Mendon and Killington, 12-29-2012

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Umsaskis

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I took the usual route to Mendon up the old road (the first half mile was groomed for skiing, then another half mile or so had been broken out; after that it was unbroken). I accidentally took a left fork at some point - I think near where the Town Forest boundary parallels the road for a bit. I was probably off-track for about a mile, on a road that angled more uphill while heading in roughly the same direction as the stream. After discovering this mistake, I had to drop back down quite a bit to get on the road next to the stream again, but it did bypass the first two stream crossings. So if anyone follows my tracks, you can opt to take my route to bypass the crossings but add some elevation gain to your trek, or go straight where I went left and do a bit more trailbreaking. Snow depth was around 18" at the start, over 2' at the top, but for this part of the trip, a dense layer partway down meant that I rarely sank more than 8" breaking trail.

From Mendon to Killington, I bushwhacked east, then skirted around the edge of the head of the valley, then angled northeast to Killington. Snow depth was similar here, not bad going, except for some patches on the steeper slopes going away from the valley and up Killington, where there was quite a bit of wallowing in the deep stuff. I found that if I could keep in the areas of taller trees with an open understory, snowshoe flotation was better. During the day a steady snow was falling, so there are probably several inches added to these snow depths by now.

From Killington down the Bucklin Trail, everything was, thankfully, broken out nicely.
 
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