Little Elbow Trail -- May 16, 2010 (from the archives)

I find spring to be the toughest time for hiking, for any outdoor activities. It's no longer possible to snowshoe, but deep in the mountains pockets of snow and ice make hiking difficult if not outright impossible. Plus, I'm impatient to get the season started. Often I find we're hearing about bugs and ticks long before we've even had a chance to go for a proper trek. If you do manage to catch a nice day, mud becomes your constant companion. Then the next day it's all turned to ice again.

And don't get me started on those thick, wet, late spring snowstorms so common in this region.

So often we stick to the trails we don't get to during the season, those flat ones, the popular ones, just to get our feet wet (so to speak), take a stroll, try to satisfy those hiking urges. Summer will be here soon enough...

That's how we wound up along Little Elbow Trail, a wide, multi-use trail that normally sees backcountry campers and mountain bikers during the summer months, or the hikers headed for Nihahi. Perfect for a spring stroll...

Ah, but there's one other sign of spring hiking that needs to be noted, and observed at all costs.... those grumpy, hungry bears...

When lined up against the hiking pole, you can see these were not insignificant prints... over 40 cm long by the adjustment markers on my collapsible poles...
 

The prints were a little too fresh and the trails a little too isolated for us to continue along the trail (the bear was traveling in the same direction we were), so we opted to save this hike for another cool spring day and leave the bears to their forest.