Subtitle: How we conquered North Whitcomb (aka The Muise) in calendar winter
I provide the following summary by one of the participants (initials dR), banned from posting on VftT, of our first attempt on Thursday, 5 February 2009.
“Thursday Alfredo Dwyer, Dr. D, and I attempted The Muise (a.k.a. North Whitcomb) in less than ideal snow conditions. After a good night of sleep and a large breakfast at the Stark Village Inn (great base camp for Nash Stream and north country area hikes), we drove to the thriving metropolis of Bungy and made our way down Bungy Rd. Dr. D drove us down the snowmo track a short distance and parked us near the snowmo track that heads south and east toward Baldhead Mt. The track was snowmo'd and dog sledded down for a ways sparking hopes that it would be for its entirety but the good fortune eventually ended and we started breaking. The trail breaking at first was not bad, slow going but tolerable with the three of us taking frequent rotations in front. Along the way Al found a nice recent moose antler castoff and put it on top of the snow next to our trail. We snow shoed to the end of the old overgrown road (shown in the NH Delorme as a dotted line) and started our whack. We took advantage of moose tracks wherever possible in a few feet of snow and enjoyed open woods to the Cohos Trail, which we intersected a short ways NE of Gadwah Notch. We hit Gadwah Notch around 11:30am after leaving the car at 8:25am.
We stayed on the trail and headed down towards Bulldozer Flat until the woods started to open up, then headed for the peak. After a short punch through thick stuff we found the same open woods that the Zimmers and I had found back in November. The going was much slower as the unconsolidated snow was growing ever deeper and there were hidden blow downs and spruce traps for our whacking pleasure.
We pushed onward and periodically encountered obstacles that seemed insurmountable. We eventually came to about a 5-foot cliff that stopped us dead for probably 20 minutes until we got past it by bending spruce trees over and standing on them. It was roughly 2pm and the temperature hadn’t cleared –10 all day. The slow progress and a growing breeze made us all layer up to stay warm. At this point anytime we progressed four steps without plunging in past our waist was cause for celebration.
We pushed on eventually coming to a wall of spruce where I basically wallowed until my feet were on the ground then pushed through in chest deep snow. Once on the other side we hit what appeared to be a relatively level blow down field. The 6-foot tall trees showed only a bit of their tops and the snow they had shed filled in the gaps in between them. The slowdown now was ridiculous and it took Dr. D about 10 minutes to go 4 feet forward. It was already 3pm.
We realized that to hit the top would literally take hours if we were able to overcome the snow so we made the inevitable call and bailed. We headed out with the knowledge that we’d made the right decision. Al grabbed his antler on the way out, the one victory of the day.
Looking at the GPS track this morning we were only about 375’ of horizontal distance from the summit but that small distance would have been a marathon all by itself (reminiscent of turning back almost at Vose Spur with Marc and Donna a few years back).
We are overdue for a thaw or some rain to consolidate the snow, hopefully the weather helps us soon.”
So, to summarize, based on our 4.5 ft of forward progress over the last 10 minutes of our first attempt (note, I feel that I covered a half foot more horizontal distance than I was credited), we would have required another 14 hours or so to reach the summit on Thursday, 5 February 2009, placing us there at about 5am the next day, for a total of over 20 hours, not counting the time it would have taken us to hike out. In retrospect, we only needed 2.5 hours to hike out, so we might have completed the climb in about 23 hours, assuming that we could have maintained the 27 ft/hr pace approaching the summit for 14 hours. Concerning the main title of this thread, we broke out over a quarter mile of the well-blazed Cohos Trail near Gadwah Notch (or about 0.15% of its 162-mile length). Our total distance was about 8 miles round trip.
What a difference 10 days can make in winter bushwhacking, as by Sunday, 15 February 2009, the North Country had seen rain at all elevations, followed by a deep freeze that consolidated and hardened the snowpack, followed by 2-4 inches of fluff that took the edge off the surface. I arrived at the Stark Village Inn at 7am to meet my two compatriots for our second attempt at The Muise, which began at the same trailhead noted above at about the same time as 10 days earlier, say 8:20am. On this fine Sunday we reached our previous high point in a little over 3 hrs, and about 20 minutes later (11:50 am) we were signing the register in the PVC canister. Unlike the sub-zero temperatures 10 days earlier, on this day we basked in windless mid-teen temperatures for a few minutes on the summit, before snowshoe boot-skiing a more direct fall-line route from the Cohos Trail back to the snowmo tracks, where Alfredo retrieved his fresh moose antler found on the way up (still flesh and blood on the stub, so no, it was not a match for the one found on the first attempt). During the approach on our second attempt, we picked up the Cohos Trail about a quarter mile lower down than we had a week earlier, which meant we were on it for about a half mile (or about 0.3% of its entire length). I think that a full winter traverse of the Cohos Trail (unsupported, of course) would be a worthy backpack objective for the next generation.
http://www.cohostrail.org/cohosmap.html
I provide the following summary by one of the participants (initials dR), banned from posting on VftT, of our first attempt on Thursday, 5 February 2009.
