Tom Rankin
Well-known member
A friend of Laurie's needed these 2 to finish his Cat35 all season list. We weren't sure how long this hike would take, given the snow dump and then more snow/rain/ice/sleet which followed, so we started at 7:30 AM Sunday from the P.A. at the end of Moon Haw Road. You pretty much get out of the car and go straight up!
We immediately found a snowshoe track and followed it. It seemed to be going where we wanted to go, so we stuck with it. The snow on or off the track was very hard and we almost never broke thru in a big way. The stride of the trailbreaker was very long, so I tried to fill in the trail as we went, for Laurie's benefit.
After a while, the trail veered very close to the underside of the cliffs under the summit of Friday. We decided to stick with it, but eventually, after a lot of sidehilling, the trail came to an end!
We had gone too far to turn around, so we kept going forward towards the col. We found the col, then worked our way up to Friday. One down, one to go. Just below the col on the way back down, we hit another set of fresh tracks. Our tracks had missed each other by just a few feet. We followed them and they went up and turned right to go to Friday. Oh well. So we stayed on the ridge line and broke our way slowly over to Balsam Cap. The snow was not as deep, but it was windy and the trees are close together. The hardest part was picking a good course. We wandered around the Balsam Cap summit area for a while and finally found the col. Congrats to Pete J! We took a few pics, had a snack and started the return.
On the way back, we met the owners of the other set of tracks. There were 2 guys who had started from the Fridel property and done Friday from a higher line, and then turned around and headed to Balsam Cap. They must have seen our tracks at the Friday summit, but they had just made their own, so they followed them back. Then when they met our track, they stuck with it. We eventually found where their track met ours for the first time. It was where we got off the herd path following the original set of older tracks that ended. The 2 trails paralled each other for quite a while. Confused? There were even more tracks going every which way! It was somewhat of a mess!
At 3:30, we were about an hour from the car, when we met a young guy heading up! He did not have snow shoes on, and he had been postholing the trail here and there! He said he was a friend of the other 2 people. After a brief conversation, he continued up! Oh well, I hope he was ok!
We got back down to the cars at 4:30. It was a long day, but we had helped a friend finish his list, and we had beautiful views of the reservoir and the mountains surrounding it!
We immediately found a snowshoe track and followed it. It seemed to be going where we wanted to go, so we stuck with it. The snow on or off the track was very hard and we almost never broke thru in a big way. The stride of the trailbreaker was very long, so I tried to fill in the trail as we went, for Laurie's benefit.
After a while, the trail veered very close to the underside of the cliffs under the summit of Friday. We decided to stick with it, but eventually, after a lot of sidehilling, the trail came to an end!
We had gone too far to turn around, so we kept going forward towards the col. We found the col, then worked our way up to Friday. One down, one to go. Just below the col on the way back down, we hit another set of fresh tracks. Our tracks had missed each other by just a few feet. We followed them and they went up and turned right to go to Friday. Oh well. So we stayed on the ridge line and broke our way slowly over to Balsam Cap. The snow was not as deep, but it was windy and the trees are close together. The hardest part was picking a good course. We wandered around the Balsam Cap summit area for a while and finally found the col. Congrats to Pete J! We took a few pics, had a snack and started the return.
On the way back, we met the owners of the other set of tracks. There were 2 guys who had started from the Fridel property and done Friday from a higher line, and then turned around and headed to Balsam Cap. They must have seen our tracks at the Friday summit, but they had just made their own, so they followed them back. Then when they met our track, they stuck with it. We eventually found where their track met ours for the first time. It was where we got off the herd path following the original set of older tracks that ended. The 2 trails paralled each other for quite a while. Confused? There were even more tracks going every which way! It was somewhat of a mess!
At 3:30, we were about an hour from the car, when we met a young guy heading up! He did not have snow shoes on, and he had been postholing the trail here and there! He said he was a friend of the other 2 people. After a brief conversation, he continued up! Oh well, I hope he was ok!
We got back down to the cars at 4:30. It was a long day, but we had helped a friend finish his list, and we had beautiful views of the reservoir and the mountains surrounding it!