chapter 459

1/29/2017

Winter Hike

peak bagging

Hold on to your hats. Thirty mile an hour gusts about blowing us over. Windchill down to 8 degrees at the top. 

This was the second excellent Adirondack Park winter hike this week to help re-hab the hip. This 1500 feet ascent (2.6 mile 4 hour roundtrip) on Hadley Mt was one of the more enjoyable times up it. An exhausting three hours up, one hour down but the hard packed snow conditions were great for microspikes. Had taken the snow shoes just in case there was significant powder.

We sought the ranger camp porch out of the wind for a drink and trail bar lunch.

Round Top Mt was photogenic from the Tower Rd on drive in. This is a few hundred feet less in elevation (2406 feet) compared to Hadley (2653 feet) just to the South which is not really visible from the road.

DEC has a nice GIS mapper.

Conditions started out around freezing at the bottom. Got colder on the way up with a few snow flurries. The footing was remarkably smooth and soft compared with our usual hike with all the boulders requiring intense focus in warm weather. The views more expansive too with all the leaves off. It is quite a nice time to hike. The forecast had been partly cloudy but we got lucky with a good amount of sun.

The ice formations were pretty. Getting an ice axe next week to dig in or something?

This was a nice little protected area flat spot on the plateau near the top. Rest of the trail quite a bit more challenging.

Soloed nearby Spruce Mt a week ago on a 3 miles 3 hr trip in sleet and rain to try out the new microspikes.

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