All good hikes should start with a snack. Mine was cheese. Shasta's was...well...I'm not really sure, but it was probably something I didn't want to know about anyway...
The streams in the Gap were flowing great that day and the sun and snow was beautiful!
We hiked along the Mid-state Trail, along the ridge top. Shasta was particularly intrigued by the smells coming up from the south...I was more concerned with the four foot snow drifts we had to slog through...nothing quite like dropping thigh deep when you hit a pocket under the crust.
We reached the end of our hike at the highway outside of the next town over. Which was between 5 and 6 miles away...To paraphrase Calvin's dad "Ahhh, the crazy hedonism of a Thursday afternoon!"
Our walk out was fun and exciting...the walk back was muddy and cold :) We walked home through a power line cutout, which the day before had been snow, but now was ankle deep mud. After playing some "Posted sign Hide-and-Go-Avoid" that involved popping up and down the ridge a couple times, we eventually made it back to the trail from home. And my shoes lived behind the woodstove for the next two days to dry out. All in all a good day (not the least because the dog slept for the next 18 hours :)
