I love Spring. The deciduous trees on my property leaf out hiding the clearcuts on the nearby hillsides. But then everyone loves the spring, right? Except for the 45 years I lived in Western Montana. It was beautiful country, but not so much in the Spring. There was some good things about it, and there was a vague sense of things coming to life. But I was there to hike, and everything turned to mud in the spring, at least at low elevations. It may be 75 degrees outside, but the roads to the trailheads were buried in deep soggy snow that were impassible until Mid June. When I could finally make it to a trailhead, I could hike up to a lake on the early morning snow and see a lake still covered in ice and if I was lucky, I could find a dry rock to sit on. On the way out, the afternoon sun would turn the snow into a soggy mush so that with every fourth step, I would break through and plunge my leg into snow up to my crotch. I love to hike, but I don't like spending 30 seconds climbing out of a hole in the snow with every fourth step. Finally, the trails would dry out by the 4th of July, and I could cruise. Sometimes I've gotten caught in snowstorms in July, which were rare, but at least the snow by then is just a new covering on the ground, and I could still make it out in good time.
