Margaret lake attempted loop April 10th 2022

Rated as Difficult due to hair rasing out of control icy decents resulting in mandatory winching to get out lol. (After the lake and 2nd metal bridge, everything before would be considered Easy)

- Attempted Margaret loop lake (first time), after the lake and just past the 2nd Bridge, the hills were extremely icy on the east aspect slopes, zero traction, zero brakes. We slid down 2 hills with no brake control at all, attempted a 3rd hill in hopes it would improve and the knowledge of returning being difficult on the up hills we slid down already. The 3rd hill had the same conditions and same result, sliding the whole way down and picking up some decent speed, definitely got a bit hair rasing. As we continued along the trail we climbed up to the top of a larger decent, at this point we knew it would be crazy to go down this steeper hill as we'd have 100% zero brakes/traction. We were now stuck between a rock and a hard place, I figured we would have difficulty going up the hills we came down but at this point we had little choice and turned back due to the steeper hill we encountered and the unknown/potential even steeper hills awaiting.
Attempted to drive up the 1st hill on the way back, this ended up being extremely eye opening to the situation as we made it 1/2 of the way up, at this point we had no more grip and started sliding backwards picking up speed, with zero brakes but locked up wheels we also had zero steering of course, attempted to release the brakes to get steering but we were picking up a hefty amount of speed while in a fairly narrow path with a side slope drawing us in to the trees, some how we were pulled into the ditch right where there were no trees. After that oh shit moment we pulled out the winch, ended up winching ourselves up 3 hills all with 2 to 3x pulls to get out of each hill (100 ft winch line). Fortunately we had our light weight running style crampons as even walking up would of been tricky lol. The saving grace was the winch which I literally installed a few days prior, would of been totally screwed with out it lol. Fun trail and was happy to give the winch it's maiden pulls, so thankful I had it, we would 100% be there right now with out it. Was running KO2 tires but honestly even if you had studded you'd be in the same boat. Would need some v bar or those HD studded chains to get by with out a winch.