Hike to Ptarmigan Tunnel

Hello everyone! One day while Terry was working, the owners of the campground offered to take Kyle and I on a hike to Ptarmigan Tunnel. The hike started on the Iceberg Lake trail, then took a turn towards a tunnel through a mountain pass. This tunnel had just recently been cleared of snow, and Kyle and I jumped at the chance to have a guided tour of the trail.
This picture is looking back at a lake that we passed along the trail, just before we arrived at the tunnel.




Here is another picture of the lake, taken from a closer vantage point. By comparing these two pictures, you can see how much we had to climb up from the lake. The trail had snow across it in several different places.









Here are Kyle and I posing at the top of the trail, and the view in back gives you another look at the direction we came from. The trail to the tunnel was 5+ miles from the parking lot, but the climbing was mostly gradual.








This is the view from the other side of the tunnel. We could have continued down the other side, but we had no desire to camp in the back country overnight. The payoff was certainly worth the effort expended.







Several of us in the hiking group had to get back early for our work shifts, and somehow I was the only adult who had to scurry to keep up with the youngsters as we headed back down the trail. We did the return trip in one and one half hours, which is hoofing it pretty hard.








I would stop to take a picture, the young pups would gain some ground on me, then I would literally have to run to catch up with them. It's a good thing that I'm not competitive, or it might have ended up in a race.









Here are three of the teenagers who Kyle works with. The boy in the middle is from the country of Moldova, and the two girls are related to the campground owners. Kyle and the boy had a contest to see who could hold their hands in the snow covered lake the longest -- they declared it a draw about two minutes in.




This hike was, scenery-wise, one of the high points of our trip. Kyle and I finished a little bit foot sore, but that was a small price to pay for a perfect day of hiking. Oh, yeah, if the return trip had been a race, I would have won. At least that's my story.

Until next time,

Glen