It was very rainy at the Lair of the Golden Bear this weekend, but that didn't stop us from hiking to Cleo's Bath on Saturday. There's not much info on this hike online, so I'll give you a little rundown of our experience. We started out walking along the lake, nice and easy, even in the rain (and mud). The hike around the lake has its ups and downs (literally, not figuratively), but it's not really strenuous. After about an hour or so of this, we came to the Cleo's Bath trailhead. While we hugged the trees to get out of the rain, which had gotten slightly heavier, we wondered how much farther it was to the end. None of us had ever done it before, so we asked a rugged-looking hiker on his way back. "30-4o minutes," he said. "It's flat for a bit, then starts going up. It'll take you an hour, tops." We believed him, and carried on. Flat for a bit it was, and then oh boy did it start "going up!" We bumped into a middle-aged couple who told us there was a "little bit of a scramble" at one point, and that it should take us about 20 minutes (HA. Took almost an hour, I think). I didn't like the sound of it...I'm not experienced with "scrambling," and we were lookin' at a lot of wet granite ahead of us. Nevertheless, we adventured onward! There were some particularly tricky spots, where we were basically climbing up narrow passageways of slick granite, and I was getting nervous about the return trip, but I surprised myself. I was stronger than I thought I was, able to hoist myself up onto rocks and such (The Boy helped pull me up on occasion, which was definitely appreciated). We finally got to Cleo's Bath, which we all agreed would be more worth it in the summer when you could jump right in. We hiked back down, sliding on our butts more often than not, and with heavy, wet jeans, made it back to the cars.
So yes, it was fun. It was wet. It was an adventure. The rest of the weekend was lovely, with the exception of a painful Penguins loss on Saturday night. We watched the game from a nice little Italian restaurant though, and the delicious food and wine *almost* made up for it. We played Yahtzee and read by the fire in the lodge, and the sun came out just in time for us to leave on Sunday. It's always nice to get away and be in the woods for a few days, even in the rain!
Pictures from the weekend below. I didn't take very many, but here they are.
You forgot to mention my triple yahtzee! That is something to remember. :)
ReplyDeleteThe hike was fun, even in the rain, and even 5 months preggers. :P
Mark was calling those rock formations "turtles." Looks like it could sort of be both (from wiki), but ducks is more common.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairn
"In North America, cairns are often petroforms in the shapes of turtles or other animals."
"In some regions, piles of rocks used to mark hiking trails are called "ducks" or "duckies". These are typically smaller cairns, so named because some would have a "beak" pointing in the direction of the route. An expression "two rocks do not make a duck" reminds hikers that just one rock resting upon another could be the result of accident or nature rather than intentional trail marking."
Thanks for the duck/turtle/cairn lesson! I feel so informed!
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