the hike up to thompson-seton was not as challenging as I expected. There was a bunch of snow on the way and the ice ax was a handy tool to bring along. Plenty of trees down also, there were about a dozen from the trail head to Inuya pass and another dozen or so to the notch, beyond I couldn’t tell because the snow was seriously deep. Having said that, it was easy to follow the trail so far even given plenty of old snow drifts on the way, which were up to three feet deep. The creeks were also a challenge to cross on dry feet, in a fun way, though. From the notch on there was no way to follow the trail, solid snow cover for most of the way and I just worked my way to the summit via the ridges, a combination of scree scrambling, walking on cornices and traverses… another rocky mountain high!

        First time I got to the red meadow lakes this year, still had to hike the last mile or so over snow to get there, beautiful bike ride as always. This was the most tour divide riders I’ve ever ran into on this ride, first two Swiss guys, here seen crossing the last snow just before the lakes, another group of four heading up and after I got back to Polebridge a couple, Richard and Leah, who ended up camping at the hostel…