BlackSpruce
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- Sep 8, 2003
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Hardly any snow in the woods at the Loj elevation, micro spikes a must the first three miles, conditions the last 1.5-mile up to Lake Arnold offered perfect snowshoes conditions, snow then about 3 feet deep, next 1.6 mile down to Feldspar Lean-to a few inches over a crust annoying but easy going thanks to Nate Jeffery, Outpost Caretaker, who with an assistant cleared the 50 plus Irene’s blow downs in early December. Just before the marshy area the bridge over the Opalescent is gone and so is the one to get to Feldspar Lean-to. Great conditions again to Lake Tear, herd path to Gray well packed but once on the ridge it appeared that the last 10 days nobody bothered to take a right and travel the next 150 yards to the true summit! Close enough it was we guessed. Then we had to break trail to Four Corners, the wind had build huge waves. Even though it took us almost one hour from Four Corners to tree line on Skylight we had a wonderful time, the scenery was spectacular (in the woods snow from 4 to 5 feet deep). There too it looked like nobody had been in ages, a dozen times we had to clear trees loaded with snow and ice acting as barriers across the way, snow drift were aplenty. We even lost the trail a couple of times! Summit proper was very icy but manageable with our snowshoes since it’s relatively flat. From there we observed a couple of climbers turning back on Little Haystack after searching about for a safe way down. Trees and boulders are all covered with thick ice so we assumed all windswept peaks are extremely icy. Every boulder on Skylight looked like a standing swan as the wind had crafted the snow into feathers; we had never seen something like it. This seventh winter visit proved once again that every time it’s more beautiful and never the same.
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