For the Love of the Sufferfest: Why?

Continuing the countdown of my 5 most heinous days in the backcountry. Click here for number 4. 5 and 4 were really child's play compared to the final 3 on the list. The 3rd most heinous day for me took place in early April of 2017. The winter of 2017 was odd in the fact that we had a fantastic snow year at high elevations and a lot of rain at low elevations. This is an important detail for this story. It was late in the evening on April 7, 2017. Tanner Crow and I were trying to figure out what we wanted to ride the next morning. The forecast was calling for a storm to roll in late the next day so we figured we had a window to go bag a classic. We settled on the Y Couloir. Going into it, I knew that part of the lower portion of the line had melted out. The rest of it looked like it was still in good shape, despite a warm March and not much snow down low. What I didn't know was how stupid getting up that lower section would be the next morning. I awoke to heavy rain in the early hours of April 8. "No problem" I thought, "it's gotta be snowing up there." Tanner had the same thought. I texted him to confirm he still wanted to go. After all, I had no qualms with going back to sleep on this rainy April morning. The day was still on, though. It wasn't snowing at the base of the Y. We met at the Lisa Falls parking lot at dawn. And it was raining. "Still time to bail," I thoguht, but no. The adventuring got turned up to 11 pretty much as soon as we left the cars. After a short walk down the trail, we encountered our first obstacle of the day: the raging and frigid waters of Little Cottonwood Creek. I was ready to bail at this point. Fuck trying to wade across that. But we did. Tanner went first. He's a good bit taller than me and it was thigh deep on him. Once he was across, I was fully committed to joining him. So off came the boots and socks. I rolled up my pants and jacket sleeves as high as I could (not high enough). And entered the stupid cold water. My feet pretty much instantly went numb, which made walking on slick rocks in swift water all the more difficult. It was mid thigh deep at the deepest point. I fortunately made it across, dried off the best I could and off into the brush we thrashed. After some quality bushwhacking, we got to the base of the Y. At least there was still snow to walk on... Remember that melted out section I mentioned earlier? Well, it wasn't just a boulder scramble. It was a waterfall scramble. We kept going though because we'd already crossed the damn river. Oh did I mention it was raining?! Yeah, we were pretty wet at this point. And still a long ways from the top of the 3,000 vertical foot line. At one point, Tanner had to boost me up to get over a boulder because I was too short to make the move and there was no other way up. But we kept going. The rain continued to fall. Up we went. Eventually the rain turned to snow. In fact, it started to feel really good below our feet. We had both managed to soak through every layer we'd brought, including our gore-tex. Soaked and shivering, we made the difficult decision to turn around 50 feet from the top. At that point all we could do was laugh at how miserable we were. It was an absolute miserable time getting to that point in the line. The top of the line was actually a lot of fun to ride. I set up at various spots to get photos, all while trying to not think about how cold I was. We climbed down the waterfall, oblivious to getting even more wet. Whatever... And what would the day be without another freezing creek crossing? We didn't even bother putting our boots back on this time. We just sprinted back up the trail to the cars barefoot. Our boots were pretty wet anyways, so it seemed like it would have been a waste of time. Plus we were both just over it so why bother? I spent the rest of the day bundled up in every blanket I owned drinking hot tea trying to warm up. I'd say it was worth it. Tanner summed it up the best. The day was so miserable that it ended up being a lot of fun!