Neil
Well-known member
- Joined
- Apr 26, 2004
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Rising 2200 feet above the valley floor Noonmark offers an excellent outing with full-on views of some noteworthy peaks. Those 2200 feet are ascended in a couple of short miles so the butt, quad and calf muscles get a good workout.
After chatting briefly with Oliver the frisky dog, Alpine 1 and the forum member who formerly logged on as Alpine 1 we headed up the Stinson trail at 10:15.
The register indicated that 4 or 5 hikers had done the hike since the snow fell last week. They had barebooted over what looked like 6 inches of snow. That 6 inch layer would increase to about 24 as we neared the summit. At the Old Dix-Stinson intersection 2 pairs of Lightning Ascents entered and I wondered if they belonged to MtnHiker and Britdog. In any case they smoothed all the rough edges out from the crusty bareboot trail.
It was a bit nippy, somewhere between 5 and 10 F I would say, but before long I removed my softshell and hiked in my base layer shirt, which gradually became saturated with sweat. My feet were cold but sweat ran down my face. As we ascended the air got colder and a breeze caught the ridge. I managed to create heat at the same rate as the moving air carried it away, but just barely. When I got too far ahead of Sylvie and Annick I turned around and walked back to meet them instead of waiting.
Higher up on the ridge I put on my eVent shell, mitten shells and a belaclava. This made me feel good. It got steeper and steeper and we came out at a viewing rock 300 hundred feet below the summit, looked up and saw someone up there. It turned out the tracks we followed indeed belonged to Britdog and MtnHiker. They had already done Round and Noonmark and were on their way to buy new boots for MtnHiker's freezing cold feet. We didn't chat long. In the summer it's the blackflies and in the winter it's the cold that keeps trail meetings short.
The wind was blowing pretty hard so just a few feet below the summit we changed out of sweaty base layers and it was then I remembered that my other base layer shirt was in the dryer, 120 miles north of the summit of Noonmark Mountain! Now I was glad I had removed my softshell before it got wet. I put it on over my tender flesh and added my down sweater and an old cheapo down parka. Out on the summit the wind was positively glacial and I could feel it through all those layers. Removing mittens to take pics was a masochistic maneuver.
We stayed on top for a good 20 minutes but both Annick and I had cold feet. I had considered removing my boots and putting my down booties on but it would have been a lot of hassle and then the leather uppers of my boots might have been too stiff to get back into.
The wind was very bracing even though it wasn't really all that cold or windy. A guy came up from the Boquet side while we were there and based on his fatigue and being covered with snow I asked him the dumbest questions ever. "Did you break trail and did you slip back and fall on your way up"?
Without divesting we slithered down to the aforementioned viewing rock and there it was comfortably warm. Removing my snowshoes released dammed up blood flow and my feet warmed up nicely. We were able to sit and eat and take a few pictures for some time before the chilly began to creep into our ribs.
We headed down without removing our warm layers and within 10 minutes I felt like I was on fire and beginning to baste in my own juices so I stripped down to just my softshell over skin, light mitts and no hat.
Back at the parking area I saw that someone had defaced the dirt on the back of my car with smiley faces. I went over to a certain jeep plastered with hiking stickers and defaced its dirt with "Hi Brian".
We dropped in at the Mountaineer and who was there trying on the most amazing Scarpa boots I've ever seen but MtnHiker. Very nice boots. The kind whose price makes you wince but if you buy them and do a Range traverse at -10 you don't regret a single penny I would think.
(If you read a TR for Noonmark this long then you should be out hiking. If I wrote one this long it's because I have uninteresting chores to do and I'm procrastinating.
)
_Pictures_
After chatting briefly with Oliver the frisky dog, Alpine 1 and the forum member who formerly logged on as Alpine 1 we headed up the Stinson trail at 10:15.
The register indicated that 4 or 5 hikers had done the hike since the snow fell last week. They had barebooted over what looked like 6 inches of snow. That 6 inch layer would increase to about 24 as we neared the summit. At the Old Dix-Stinson intersection 2 pairs of Lightning Ascents entered and I wondered if they belonged to MtnHiker and Britdog. In any case they smoothed all the rough edges out from the crusty bareboot trail.
It was a bit nippy, somewhere between 5 and 10 F I would say, but before long I removed my softshell and hiked in my base layer shirt, which gradually became saturated with sweat. My feet were cold but sweat ran down my face. As we ascended the air got colder and a breeze caught the ridge. I managed to create heat at the same rate as the moving air carried it away, but just barely. When I got too far ahead of Sylvie and Annick I turned around and walked back to meet them instead of waiting.
Higher up on the ridge I put on my eVent shell, mitten shells and a belaclava. This made me feel good. It got steeper and steeper and we came out at a viewing rock 300 hundred feet below the summit, looked up and saw someone up there. It turned out the tracks we followed indeed belonged to Britdog and MtnHiker. They had already done Round and Noonmark and were on their way to buy new boots for MtnHiker's freezing cold feet. We didn't chat long. In the summer it's the blackflies and in the winter it's the cold that keeps trail meetings short.
The wind was blowing pretty hard so just a few feet below the summit we changed out of sweaty base layers and it was then I remembered that my other base layer shirt was in the dryer, 120 miles north of the summit of Noonmark Mountain! Now I was glad I had removed my softshell before it got wet. I put it on over my tender flesh and added my down sweater and an old cheapo down parka. Out on the summit the wind was positively glacial and I could feel it through all those layers. Removing mittens to take pics was a masochistic maneuver.
We stayed on top for a good 20 minutes but both Annick and I had cold feet. I had considered removing my boots and putting my down booties on but it would have been a lot of hassle and then the leather uppers of my boots might have been too stiff to get back into.
The wind was very bracing even though it wasn't really all that cold or windy. A guy came up from the Boquet side while we were there and based on his fatigue and being covered with snow I asked him the dumbest questions ever. "Did you break trail and did you slip back and fall on your way up"?
Without divesting we slithered down to the aforementioned viewing rock and there it was comfortably warm. Removing my snowshoes released dammed up blood flow and my feet warmed up nicely. We were able to sit and eat and take a few pictures for some time before the chilly began to creep into our ribs.
We headed down without removing our warm layers and within 10 minutes I felt like I was on fire and beginning to baste in my own juices so I stripped down to just my softshell over skin, light mitts and no hat.
Back at the parking area I saw that someone had defaced the dirt on the back of my car with smiley faces. I went over to a certain jeep plastered with hiking stickers and defaced its dirt with "Hi Brian".
We dropped in at the Mountaineer and who was there trying on the most amazing Scarpa boots I've ever seen but MtnHiker. Very nice boots. The kind whose price makes you wince but if you buy them and do a Range traverse at -10 you don't regret a single penny I would think.
(If you read a TR for Noonmark this long then you should be out hiking. If I wrote one this long it's because I have uninteresting chores to do and I'm procrastinating.
)_Pictures_
