DLhiker
New member
Three days of day hiking, two nights in the Keene Valley Hostel.
We hiked Marshall on Wed from upper works. We were reading as low as -13 driving in the Upper works road. Blue sky, no wind...very cold. The temp never rose above zero according to our mercury, but it was a perfect sunny, windless day. Trail conditions...to flowed lands, hard crust/icy. Up marshall, snowhoes helped, not so much for flotation but for bite in the snow crust.
We hiked Colden via Lake Arnold on Thursday from the Loj. To Marcy Dam is pretty miserable--hard ice all rutted with boot prints. A little better from the Dam to Avalanche camps. Someone postholed most of the way down Colden making a good part of the trail frustrating to navigate. Again, snowshoes were not needed for flotation as much as bite. The higher we climbed, though, the more powder we encountered. Crampons were never needed on Colden. [Some in our group cut over to Indian Falls after colden and grabbed Tabletop, and report similar conditions on that trail]
We hiked Giant and RPR on friday via the Chapel Pond trail. Lots more powder and soft snow over here, and more hard ice on the exposed areas. The trail down Giant to the col for RPR is easy going (except for the near vertical ascent!). The section up to RPR was the best snow we encountered. No crust, just soft powder. In the col, we made the decision to bushwhack down rather than ascend back up to Giant. We knew that we might regret it, but it worked out just right. The Topography leads you pretty much exactly where you need to go. Once the land leveled out, we made our way over toward the washbowl. Some areas are thick, but overall, as bushwacks go this was not too bad. I would do it again (I'm not sure everyone in our group would agree.)
We hiked Marshall on Wed from upper works. We were reading as low as -13 driving in the Upper works road. Blue sky, no wind...very cold. The temp never rose above zero according to our mercury, but it was a perfect sunny, windless day. Trail conditions...to flowed lands, hard crust/icy. Up marshall, snowhoes helped, not so much for flotation but for bite in the snow crust.
We hiked Colden via Lake Arnold on Thursday from the Loj. To Marcy Dam is pretty miserable--hard ice all rutted with boot prints. A little better from the Dam to Avalanche camps. Someone postholed most of the way down Colden making a good part of the trail frustrating to navigate. Again, snowshoes were not needed for flotation as much as bite. The higher we climbed, though, the more powder we encountered. Crampons were never needed on Colden. [Some in our group cut over to Indian Falls after colden and grabbed Tabletop, and report similar conditions on that trail]
We hiked Giant and RPR on friday via the Chapel Pond trail. Lots more powder and soft snow over here, and more hard ice on the exposed areas. The trail down Giant to the col for RPR is easy going (except for the near vertical ascent!). The section up to RPR was the best snow we encountered. No crust, just soft powder. In the col, we made the decision to bushwhack down rather than ascend back up to Giant. We knew that we might regret it, but it worked out just right. The Topography leads you pretty much exactly where you need to go. Once the land leveled out, we made our way over toward the washbowl. Some areas are thick, but overall, as bushwacks go this was not too bad. I would do it again (I'm not sure everyone in our group would agree.)
