remembering deep snow years

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buddy

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Dec 25, 2003
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Northampton, MA
The weather forecast forced my hiking partners and I to reconsider our planned five day camping/bushwhacking trip in the Hurricane mountain Soda range area. It’s really hard to give up on a trip after putting so much time and effort preparing for it but camping in the rain in February has never been fun and I have always regretted past trips when we have decided to go even though the forecast suggested we do otherwise.
So instead we decided to go to a friend’s summer camp on Highland lake up near Mt. Monadnock and bushwhack around there. We hiked during the day and watched slides from from our earlier trips at night. After viewing slides from the 1981 to the present we could not help but to be impressed by the snow depths from a couple of those trips.
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Above is a picture (from the mid 80’s) taken from what I believe is the eastern end of MacNaughton’s summit ridge that we approached from Preston ponds. I remember it being a beast to get to that location. I also remember being a little intimidated by the snow depth and the seemingly bottomless spruce traps. Fortunately the snow was well consolidated and none of us fell into one. I can remember punching through a couple of times and peering into what appeared to be bottomless voids.

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My long time hiking partner and I, in the back, somewhere on MacNaughton. Notice the old school equipment.




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This photo shows me approaching the summit of Mt. Isolation from the east in 1981 I believe. This was my first winter trip to the White mountains. I remember many falls into deep spruce traps that trip and being grateful that there was four of us available to aid in extracting ourselves. There was more than one occasion when somebody went down to their armpits in a trap and it was very difficult and time consuming to get them out.
 
It's possible that we were on the knob to the south of the MacNaughton summit ridge. Some in our group claim that's not the case but viewing the topos brings it into question.
 
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