November 3rd 2015
As I stumble for my phone first thing in the morning I noticed a text from my friend Jennamae asking what I was up to that day and letting me know she worked at 2:00pm. I immediately give her a call and tell her to be ready in 15 mins and we can make it up Joffre and back in time. With that I am in my truck and on my way to pick her up, of course stopping to grab my favourite hiking wolfdog, Link. We get to the parking lot in under and hour and I set an alarm on my phone with when we should turn around if we don’t make it to the second lake.
We set off on our hike and because of the resent trail construction we moved quickly as we ascended. As we reached our first major uphill the run off from the storm the previous night had left a solid ice path on the trail. We stuck to the small river bed on the right hand side and moved slower as made our way up. Link having no trouble at all played in the surrounding snow and came back every once and while to check on us.
We got to the first lake in under and hour and my timer still had 15 mins on it! We did a quick photo shoot and talked about the lines we wanted to ski this winter and started to make our decent. The hike down was a lot quicker so when we saw a bunch of birds hanging out we grabbed our trial mix and started to feed them. This was shear torture for Link as he watched with a death stare as the birds gracefully ate from our hands.
We traveled back down the Duffey with enough time for Jam to shower and get ready for work! These short journeys are right in our backyard and with all the trail work that has happened they are easy and super accessible for everyone with the right gear!
