Day 4 - the Bush trail

The dogs shut up when Laird and I screamed at them simultaneously. It was just Sage being a little yelper. Breakfast was great, Laird threw together somethingthat had a few onions, some bacon, and lots of tiny hash browns. I smeared nutella on my toast and slathered it with the creation. It was one of the best breakfasts I've ever had.
After breakfast it just became a matter of packing up all our belongings, preparing to return to the lodge. Pretty much everything was scattered all over the kitchen tent and it took us all an age and a half to locate our own things and seperate them from the jumble. I almost left my binoculars behind, probably because they had yet to be particularly useful to me, though the upper slopes of the mountians looked great through them, all green and white, like a christmas cake (Not this years christmas cake, not since grandma elected not to put the icing on...) but bald fruitcake aside, the taril back was virtually the same as the trail there, except for one difference. About halfway across the tranquil Fish Lake we swerved off the path into what the Guides called 'the bush trail'. This path consisted of a continuous batch of sharp uphill and downhill slopes, and going at the speed I tried to keep up (a fair bit faster than was advisable) my sled tended to just leap from crest to crest, not an easy ride. The rest of the trail tended on the side of a great many sharp downhill turns through crowded bushland, twigs wipping us inthe face and snow laden branches continually dropping the white stuff down the backs of our parkas. But the best came at the beginning of the trail. In order to get the height we needed to make the downhill plunge through the visibility impaired track, we first had to trek up a steep hill. At the top of this hill a sharp left hand turn around a mighty fir tree kept visibility at zero. But visibility wasn't the problem. Enthusiasm was my downfall. Climbing off the sled to run up alongside my dogs, the moment the sled topped the rise I leapt back in, crashing my head against a bough and knocking myself back off the vehicle, and my beanie off my head! With a speed born of desperation (those dogs were never going to stop for me!) I grabbed hold of the brake with one hand, my beanie with the other, and was dragged through the snow like the backside of a seal as I fought to regain my composure. I eventually managed to climb back up into a standing position, take my beanie out of my mouth and jam it back onto my head, just in time for a reaching, grasping branch to sweep it right off and back into the snow. Who says god doesn't have a sense of humour?