Marshall 1/24/09

[mtnhiker]

Hiked from the Loj across Avalanche Lake and Lake Colden. Most of the herdpath up Marshall is a well packed trail. There is one split right at the very start, about 5-10 minutes in, and we chose left. Not sure where right goes. It is a well broken track, about halfway up it deviated from the summer track, but it was paralleling the summer track, so we opted to stay with it. Almost at Marshall we hit the end of the broken track. It was on a bump, not sure you’d actually call it a false summit or not, but it was a bump with a col between us and Marshall. It was right around 4200 ft and we were about .2 from Marshall. Maybe those who had gone before us thought this was the summit? We could see Marshall clearly and began the hunt for a clear way down into the col which involved mining many spruce traps and creating quite a grid of tracks on this bump. It was slow going through deep unconsolidated snow and thick brush. Finally saw the happy yellow disc. On our way out, back on the false summit bump, we blocked off all the dead end herd paths we had created with branches. Not sure how we missed the other group on Marshall on 1/24, maybe they were behind us and they turned around while we were still over on Marshall. Finished the day with a truly spectacular walk out across the lakes.