hey, nice trip (from the occasional cc lurker who lurks enough to know any JasonG TR will be a feast for the chair bound eyes...
anyhow,
I almost hate to pop "another Cascadian mystery" because they are probably way more fun to contemplate than know about, but what the heck, I'm claiming those shoes. I was kind of wondering if anyone would ever come across them...
Just to be clear it was very much an anomaly, I do not make a habit of leaving things in the mountains... in fact if it had been up to me I would still have them but my partner insisted on leaving our approach shoes (we had skis and boots) so I followed suit. This is early June 2014.
As it turns out and as you know that approach is rather long, especially for a day trip. So on the return I talked my partner into skiing down an Illabot-creek-wards couloir that we knew would end but was still way better than traversing all the way back across that ridge with all it's ups and downs and mixed terrain, snow/no snow. Yeah, way better...
Turns out Illabot Creek is no bushwhacking picnic...took us 4 hrs. for a mile and a half I think... yeah, holy crap. Still rates at the top of the schwack list, at least with pretty much full foliage as it was early June that year. Whenever we saw a log in that morass we would scramble up it, would move forward 50 feet and consider ourselves really lucky for having gone so far so fast...heh...back at the car past midnight...
But you know I love that shit--no, wait...more likely that confounding selective memory--so I went back for more the following year, half-assedly considering the Jug Lake approach but also having spyed a potentially more direct route on the map which I ended up going with... the unknown turned out fantastically well - http://www.turns-all-year.com/skiing_snowboarding/trip_reports/index.php?topic=34241.0
I guess the only thing missing now is some boot pics??