Tom Rankin
Well-known member
It was -8F at our house this morning (almost sea level), and God knows how cold up in the Mountains!
We got a fairly late start, heading out at 10:10 from the Mill Brook Road PA. The parking lot WAS well plowed, but it's still snowing as I write this Sunday AM. We met a gentleman in the lot who was heading to BLM, and chatted for a while, and off we went. There was one other car in the lot.
The trail has been hard packed by a snowmobiler that we later found out went all the way to the summit of BLM!
(This is clearly marked as illegal). Well, we got some broken trail out of it anyway. We were also following the MSR tracks of the hiker in the 'other' car. After about an hour, we came to the turn off for Graham, and the tracks went that way too! Bonus! We eventually met the trail breaker who was PigPen. He said he was glad to have trail to break, and we told him we were glad to have broken trail to follow! He warned us that the trail, which had an occasional blowdown here and there, would soon get much more difficult, due to the iced over trees.
He was not kidding! The trees, (which Dr. Kudish calls 'a pygmy first growth hard-wood forest'), were frozen over the trail, almost completely blocking it at times. We had to crawl under them or fight our way thru for about a half an hour before we finally made it to the summit! There is a clearing here, and an old cinder block building, so we had some decent views, (that's BLM and the fire tower), and a respite from the trees. The wind was calm, and it was still sunny, so we hung out for a while, eating and drinking hot tea! Mmmmmmmm. Our thermometer said it was about 10F, so I guess a good amount of warming had taken place.
On the way back down we stopped at the view point that looks towards Belleayre, Haynes, etc. The old telephone poll standing there is quite surreal! There were lots of animal tracks across the path, but no critters were seen today, not even a bird.
We got back down to the car at 3:05 PM, (the BLM hiker had still not signed out, which worried us a little), to find 4 Canadians preparing for some sort of 'adventure'. 2 of them were shoveling the PA, which was odd, because it was already quite well plowed, and one claimed that they had done all the work, (I think), which I knew was untrue. Another was evasive about where they were going. At this point, we left them to themselves. Oh well, maybe it was a language barrier....
Anyway, it was a very nice day to be out, and the trail should still be usable unless we get a ton of snow.
We got a fairly late start, heading out at 10:10 from the Mill Brook Road PA. The parking lot WAS well plowed, but it's still snowing as I write this Sunday AM. We met a gentleman in the lot who was heading to BLM, and chatted for a while, and off we went. There was one other car in the lot.
The trail has been hard packed by a snowmobiler that we later found out went all the way to the summit of BLM!
(This is clearly marked as illegal). Well, we got some broken trail out of it anyway. We were also following the MSR tracks of the hiker in the 'other' car. After about an hour, we came to the turn off for Graham, and the tracks went that way too! Bonus! We eventually met the trail breaker who was PigPen. He said he was glad to have trail to break, and we told him we were glad to have broken trail to follow! He warned us that the trail, which had an occasional blowdown here and there, would soon get much more difficult, due to the iced over trees.He was not kidding!
The trees, (which Dr. Kudish calls 'a pygmy first growth hard-wood forest'), were frozen over the trail, almost completely blocking it at times. We had to crawl under them or fight our way thru for about a half an hour before we finally made it to the summit! There is a clearing here, and an old cinder block building, so we had some decent views, (that's BLM and the fire tower), and a respite from the trees. The wind was calm, and it was still sunny, so we hung out for a while, eating and drinking hot tea! Mmmmmmmm. Our thermometer said it was about 10F, so I guess a good amount of warming had taken place.On the way back down we stopped at the view point that looks towards Belleayre, Haynes, etc. The old telephone poll standing there is quite surreal! There were lots of animal tracks across the path, but no critters were seen today, not even a bird.
We got back down to the car at 3:05 PM, (the BLM hiker had still not signed out, which worried us a little), to find 4 Canadians preparing for some sort of 'adventure'. 2 of them were shoveling the PA, which was odd, because it was already quite well plowed, and one claimed that they had done all the work, (I think), which I knew was untrue. Another was evasive about where they were going. At this point, we left them to themselves.
Oh well, maybe it was a language barrier....Anyway, it was a very nice day to be out, and the trail should still be usable unless we get a ton of snow.
