I looked for directions and slid my front wheel but after heading back along the Freiburg trail I rolled into Tyax at 8:30pm 30 mins before dark! Straight into the bar for beers with Adrian, Scott and Jenny. What an amazing day! Exhausted but grinning!
Todays lesson was about the scale of the map here and the scale of the landscape- totally huge compared to UK OS maps! 2cm on map here - long way on ground!
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