“Thursday Alfredo Dwyer, Dr. D, and I attempted The Muise (a.k.a. North Whitcomb) in less than ideal snow conditions. After a good night of sleep and a large breakfast at the Stark Village Inn (great base camp for Nash Stream and north country area hikes), we drove to the thriving metropolis of Bungy and made our way down Bungy Rd. Dr. D drove us down the snowmo track a short distance and parked us near the snowmo track that heads south and east toward Baldhead Mt. The track was snowmo'd and dog sledded down for a ways sparking hopes that it would be for its entirety but the good fortune eventually ended and we started breaking. The trail breaking at first was not bad, slow going but tolerable with the three of us taking frequent rotations in front. Along the way Al found a nice recent moose antler castoff and put it on top of the snow next to our trail. We snow shoed to the end of the old overgrown road (shown in the NH Delorme as a dotted line) and started our whack. We took advantage of moose tracks wherever possible in a few feet of snow and enjoyed open woods to the Cohos Trail, which we intersected a short ways NE of Gadwah Notch. We hit Gadwah Notch around 11:30am after leaving the car at 8:25am.
We stayed on the trail and headed down towards Bulldozer Flat until the woods started to open up, then headed for the peak. After a short punch through thick stuff we found the same open woods that the Zimmers and I had found back in November. The going was much slower as the unconsolidated snow was growing ever deeper and there were hidden blow downs and spruce traps for our whacking pleasure.
We pushed onward and periodically encountered obstacles that seemed insurmountable. We eventually came to about a 5-foot cliff that stopped us dead for probably 20 minutes until we got past it by bending spruce trees over and standing on them. It was roughly 2pm and the temperature hadn’t cleared –10 all day. The slow progress and a growing breeze made us all layer up to stay warm. At this point anytime we progressed four steps without plunging in past our waist was cause for celebration.
We pushed on eventually coming to a wall of spruce where I basically wallowed until my feet were on the ground then pushed through in chest deep snow. Once on the other side we hit what appeared to be a relatively level blow down field. The 6-foot tall trees showed only a bit of their tops and the snow they had shed filled in the gaps in between them. The slowdown now was ridiculous and it took Dr. D about 10 minutes to go 4 feet forward. It was already 3pm.
We realized that to hit the top would literally take hours if we were able to overcome the snow so we made the inevitable call and bailed. We headed out with the knowledge that we’d made the right decision. Al grabbed his antler on the way out, the one victory of the day.
Looking at the GPS track this morning we were only about 375’ of horizontal distance from the summit but that small distance would have been a marathon all by itself (reminiscent of turning back almost at Vose Spur with Marc and Donna a few years back).
We are overdue for a thaw or some rain to consolidate the snow, hopefully the weather helps us soon.”
So, to summarize, based on our 4.5 ft of forward progress over the last 10 minutes of our first attempt (note, I feel that I covered a half foot more horizontal distance than I was credited), we would have required another 14 hours or so to reach the summit on Thursday, 5 February 2009, placing us there at about 5am the next day, for a total of over 20 hours, not counting the time it would have taken us to hike out. In retrospect, we only needed 2.5 hours to hike out, so we might have completed the climb in about 23 hours, assuming that we could have maintained the 27 ft/hr pace approaching the summit for 14 hours. Concerning the main title of this thread, we broke out over a quarter mile of the well-blazed Cohos Trail near Gadwah Notch (or about 0.15% of its 162-mile length). Our total distance was about 8 miles round trip.
What a difference 10 days can make in winter bushwhacking, as by Sunday, 15 February 2009, the North Country had seen rain at all elevations, followed by a deep freeze that consolidated and hardened the snowpack, followed by 2-4 inches of fluff that took the edge off the surface. I arrived at the Stark Village Inn at 7am to meet my two compatriots for our second attempt at The Muise, which began at the same trailhead noted above at about the same time as 10 days earlier, say 8:20am. On this fine Sunday we reached our previous high point in a little over 3 hrs, and about 20 minutes later (11:50 am) we were signing the register in the PVC canister. Unlike the sub-zero temperatures 10 days earlier, on this day we basked in windless mid-teen temperatures for a few minutes on the summit, before snowshoe boot-skiing a more direct fall-line route from the Cohos Trail back to the snowmo tracks, where Alfredo retrieved his fresh moose antler found on the way up (still flesh and blood on the stub, so no, it was not a match for the one found on the first attempt). During the approach on our second attempt, we picked up the Cohos Trail about a quarter mile lower down than we had a week earlier, which meant we were on it for about a half mile (or about 0.3% of its entire length). I think that a full winter traverse of the Cohos Trail (unsupported, of course) would be a worthy backpack objective for the next generation.
http://www.cohostrail.org/cohosmap.html
