Saturday, February 26, 2011
Mt. Colden
4,714 ft. | Ranked 11/46 in height | 24th peak climbed | 22 to go
We arrived at Adirondack Loj around 7:30am, to the pleasant realization that it was a solid 10* warmer than our trip up Whiteface last month. We parked at HPIC, got into our gear — snowshoes for three of us, cross country skis for the one of us crazy enough to ski up a mountain — and signed in to the trail register around 7:45am. We were already at Marcy Dam by about 8:30.
Mt. Colden from Marcy Dam
Marcy Dam
The trail along the Van Hoevenberg was fairly well broken by earlier risers than us, but still had a fair amount of powder from Friday’s snowfall.
After crossing Marcy Dam, we headed toward Avalanche Lake, stopping to check out the conditions at the Hudowalski and Kagel lean-to’s. A chickadee flitted around the campsite.
At the junction before Avalanche Lake, now 3+ miles in, we finally started really ascending toward Indian Falls and Lake Arnold. When we got to the junction with the trail to Indian Falls, we were glad we’d come around by Avalanche rather than Phelps Trail. The trail from Phelps via Indian Falls wasn’t broken through the powder until we watched a duo come through with fully loaded packs, bound for Feldspar Lean-to. They were really earning every step of progress.
Lake Arnold
From there the trail up to Lake Arnold was relatively well broken, and was not so much difficult as just relentlessly ascending at a constant rate. When we got to Lake Arnold, it was as quiet and snowy as Marcy Dam had been.
Once we passed Lake Arnold, it became clear that a fair amount of the traffic along the trails must have been bound for Feldspar Lean-to, because once we passed Lake Arnold toward Colden, the snow became much less packed, and much looser powder. Not as many snowshoes had been through. It was also deeper.
Trail markers were much closer to the snow surface, and the trail was less well defined. There were plenty, I’m sure, that we never saw under snow. In a few places, we had to stop and look pretty hard for the next one — clearly people going before us had too, because there were several choices of footprints in the snow to follow. It took some care to follow the right ones.
As we went over the first bump and passed the Alpine Zone sign, Adam finally swapped the skis for snowshoes. Even with skins, it was getting steep and narrow to keep going on skis.
After the bump, there was a quick descent, another small bump, another quick descent, and then up to the actual summit. From the distance, the drops and gains in elevation looked pretty daunting – all those pine trees between Points A and B! …Until we looked across and saw a group of three hikers ahead of us, on the actual summit ascent. They were about three times as tall as each pine tree, or at least, what stood above the snow on each pine tree. Ah, perspective… mountains buried in snow are much nearer than they appear.
Trail marker!
Bumps behind us, we headed up to the actual summit. The trail markers above snow depth were few and far between. It was hard to say where, exactly, the summit was. I’m sure there’s a benchmark, but it’s probably several feet down from where we stood on the snow. Finding the summit in winter can be a little anticlimatic that way. It was windy and cold, but we walked around for a while, content that at some point we stepped over whatever the highest point was.
Even Algonquin was mostly hidden by the clouds and light snow.
We could see Adam’s skis on the bump from the top: the straight line about midway down the open snow:
On the way back down, we got back under the clouds and got some slightly better views to the north of Tabletop and Phelps.
Lake Arnold – about 1.4 mi. from the summit
The descent went pretty quickly, as 6.2 or so miles go. Down to Lake Arnold, there was a fair amount of snowshoe sledding going on. Each step was good for three or four times its normal distance in sliding downhill on the loose powder. It was worth learning to work with it rather than fight gravity. After we got below Lake Arnold, Adam went back to the skis and left us all in the dust. The three of us snowshoed our way easily down. We hit Marcy Dam again around 3:45, and the parking lot not much past 4:30 or 4:45, with an hour+ of daylight to spare.
I’d expected the day to take much longer than it did. We did Whiteface, about 2/3 of the miles, in about the same amount of time a month earlier. But then, almost half of the 12+ miles on this trip were fairly flat. It made for a great day trip. All I’d like for the next one is… a little more sun!
