A Brief Interlude

The chill of morning soon heated up by afternoon along Ptarmigan Lake. I hiked up through the spruce and hemlock forests along the south slope where the curve of hill opened into the frozen view of lake and steep mountains beyond. The ice had begun to melt along the edges of the lake and cracks formed in its margins. As the sun climbed higher, the brightness reflected off the frozen Lake and hurt my eyes. The view was a piercing effect of reflective blindness to the sight. I stood a moment and breathed in the clean air of the back country.The light wind still felt cold, but once I was again in the shelter of trees, a warmth radiated from the ground. In the distance, outside the valley and above other mountains to the west, anvil shaped clouds sucked up moisture from the earth. It would be a hot day and possibility of danger from above. The two dogs were having fun, chasing a squirrel here and there along the trail, although I thought that watching for the occasional bear might be better for all of us. However, it was quiet and I had not seen much sign of any other movements in the area. Half way down the
Ptarmigan Lake ( four-and-a-half by three-quarter miles of a long narrow shape), the first in a series of Avalanche chutes had spilled tons of compressed snow onto the lake. The trail was blocked. At the base of the snow slide a deep green opening of water formed. Forty-five to fifty feet of avalanche lay above it. The top of the mountain, the source of this spillage of loose snow pack, was over four thousand feet straight up. I couldn't see the condition of the upper slopes, but I had to cross to continue along the trail. Across the lake, the mountains were even steeper and higher ( six-thousand feet), lost in the shadow of a north face. Avalanches became more vocal as the sun warmed the land; at first they sounded like jet noise in the sky, but lasted longer and didn't fade in the distance. The dogs and I began our climb up the rounded piles of solid snow. My foot couldn't kick too deep in the surface for holds, so by grabbing the alder, we finally reached the top of the slide. The piles of icy debris were like huge dirty snowballs of two to three feet in diameter. First the release of slabs of snow; then down the chutes in rapid collision;next the flowing in a large mass of smaller rounded material to the region below--a avalanche is born. The one I was on wasn't the biggest in the valley; in fact, acrosss the lake, the huge fans of avalanches were much larger in width and length. I had only to traverse a little less than one-hundred feet. Nice view of the valley though. More steeper slopes, more difficult traverses ahead. But not today. I'll be back again in June when the wild flowers are blooming on the steep south slopes near the end of the lake.