Eastern Memories

 I was thinking about hiking Tom, Field and Willey range for quite some time, and finally on March 23rd me the dogs and Garrett with Boone set up for the trip. We were not rushing, started the hike a little after 9. It was very windy and snowing. We put our snowshoes on right away when we got out of the car, we were advised at the Highland Center that with at least 4 inches of fresh powder that would be the best option.

Misha on the summit of Avalon

There were three sets of people going before us, but as usually we passed them pretty quickly. 
Because the three groups started ahead of us the trail was broken for the first 20 min. I was not worried about anything, but after we passed all the people it started to look worse. Normally i would not worry, but that day Kappa was with us, and he has been having hard time lately with his back legs, i was afraid that breaking the trail might be too much for him. And being him silly self he would not let anybody in front of him.

We got to Avalon pretty quickly, some parts of the trail were hard to find but for most of the time we did not have hard time following the trail. Summit did not greet us with any nice views so we went back down pretty quickly.

 From that point trail was getting harder to break. I had to shoe Kappa away and go first, i could see he was getting more tired, this time he didnt even object and went behing Misha and Boone. I started getting tired as well. Snow was well above the ankle, some spots with drifts, close to knee level. Around 0,3 miles from Field we let the group of 5 people go in front of us because i did not think i could continue with that deep snow with the dogs.

What a great idea that was!!!! Walking behind them was like a dream, trail was packed and easy to follow. We reached Field summit in a strong wind and i decided that we should head down, skipping Willey . I thought we might try go for Tom if Kappa does ok when we reach Tom spur cutoff. 
Almost at the intersection for Tom spur trail i realized that i left my poles at the AZ-Avalon trails intersection. I was really upset because those were pretty new poles, but i also knew that i did not want Kappa to get additional miles added on. SO i decided i will hope for somebody else to retrieve them for me.
We got to Tom summit in a pretty nice time, on a way passing single women which we talked to on the summit as well.

It was still very windy and it was still snowing. We did not spend much time at the summit. We went back down without stopping much, passing couple of people on skis going up. 
We reached the parking lot around 2:20. I went ahead to Highland center to leave info about my poles and around 2:45 we were already on the road home.
So the day did not go as expected. We did not reach the 4th summit of the day, Kappa got really tired and i lost my poles.
Hopefully i will get back to Willey some time soon.