On Sunday I hiked to the summit of Basin Mountain. It's a 17.6 mile hike, round trip. The trail was nice and firm for seven miles, and then for the next 1.8 miles I didn't see a single sign of a human passing that way. I suspect nobody had for maybe two weeks. There was about 18-24" of uncompressed snow. Naturally on the return I only saw my own tracks. I'm still a little sore. It was brutal, and I fucking did it. I think I covered that 1.8 miles in nearly four hours, less than half a mile an hour. It took me 7.5 hours to make the summit and almost six hours to get down. I think I got a little frostbite on my thumbs. I didn't feel cold until the sun was down. My mittens had gotten a little wet, and they started to freeze. I was down all the steep parts, so having little grip wasn't too bad. And my mittens were frozen in the shape to hold something, so that was good.