Ashfordite
New member
- Joined
- Jan 27, 2005
- Messages
- 48
- Reaction score
- 5
Seven of us hiked Mt Marcy from Adirondack Loj on Saturday the 27th. This completed my W46 and W115. Yahooooooooo!
We wore snowshoes from start to finish, no crampons needed. The trail was incredibly beautiful with all of the recent snow. The trail was well packed to the spur trail to Phelps Mtn. Beyond that, a few hikers and skiers were ahead of us, but the trail wasn't packed firm. A short distance before the Hopkins trail jct, the tracks we followed deviated from the trail for a little ways. We broke out the proper trail on the return (following ski tracks). There was no evidence of recent traffic on the Hopkins trail. The area by the Phelps jct was wind blown, it was difficult to tell if the Phelps trail had been traveled recently.
We had very limited views as we climbed above treeline, but we could follow the tracks ahead of us easily. It was breezy and snowing lightly but it wasn't cold. As we approached the summit the visibility deteriorated and it was more wind blown and difficult to follow the tracks. A strange dark object appeared in the background of pure white. The contrast was remarkable. As we approached, I realized it was the summit plaque! We celebrated on the summit for about 15 minutes. During this time the weather deteriorated further. We were being blasted by snow pellets. As we started down we quickly realized that it was impossible to follow the our tracks. Visibilty was down to about 40 or 50 feet, near whiteout conditions. We couldn't see far enough to get a sense of the contours of the land and the wind and snow had erased any tracks that we had left. We used a GPS with a waypoint at the Phelps jct to get us started in the right direction. We made our way to the right of steep rocky area that looked difficult to navigate. After about a third of a mile the visibility improved considerably. We soon saw other hikers ascending and were able to pickup the trail.
The rest of the trip down was not as adventurous, but still very beautiful.
We wore snowshoes from start to finish, no crampons needed. The trail was incredibly beautiful with all of the recent snow. The trail was well packed to the spur trail to Phelps Mtn. Beyond that, a few hikers and skiers were ahead of us, but the trail wasn't packed firm. A short distance before the Hopkins trail jct, the tracks we followed deviated from the trail for a little ways. We broke out the proper trail on the return (following ski tracks). There was no evidence of recent traffic on the Hopkins trail. The area by the Phelps jct was wind blown, it was difficult to tell if the Phelps trail had been traveled recently.
We had very limited views as we climbed above treeline, but we could follow the tracks ahead of us easily. It was breezy and snowing lightly but it wasn't cold. As we approached the summit the visibility deteriorated and it was more wind blown and difficult to follow the tracks. A strange dark object appeared in the background of pure white. The contrast was remarkable. As we approached, I realized it was the summit plaque! We celebrated on the summit for about 15 minutes. During this time the weather deteriorated further. We were being blasted by snow pellets. As we started down we quickly realized that it was impossible to follow the our tracks. Visibilty was down to about 40 or 50 feet, near whiteout conditions. We couldn't see far enough to get a sense of the contours of the land and the wind and snow had erased any tracks that we had left. We used a GPS with a waypoint at the Phelps jct to get us started in the right direction. We made our way to the right of steep rocky area that looked difficult to navigate. After about a third of a mile the visibility improved considerably. We soon saw other hikers ascending and were able to pickup the trail.
The rest of the trip down was not as adventurous, but still very beautiful.
