Whiteout
The San Juan Mountains: the most avalanche prone range in the U.S., containing one of the highest concentrations of peaks over 14,000 feet tall. It was here I started my most recent trip.
I had been getting reports of extremely low temperatures and the mountains did not disappoint with night time temperatures below -10. Exploration in the strictest sense was virtually impossible. Waist deep snow and extreme temperatures confined trips that were intended to go deep into the mountains to the outermost edges of the wilderness. I traveled with frustrating slowness, a 1 mile per day pace. It was interesting from an engineering perspective how my equipment failed during the trip. The nylon and rubber of my waterproof backpack became stiff and cracked. The windshield of my vehicle developed a long horizontal crack shortly after reaching warming climates. Plastic buckles shattered as if made from glass. But worst of all was the discovery that leather boots freeze absolutely solid. Every morning I woke up only to wrestle for an hour with boots that felt as if they had been forged from cast iron. I usually spent an hour slowly turning them over my campstove, wasting precious fuel, until they became pliable enough to go over my feet. Even then they were agonizingly cold and uncomfortable. Nothing I did prevented their nightly solidification.
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