Monday, June 29th MAGGIE & MINNIE GULCHES

We had a late start today and headed out solo.  The trail up Maggie was clear to the end EXCEPT for one patch of snow on the side trail which Jimmy managed to get stuck in.  At one time we had three ATVs with their wenches hooked to the back of us, but we were just pulling them down.  Next, we tried wenching our-self out with our wench wrapped around a rock, but it only pulled the rock up onto the trail.  Finally, one of the guys helping us found a large, well-seated rock further down the trail and wrapped our strap around it and tied the strap to the wench and we were able to wench out.  Once we were free, I looked down and saw Brett at the bottom of Maggie.  Had we turned our ham radio on, we would have heard him calling us and he could have pulled us out with his Jeep in nothing flat.

Lots of snowmelt making waterfalls where you don't usually see waterfalls and the usual ones are pouring out huge amounts of water.

A few wildflowers starting to pop out.  Some of the bluebells look as though they may have already peaked.  Hope this doesn't mean the flowers are going to come out randomly instead of all at once.

So okay, here's the story I promised a few days ago.  It doesn't look so bad in this picture.  I was driving back on Picuyane a couple of days ago and came to this very narrow curve on the ledge road.  There was a large rock on the inside.  I didn't want to take the outside with the drivers' tires on the rock for fear it would tip too far toward the ledge.  I asked Jim what I should do.  He said "I'm not telling you what to do."  I took the inside and really started tipping.  I asked him if we were going to roll over and he replied "Probably."  Then, he started yelling "Back-up, back-up."  Anyhow, on the fourth attempt, I was able to get across.  Like I said, it doesn't look that bad in the picture Brett took: