Yesterdays Hike

Yesterday dad came home and said that I could go on a hike with Paul up the back side Verstovia if I wanted. I decided that I wanted to I texted him and found out when I need to meet him. Once it was time for me to go I went out and met him then we went out to blue lake road and started hiking up the road a little ways. Then we turned off and went up the thimble berry and heart lake trail. We hiked up it a little ways then we turned off and went up a creek.

We hiked up the creek aways then we rested for a little will and sat in the sun then started hiking again.

It took us about two hours to make it to tree line, and by the time we got there my legs were killing me. There was still a lot of snow up there and since it had been sunny and I suspected that we would run into snow up there so I brot some sun glasses. Once I had been walking on the snow for a little while my legs stopped hurting. There was only a few none snow spots up there where we were. We worked our way to the first none snowy patch there. Once we got there we looked around it for a few minutes then we walked up a little rock face that was part of the first snow free area as we walked up it a little more I looked to the side a little in front of Paul and I saw a willow ptarmigan in the scrubby stuff. I told Paul and we stopped and we were able to get some photos of it. We went up a little higher and sat down and watched it for a few minutes then I decided that I would go down there and try to get better photos of it. I went down the hill a little ways and sat down a watched. Paul said that it was coming out the other way and that he would try to get it to go towards me. He walked down the hill a little ways and the ptarmigan came towards me but it flew away before I could get any photos of it. We went up and crossed some more snow to go to a higher snow free area on top of the ridge. We sat down and ate some lunch and watched a pipit that was up there and looked around we also saw a red tailed hawk up there. While we were looking around I first heard the willow ptarmigan then I caught a glims of it going back to the same snow free spot that I saw it on the first time. We spent about an hour up there looking around in a small patch that had no snow.

We walked down the ridge a little ways then we turned and walked down a different ridge and headed for indian river valley. The snow was pretty deep on that ridge but on either side of the ridge it was pretty high risk of avalanches. As we got further down the ridge we came across some fairly old bear tracks in the snow we followed them because they were going the same way we were. In one spot we saw where it had been having some fun sliding down the hill in the snow. We eventually made it to tree line and walked down the ridge into indian river valley. We walked along the trail and went home. It took us almost three hours to get home but I had fun.