bignslow
Active member
Broke trail all day until ~1900-2000 feet before we decided to turn around. Slow progress was disheartening (breaking trail through 18" of powder from the previous week from the trailhead until our turn around point 5 miles in was exhausting). However; the main reason we threw in the towel was the repeated *whump* sounds the snow pack was making (and this was on very moderate terrain). We had at least 3-4 times where the entire snowpack would shift/drop (sometimes propagating outwards from where we were standing). There was also one steep spot early on that you side-hill across that was showing fractures all the way down the slope.
Assuming that the snow instability was going to get worse in the steep stuff after the cabin/campsite (and who knows what we were going to find above treeline) we decided to call it a day. We covered 5 miles from the car, which was about 3 miles from the summer trailhead, and around 2.25 miles from the old trailhead.
Not sure when the snowpack will stabilize, but please go use our tracks as we would prefer for them not to go to waste before the next big snowstorm...
The brightest part of the trip was staying at the Mountain View Motel (http://www.mountainviewmotelmaine.com/), Nice rooms (with kitchenettes which makes heating water and cooking dinner easy), hot showers, and the prices were reasonable. It was a really good basecamp for the "Rangely 10-pack"
cross posted on NETC:
http://newenglandtrailconditions.com/me/viewreport.php?entryid=15532
Assuming that the snow instability was going to get worse in the steep stuff after the cabin/campsite (and who knows what we were going to find above treeline) we decided to call it a day. We covered 5 miles from the car, which was about 3 miles from the summer trailhead, and around 2.25 miles from the old trailhead.
Not sure when the snowpack will stabilize, but please go use our tracks as we would prefer for them not to go to waste before the next big snowstorm...
The brightest part of the trip was staying at the Mountain View Motel (http://www.mountainviewmotelmaine.com/), Nice rooms (with kitchenettes which makes heating water and cooking dinner easy), hot showers, and the prices were reasonable. It was a really good basecamp for the "Rangely 10-pack"
cross posted on NETC:
http://newenglandtrailconditions.com/me/viewreport.php?entryid=15532
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