First and foremost… this was my very FIRST SNOW hike I've EVER attempted! Also our first peak for this Six Packs of Peaks challenge on March 24, 2019 :). I personally felt pretty geared up with my crampons, snow pants, backpack with all my goods inside, etc. Hiking up in the snow was great but hiking down the mountain was such a challenge which gave me mixed feelings about snow hikes, lol. Most likely, I'll attempt a snow hike again ????

Luckily we chose a beautiful sunny day to hike this peak, but I forgot to anticipate in bringing sunscreen so now my face is all red, haha. I've done this trail before and hiking in the snow definitely made it much harder. The first few switch backs going up, I've noticed people followed the trail, but soon after I've notice people wouldn't follow the trail but yet leave their trails by just going straight up the mountain. My group and I decided to follow. Yes, it was strenuous but we eventually made it to the top. When we got to the top, we didn't realize how much snow cover was on that mountain which buried the flag and the mini monument for our proof through pictures that we made it to the top, Haha. But the view was magnificent and we felt amazing! However, going down was our issue. We didn't realize how steep the mountain was towards the beginning of the trail going up so going down was a big challenge for us. Even with our crampons we were sliding down, fearful if not being able to stop due to the steepness of the mountain. Then we realize how important it is to stay on the regular trail, lol. I used my snow pants to slide down here and there to finish my trail faster and boy did I have a blast, haha. As it got steeper, we wouldn't slide as much but we would try to walk it down. Then we got to the point where we would walk slowly in order not to slip and fall. Unfortunately there were times we did slip and we would purposely crash into a tree in order to break our fall, haha. We tried using our hands or sticks to help us break and find other cleaver ways to hike down without endangering ourselves. Be aware of the snow condition. Some snow areas would feel fresh as if it just snowed and some areas would feel slushy. Other areas of snow would feel icy and hard, which I feel it's the easiest to hike on. Making our own trails down the mountain was probably better for us because we would sink into the snow which gave us leverage from sliding down. We kept looking for the main trail so we CV an stop suffering from the steepness,  haha. We manage to successfully finish the trail and thank God for guiding us through our hike down. I'm proud to say I finally accomplish my goal in hiking in the snow and finally able to check off my bucketlist.

Thank you for reading my blog ????

-Jennisy aka Jigenlo