What a gorgeous day for a snowshoe hike! In an effort to meet people here in St. George we organized a snowshoe hike at Cedar Breaks National Monument on the Alpine Pond Trail. To get to this trail, drive on Highway 143 until approximately 3 miles south of Brian Head where the road turns at the junction with 148 (Cedar Breaks Scenic Drive) at the closed gate there will be a small parking area carved out of the snow.
Snowshoe south on closed stretch of Hwy 143 1 mile to the Cedar Breaks’ winter ranger station Yurt. This yurt is staffed by volunteers, on the weekends during the winter season between 11a.m.-3 p.m., who offer hot cocoa to winter visitors. You continue on the trail following orange cross-country poles south 1 mile, and return.
When we arrived both kids were excited and ready to go. Generally Sarah loves snowshoeing and I don’t have to motivate her. Today was a different story almost immediately after we started she was moving like a snail and driving me to drink. She would walk 4 steps and stop. Sometimes mommies just don’t clue into the issues until it is too late, needless to say I was frustrated with her. We currently live at approximately 2,860 ft elevation and have for 8 months now, long enough for us to lose our mountain lungs. Where we were hiking was 10,500 ft. On our way to the yurt she said it hurt to breathe that is when it dawned on me that she was having issues with elevation not motivation. We met up with the group that we organized and ate lunch and walked a little ways further with them before we turned around and headed back. It was a very slow pace our total distance was 3.01 miles in 3 hours and 37 min. On the way back Spencer took off uphill at a fast pace as I caught up to him he looked a little green and said he felt like throwing up. As I stood there huffing and puffing myself as my lungs burned I told him to have a seat and relax a few minutes, lay your head down if you need to.
We made it back to our car about 3PM and instead of waiting for the rest of the crew to come back I chose to take the kids off the mountain. They were both beat and Sarah was complaining of a headache.
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