The plan was to complete our second hike in "wilderness" by hiking the Bowman Lake/Chimney Lake trail. Little did we know what we were getting ourselves into.
As we looked into the mountain ranges that surrounded us on three sides we saw little evidence of large accumulations of snow.
Apparently we picked the trail where the snow had decided to settle for the summer. But more on that alittle later. The start of the trail was switchbacks that led straight up the side of a ridge. We could hear for a long time the distant sound of a waterfall. The sound kept me going up the hill with the prospect of some cold water to soak my hat.
The temperature that day was in the low 90's and the trail was on an exposed hillside. The waterfall was both beautiful and icy cold. Stopped there to take several pictures, wet hats and cool down in the mist.
We continued up several more switchbacks before we rounded a corner that showed us the beginning of the end of this days trail. We trudged thru several small snow patches that covered the trail, but were still passable. We met a young couple coming out on the trail that said that you could only walk about another 1/2 mile because of the "snow". We decided to continue walking and check out what they were talking about. About 1/2 mile later we ran across the snow that they were talking about and laughed. 
We easily walked thru the snow and continued on our merry little way to Chimney Lake. From the surroundings, we figured that we were approximately 1 mile from the lake and really wanted to see this high alpine lake.
The snow crossings started to become more frequent but we still decided that it wasn't a problem. Then we entered a thicker section of forest and the fun stopped. Snow was knee deep and there were several creeks flowing high from the spring/summer runoff that were cutting under the snow.
We couldn't see the trail and following the directions in the hiking book were pointless. It stated that we would need to cross a "small creek", unfortunately there were 3 creeks running and they were far from small. We hiked around the area looking for a way across for about a half an hour. It was then that I looked at John, who was trying to figure out how to "jump" over this river, and said enough. We had only been retired for about 2 weeks and it seemed stupid to do something that might get one of us seriously hurt.
We heading back down the trail to the waterfall for lunch and the acceptance of the hike being incomplete. Then we both started laughing realizing that we could always come back. There was nothing stopping us from doing this hike at a later time when the snowfall maybe hadn't been so heavy. We realized that it is not about the destination, it is really about the journey.
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