Emmons and Seward, Dec. 24.10

[BlackSpruce]

The road had not been ploughed in a few days and the driving to the summer trailhead was iffy even with our 4x4 truck. We find ourselves totally alone, almost 10.5 hours, for a magnificent day above the clouds. The trails are all well broken making for perfect snowshoeing conditions all day, ice not a problem anywhere even the two steep chutes below Seward summit were easy. There is about 2 feet of snow up high with just as much on the trees; the bad news is that there is considerable new blow down all the way up Calkins Herdpath, making for numerous detours and what seemed, even if it obviously was not, constant over and under, under and over... almost all the way to the Donaldson col. We were totally alone in there but the trail register indicated a fair number of visitors every of the three previous days to Seymour and Seward and Emmons, the only odd thing was noticing that none of the previous climbers had bothered to climb onto Donaldson summit bump, must be that like us they did not need it...

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year