I headed up to the West Glacail Knob again this weekend where we had built an igloo on Jan. 24th. I had received a report from Aleks that a hole had melted through the igloo. Her SO had gone back and checked on it about a week ago to find a gaping hole in the windward side.
David Phillips, the outdoor writer for the Colorado Springs Gazette, joined me making it a team of two this weekend and I was impressed with Dave's physical abilities as well as his experience in the winter outdoors.
We arrived early in the day to find the gaping hole in the igloo but it looked like an igloo that could be easily repaired:
Coming around and getting a little better view made me think of a rock I know that says "Hey Buddy, wanna take a short cut":
The igloo had sagged a considerable amount but did look easy to repair:
Dave originally got hold of me to see an igloo being built and now we had a choice of either repairing the igloo or building a new one.
It had been a bit breezy when we left the trailhead but the winds had seemed to stop and the clouds had stopped moving so fast over the peaks. It was mostly overcast with high clouds but it was quite a balmy day:
With it being such nice weather and so early in the day, we decided to build a new igloo and Dave suggested that we tear down the old igloo and build our new one on the old foundation so we wouldn't need to build a new platform. I figured the energy might be equal either way so we decided to chop down and remove the old igloo after checking and finding the old igloo walls soft enough to chop up easily enough.
At first we threw a lot of chunks down into the doorway and trench to fill them up so we would have a floor to stand on and place to position the igloo tool stake.
We built through the day and completed a new healthy looking sentinel a short time before sunset:
It had been a pleasant day and we didn't have much of a sunset but some blue skies were visible in the low light of evening:
We had a good evening telling stories until 10:00 pm and slept very soundly to awaken to a nice morning view of Longs:
Although it was still overcast there was a bit of light getting through from time to time:
It always saddens me to leave when the weather is so beautiful in the morning:
We took a different route back to the trailhead which took us past a couple small ponds and some different views that Dave and I both enjoyed and soon ended up shedding some layers as we got lower and it warmed up.
All in all, a wonderful trip it was.
