Posted by GeoTom on February 8th, 2010 |
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It was Super Bowl Sunday, and at the last minute Dani abandoned me to go skiing. What’s a boy and his dog to do? The weather was not inspiring, but I still wanted to get in a few miles so I decided to hike to Lake Serene. It’s a short drive from home and I hadn’t been there in a couple years. But wait, there’s a summit near the lake. No, not Mt. Index, Philadelphia Mountain. I was saving Philadelphia for a dreary day as the treed summit wouldn’t allow for good views. This was a dreary day, so off we went.
The Lake Serene trailhead was practically empty, much to my delight. Shortly after starting out we ran into some local wildlife, more commonly seen in urban settings.
We quietly made our way past the strange creature and continued up the trail. Shortly we saw another one of these creatures. Jasper gave it a quick sniff, but refrained from angering it by barking.
Soon we passed the turnoff for Bridal Veil Falls and found ourselves at the crossing of Bridal Veil Creek. I was a bit shocked to see how little water was flowing down the rocks.
Most other times I had been to Lake Serene there was enough water at this point to make the crossing a little interesting. Not so today as we simply walked on the gravel to the other side, then began the steep ascent to the lake.
There were only a couple very small patches of snow before the lake, not unusual for May. Wait a minute it’s early February. At least the lake was frozen over. Barely. We caught some glimpses of Mt. Index through the clouds. The sounds of avalanches and rockfall off of Mt. Index was impressive, especially since we were safely out of the runouts.
We took a short break to discuss our next move. Jasper seemed to agree with my basic idea for the ascent of Philadelphia, and up we went. Straight into a boulder field. A moss covered boulder field. With some snow patches. And slide alder. Oh, it was lightly raining too. This was shaping up to be a fun ascent. Having just removed one monkey from my back the previous day, I wasn’t about to turn around at this point. Philadelphia would have to do better than a little snowy, mossy, alder overgrown boulder field to stop this stout hiker.
Luckily the boulder field only lasted a couple hundred feet before yielding to forest. Jasper and I avoided the steep cliffs to our right, and kept moving up.
The snow patches began to coalesce as we ascended, and soon we were walking on snow. I was even a bit surprised to see fairly recent bootprints. I thought this was an obscure mountain.
The bootprints kept going up, so naturally we followed them. Eventually we found ourselves below a final rise and the summit. Only it wasn’t actually the summit. It was the first in a long series of false alarm summits. There must have been 50,000* of these false summits before we finally reached the eastern edge of the ridge and the official highpoint of Philadelphia Mountain. Jasper celebrated his 179th different summit by leaving a Jasper cache while I managed to snap a summit shot of Soapy.
Our summit stay was short, maybe 5 minutes. I wasn’t in a hurry to get back and watch the Super Bowl, but there just wasn’t any reason to linger. The same 50,000** false summits were still there on the descent. It started to snow lightly, but not enough to bury our tracks.
I wasn’t looking forward to descending the boulder field, but luckily we found the bootprints (I had missed the lower set on our way up) and followed them as they skirted the worst parts of the boulder field. We decided to visit the shore of Lake Serene since we were there. Again our stay was short as the weather was gray and damp and Mt. Index was revealing less of herself than before.
We ran into a few more 2 and 4-legged hikers on our descent, including a nice German Shepherd named Phoenix. Jasper seemed to liek him weel wnough, only growling once before doing the customary sniff. The twin Ventix Starbuckus creatures were nowhere to be seen on our way back, probably got scared off by all the activity on the trail.
The truck was still intact when we arrived at the trailhead, but there was a little slip of paper under the wiper blade. A ticket?! No, just a hand written note that said “Kisses” with a little heart next to it. I had a fan club! The handwriting looked familiar. Jasper took a look at it, turned to me and said, “Mom” Aha! It was Dani. She must have finished skiing early and knowing that I was at the Lake Serene trailhead thought she’d leave me a note. How sweet. Of course, when we got home she said the note was for Jasper.
It wasn’t the most spectacular of summits. In fact, it might have been the least spectacular, but it was there. And so was I. And Jasper. Soapy too.
Full flickr photo set
*Possibly a slight exaggeration
**I counted 3. Or possibly 4. But it felt like 50,000
The Streets of Philadelphia