Barriers in Place for Barrier

For today to be an enjoyable experience, barriers had to be put in place to make our trek to the Barrier Lake Fire Lookout happen when the high temperature for the day was a forecast of -22 Celsius. The barriers were not the road block kind but doing whatever it took to keep the cold out and the warm in.

As you can tell from this photo there were six of us today! You can also tell there were three boys and three girls and that all of us are bundled up. The photo also tells you is was a sunny day with a blue sky. I hiked up to this lookout a few times and each time the wind howled. Today was different! I was prepared for the wicked wind crossing the dam by the lake but it never materialized. With that in mind and the blue sky, I took this as a sign.

As we cleared the open area and headed into the woods for the uphill climb, I delayered, down to two instead of four layers. It was cool but yet comfortable. See my hair! Yes, the air was cool!

The snow was just over our ankles in some parts and in other areas it was just at our knees. No need for snowshoes but need for icers in the steep sections and need for probing as we went looking for big holes between snow covered boulders and rocks. We reached the lookout and cleared the picnic table for lunch. We took time for summit shots and scenery shots too. I thought we had amazing views today. We could see forever!

At 2:00 we began our descent. It was a much, much quicker return. A fun one at that! It was almost like running down a scree run. I even wished I had my Pelican Snow Flite. We made it down to the Lake and the lighting was beautiful. I took a quick detour down to the shore side to snap some shots and look at the driftwood formations.

Our distance for today was just over 12km which is significant for a cold snowy day. In the summer this would be a walk in the park but today I called this the Barrier Lake Lookout Expedition. Our total elevation was short of 700 meters so that took us quite high. It was high enough to make me feel like I was "on top of the world"!