Sledding on July 4th?

We started the day with a hike up the Trail of the Cedars to Avalanche Lake. The hike of course goes through an incredible cedar rainforest with cascading stream. Blah blah blah. More beautiful scenery.

The beginning of the hike was punctuated by a quick wade across the stream to play on a sandy island for a bit. We discovered that wading through ice cold glacial water can be painful after about ten seconds, but the pain can be ignored for a little while in pursuit of higher purposes.

Avalanche Lake, the destination of the hike, was surrounded by high mountain walls and with cascading waterfalls all around. It reminded me of the crater in the middle of Kauai. The landscape of the volcano versus the glacier is quite similar to the non geologist.

The last part of our day was taken up by another drive up to Logan Pass where we tried to use our sleeping pads to sled down the mountain. The coefficient of friction on the pads was too high to allow us to slide down, so we got another drive up and down the mountain. We did capture a picture every ten seconds of the drive down the mountain, to make a video, which I'll publish later.