After our preparatory morning rituals, we head down to the breakfast room in the hotel - it’s one of those specific types of setups that are common to certain types of American accommodation, including a pretty huge spread of hot and cold options. Most importantly it offers the make-you-own waffle station, which is a great innovation involving the rarest of culinary technology - the rotating waffle iron. We indulge, with waffles and bacon aplenty thanks to a very attentive staff member, then set off into the national park.
It’s an impressively recurring theme that many of the national parks seem to try and maintain some sort of access through the winter months. Whilst roads are more limited than in the summer, several arterial sections are regularly plowed and cleared of waist-deep snow and ice. This diligence affords us entrance to the Apgar Lookout trailhead, a hike that my companion has identified using his trusty AllTrails subscription - it’s described as ‘hard’ and covers a fairly vertical c.22km section of a peak overlooking the surrounding area.
What follows is one of the hardest physical endeavours I’ve ever undertaken. After an almost interminable approach through deep, powdery snow that sucks at our snowshoes and makes every step a chore, we start to climb sharply. We’re following a path of sorts, although the overlapping impressions of boots and snowshoes means each attempt to move forward risks twisting an ankle or dropping a foot an unexpected depth into the snow. It is wearying in the extreme and progress is slow - this worsens when the established track runs out and we have to blaze our own trail using our map and GPS. The snow is now more than knee-deep and one step can find surprisingly solid ground or a leg that pushes deep into the yielding snow. The path requires several long, sweeping traverses that snake up the mountain and mean that our up-slope leg bears the brunt of the work whilst the down-slope leg slips and flails uselessly.
We end up taking alternating roles as pathfinder, as walking in somebody’s compacted snowshoe tracks is significantly easier than breaking fresh ground. We cover increasingly shorter amounts of ground before we have to swap places and the trail seems almost infinitely long as we focus on just putting one foot in front of the other. Eventually, in what seems like a lifetime, the ground starts to level out and we enter the edges of a peak top forest - snowy dunes curve away from us as we see a cabin emerge from the grey skies. It’s a fire watch post, barred and padlocked for the winter season, but welcome as it marks our final destination. After our obligatory summit celebrations, and a frozen beer, we start to make our way back down.
We’re tired, with legs that shudder unpredictably as each footstep hits the floor, but we start our descent in high spirits after conquering what feels like our first real peak. The descent from the Lookout is quicker, made easier by the presence of our own footprints, and we make reasonable progress. The good feeling slowly dissolves once we arrive at the surrounding forest plains, which seem to stretch on forever, far longer than they did on the way up. By the time we’re an hour or so in, my body is working purely on instinct and I resent every slip of foot or unexpected dip into the slushy snow that bites at my boots. Finally, finally, we make it back to the car - without more than a handful of words spoken between us, we remove our gear and stow it in the boot, and sit silently in the car for a few minutes. It’s not a bad feeling, more the quiet reflection that always seems to follow something that genuinely feels like an endeavour.
As soon as we pull away from the carpark, we’re chatting easily - mostly about how tired we are - and driving back to the hotel. Upon our return, my companion heads directly to the leisure centre’s hot tub (for what seems like hours) whilst I shower, change and collapse onto the sofa. We head out for dinner - a massive portion of carne asada that verges on the ludicrous - which a little suppressed due to the cold and the bone-tiredness we’re both feeling. In fact, I don’t really remember the walk back from the restaurant and I certainly don’t remember anything from the room before sleep crashes over me.