Elevation: 11,351 feet – Trail distance: 2.4 miles one way (if on trail) about 4hrs off.
Photos
Long before the hail storm.
Oh Loch Lomond you hurt us. This was one of those hikes where we learned many things the hard way and all came out scarred by the trek. The trail guides call it a “moderate” but I believe they rated the hike before the roads were washed out. Bare-minimum I think this should be called a “moderate rough” – and of course that would be while keeping to the trail, which we did not because we couldn’t find it. So in our infinite wisdom we decided to go bush-whacking, me in shorts and a tank top.
We seemed to keep going up and up, sometimes on piney turf that felt spongy as we walked – other mounds of earth ended up being ant hills big enough to be able to make a guest appearance on Creature Feature.
I’m not sure how many times I landed on my ass but we finally got to an angle so challenging that I turned my pack around and had the guys strap the buckles on my back. I now have a glimpse of what it’s like to be carrying at 7 months or so and I feel for you mommas out there!
At one point we had to decide how to get around a big waterfall, couldn’t see it but we could hear it so we knew heading left would take us into the creek. Steven and Brian made their way up a huge wash of boulders (no pictures of it because I was far more concerned with staying upright than documenting the event). Let’s just say I am not a rock scrambler by nature so this was going way out of my comfort zone, even if the boulders were bigger than me and appeared stable – they fell from somewhere and some day would most likely fall to somewhere; question was, when?
Resting after the boulder climb.
After a break we kept going up, at which point the woods started whomping on us. The trees scratched my arms and legs and a limb even went so far as to clothesline me across the throat and then swing up and over to bash me on the head. Other times I’d clear a spot only have a bush or limb swing back and sock me in the ass. I hadn’t brought the right clothing to cover my arms with something light so I ended up putting on my fleece for a while just to try and protect myself from scratches but that got so hot that I switched to tying my poncho around my throat like a cape.
The rains came in – I don’t really know when – but there was a point where two things happened, 1) I stopped talking. Anyone who knows me knows that this rarely ever happens. The second thing that happened was my absolute belief that we were going to end up getting stuck in those woods and have to stay overnight.
After about an hour in we saw daylight over the ridge and we somehow made it back out to a “road” (more like a much-abused rock gulch). Older pictures of Loch Lomond show cars driving right up to the lake, don’t know when that stopped being possible but parking was much further down the mountain. There can sometimes be some serious pain when trekking up a rock gulch (though the trek down is even harder on the knees) and after rock scrambling across various creeks and sliding our way through snow we reached a summit just before the lake.
The winds started picking up and as I stopped to trade out my wet socks for dry ones my contact lens wedged back behind my eye. Anyone who knows how bad my eyes are knows that this is a pretty crippling thing to have happen. I had an extra contact lens in my pack but then the rains came in and we were smack in the middle of a lightning storm on top of a mountain. Great.
I had twisted my ankle in the snow so was going kind of gingerly at this point, then with the lost contact my depth perception was shot and I couldn’t see my way to step on and around all the rocks. I felt completely helpless and I didn’t like it at all.
Steven came back to help me down a small ridge and between his arm and my walking stick we all made it to a copse of trees, where we felt safest even though we were in the absolute worst place to be. I managed to put my spare contact in (the other would find its way out days later) and then we made a joint decision – if it’s gonna get us it isn’t going to get us lying down.
So we decided to book it down the mountain, through the snow, across the creeks… every patch of water reminding us how precarious our situation was. And then cue the hail storm. Yes, hail. We all ponder the advisability of walking around with metal walking poles but can’t ditch them and are so far gone in terms of “dont’s” at this point why start correcting ourselves now? We all agreed to try to get back down into the woods the first opportunity we found.
Once we made it back below the treeline and into the forest we all seemed to feel a little better. I for one figured the lightning would have a lot more trees to choose from now and so maybe we’d be ok after all. The rain slowed to a drizzle, the lightning went on its way and we somehow managed to find the tried-and-true hiking trail to lead us back. Needless to say the going back was less of an adventure but the slick dirt trail was riddled with roots and stones and still needed watching.
We heard other hikers and knew we were close to the end. And the pleasure at seeing other humans shows how done in we all were. We hobbled out toward the Jeep, 3 in/3 out, all under our own steam. We were damaged goods but all surprisingly happy and unified. We got in the car and just sort of fell in to what we could have done differently. We had some seriously loaded packs and used just about everything we had been carrying, so we were proud of being prepared that way. But we would also later research what to do on a mountain in a lightning storm, and find we did everything wrong until we trekked down into the woods.
But we made it out. I never did see the lake, was a few hundred feet away when the storms came in. But there’d be next week, where in our infinite wisdom we’d try to tackle Loch Lomond again.
