Becca M
Active member
We (Eric, Dave & I) left 1 car at East Pond (Kanc), 1 car at the Discovey TH (for a bailout if needed) and started at Loon Mtn. At 8am we started up the wrong road - but it looked ok on the GPS!!! After traipsing around the slopes, we finally found the right tractor path. It was starting to get hot and it was already pretty humid.
Around 10am we got to North Peak. We went around .1mi down from N Peak and took a right - thick in there!!! But it soon thinned out and before long we found the well-maintained herd path, fire ring, etc. The path seems to lead to Black Mtn but we took it towards the col for at least a half mile and enjoyed the ease of our journey!!!
Soon it got a little nasty when we were past the col and heading to W Scar, but it was still manageable. We hit the first bump (WW Scar) which had a canister! The second one (E W Scar) also did. We were in there around noon. Not bad! Very reasonable!
Then, we headed off along the ridge to Middle Scar. Coming off the summit we hit a large blow-down area aka "Christmas Tree Hell" - traversing rotted blowdowns and hugging wet (but soft!!!) fir trees at a crawl pace. We tried not to look down b/c there was no ground that we could see!!!! Once in a while someone would fall through the sort of spruce trap hell and then claw back up onto the blowdowns. We seemed to hit these areas on the descents.
And the ridge was a mix of those large areas of elevated soaking/rotting blowdown with crawling up through rocks and blowdowns with the occasional more-open area (hooray!!!!). We did, however, have occaisional views of the ridge ahead - everything looked so close! Around 2pm the thunder and lightning blew overhead bringing with it the occasional downpours. But, the rain didn't matter b/c we were soaked anyway. I was thankful the branches, so wet and soggy, were easy to bend!!!
After hours of mixed terrain and then the impending sundown, we hit East Scar's main, flat peak and decided not to hit the lower East Scar and gun it for the East Pond trail before sundown. We gave up looking for that canister and then, Eric spotted it!!!! The papers were too flimsy to sign in the dampness, so we didn't bother.
Finally got back to the car around 8:45 pm - it was getting pretty dark!!! Yeah! I'm shocked at the bruises that keep showing up that I don't remember getting!
All in all, a good day with great company! Won't be going back for a while!!! We wondered, though, with such poor visibility of the peaks how people have traversed the ridge with just a compass & map (before the days of GPS's!!!)?
--Becca Munroe
Around 10am we got to North Peak. We went around .1mi down from N Peak and took a right - thick in there!!! But it soon thinned out and before long we found the well-maintained herd path, fire ring, etc. The path seems to lead to Black Mtn but we took it towards the col for at least a half mile and enjoyed the ease of our journey!!!
Soon it got a little nasty when we were past the col and heading to W Scar, but it was still manageable. We hit the first bump (WW Scar) which had a canister! The second one (E W Scar) also did. We were in there around noon. Not bad! Very reasonable!
Then, we headed off along the ridge to Middle Scar. Coming off the summit we hit a large blow-down area aka "Christmas Tree Hell" - traversing rotted blowdowns and hugging wet (but soft!!!) fir trees at a crawl pace. We tried not to look down b/c there was no ground that we could see!!!! Once in a while someone would fall through the sort of spruce trap hell and then claw back up onto the blowdowns. We seemed to hit these areas on the descents.
And the ridge was a mix of those large areas of elevated soaking/rotting blowdown with crawling up through rocks and blowdowns with the occasional more-open area (hooray!!!!). We did, however, have occaisional views of the ridge ahead - everything looked so close! Around 2pm the thunder and lightning blew overhead bringing with it the occasional downpours. But, the rain didn't matter b/c we were soaked anyway. I was thankful the branches, so wet and soggy, were easy to bend!!!
After hours of mixed terrain and then the impending sundown, we hit East Scar's main, flat peak and decided not to hit the lower East Scar and gun it for the East Pond trail before sundown. We gave up looking for that canister and then, Eric spotted it!!!! The papers were too flimsy to sign in the dampness, so we didn't bother.
Finally got back to the car around 8:45 pm - it was getting pretty dark!!! Yeah! I'm shocked at the bruises that keep showing up that I don't remember getting!
All in all, a good day with great company! Won't be going back for a while!!! We wondered, though, with such poor visibility of the peaks how people have traversed the ridge with just a compass & map (before the days of GPS's!!!)?
--Becca Munroe
