Iced over in the Sawtooths

The thermometer in my truck read -15 when I pulled off the road in Sawtooth Valley. If I were doing a climb, I could have quickly gotten above the chilly inversion layer and enjoyed a better climate up high, but that evening, I was taking tickets at the basketball game in the school I work at, so today had to be less ambitious. I decided to hike to Toxaway Lake. There wasn't much snow in the glaciated valley leading into the craggy Sawtooths, and I made quick work of the hike early on. Yellowbelly Creek was not yet iced over, and that was my undoing. After a couple crossings, my overboots were flooded, and the water had frozen solid, encasing my boots in a two inch thick layer of ice. Once the snow became deep, I faced a problem: since I wasn't climbing, my ice axe was at home, and without it, I couldn't knock off enough ice to fit into my snowshoe bindings. I was left kicking a tree in a futile attempt to dislodge the ice, my curses echoing through the forest. Worn out after 45 minutes of fruitless effort and mindful of my tight schedule, I gave up and stomped back down the way I came, blasting Marilyn Manson in my earbuds. My simmering temper lasted for the better part of an hour before I calmed down, traded Marilyn for some downtempo electronica, and reminded myself that it was a beautiful day, and I was damned lucky to be stomping in frozen boots through such a magical place.