BlackSpruce
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- Sep 8, 2003
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What was intended as a vultering loop turned out, as it often does in winter, to be more effort than anticipated. Thankfully we were rewarded with a perfectly blue and windless sky all day. It was 4F when we (Inge, Carl, Gary and I) left the Round Pond trailhead at 7AM and it stayed that way to the summit of Dix. Diametrically crossing the shining ice of Round Pond was the first of many treats of the day, particularly since we could already glance at our last peak of the day: East Dix! As always the final ascent to Dix was a struggle and quite draining. Luckily there was just enough new snow to allow us to make the climb with our snowshoes. Going up we were very pleased that our program of the day was saving us from making a skeleton descent down this chute! It’s when the trail eased that we noticed that wind and snow had erased all previous tracks and soon realized that we will likely not make it to Macomb as well. Once on Dix summit ridge, (Dix for D, as Redfield was for A, Blake for B and Colden for C), we delighted in finding a warm sun and knowing that from now on all the steep slopes will be down... All the way to Grace and down to the bottom of the East Dix slide, where we finally found previous visitors’ tracks, we more often than not had to look for the herd paths and broke trail in a few inches of new snow that provided enough cover to soften the underlying crust. Still we were having the best of time burning our faces and our calves. I am to be blamed for the descent route from Hough, having chosen to leave the ridge early expecting to find enough snow to enjoy the very steep slope and a short-cut. It got us down to the col... Eventually... but I got “zeros” for route finding from the rest of the team. From then on Gary and Carl made sure to stay in front! Mind you once in the Carson-Pough col it became much easier to follow the herd paths even through one more foot of snow and it would have been necessary to crawl up the tunnel to South Dix summit. Once near the North and South Fork the snow cover was thin and the water crossings not exactly free of worry but we made it to the stone bridge, if barely for the very last one, without getting wet!
PS: Contrary to the beliefs of some climbers the herd path initiating at the foot of East Dix is a couple of decades old at least. Barbara McMartin in her 1989 edition of Discover the Adirondack High Peaks encourages climbers to bushwhack down that route to rejoin the bottom of the slide at 3000’. Her advice was certainly well followed as in a 1996 edition of Peeks, John E. Winkler recalls, a year or two prior, finding a new but well travelled herd path from the col to the bottom of the Great Slide (the slide on the left is called the Zipper). And now that in 2009 one of the outdoor magazines recommends it as a way to reach the Dixes, its status as one of the Dixes herd paths is established for posterity.
PS: Contrary to the beliefs of some climbers the herd path initiating at the foot of East Dix is a couple of decades old at least. Barbara McMartin in her 1989 edition of Discover the Adirondack High Peaks encourages climbers to bushwhack down that route to rejoin the bottom of the slide at 3000’. Her advice was certainly well followed as in a 1996 edition of Peeks, John E. Winkler recalls, a year or two prior, finding a new but well travelled herd path from the col to the bottom of the Great Slide (the slide on the left is called the Zipper). And now that in 2009 one of the outdoor magazines recommends it as a way to reach the Dixes, its status as one of the Dixes herd paths is established for posterity.
