Fir 1/26/2008

[daLunartik]

I met Dick, Joanne and Ralph at the Biscuit Brook parking area at 9:30. After the initial exchange of greetings, we briefly discussed requisite footwear for the day and all but myself decided to go sans snowshoes, relying on Stabalicers and MicroSpikes for traction control.

After we got over the first ridgeline, I decided to pull my MSR Lightinings off my pack, as the 3" of snow was just slippery enough that I knew would be fatigued from the extra balancing required. We stopped at the lean-to for a breather, where Joanne got a good laugh at the outhouse, which lacks the house portion .

From there, it was a short ways along the trail, until we jumped off into the woods. The hike up was relativly uneventful, not many views to speak of. We stuck together during the initial climb, but as we got higher up and it got later towards and past lunch, both HauntedFox and Jo started to run out of fuel. They pushed on to the cannister, however we really should have stopped to eat before the summit, as we did have a late start and the last 1/2 mile took longer to weave through blowdown than we expected.

After refueling, we took a quick summit picture before starting back, around 2:30pm. The hike out was much nicer than the hike in, namely because we were hiking into the setting sun and flurries, plus the angle of the sun gave the woods a nice depth due to the shadows cast on the snow.

All together, about 7.5 miles and 1800', putting me at 27/35 W, Dick and Jo at 36/39 and of course, this was Ralphs first Catskill 35er