FreightTrain
New member
We started our 3rd winter attempt at the twins around 8:00am Saturday morning. There was one truck at the end of the road for the seven dwarfs when we got there. A wide very well packed snow shoe troth was already established. We decided to see how far the bare boot thing would get us. The established trail did not do the river crossings and we marched along this path. There were blow downs along the way, some with side trails and others were crawl throughs. The last stream crossing (the only one on this route) was frozen over and we crossed easily. There were more smaller trees and limbs bent over from heavy snow loads but most were cleared by some one with a saw. Within about .2 mi. it was time to put the snow shoes on. While we were strapping on the shoes a couple of women came up the trail and continued up past us. Several more bent over trees and branches slowed our progress. We met up with a lone hiker just below the look out. He had made several attempts at trying to find the trail to the summit. The two women were just coming back down after making a few attempts to find the trail themselves. We had done this hike last year and knew that the trail was to the left of the look out. After a difficult push through the spruce and snow, we did get on the trail again. The effort took a bit of wind out me and a rest was necessary. We were now a bit behind schedule and started to question the decision to get to the south peak. We decided to make a decision at the summit of N. Twin. We walked back to where we thought the trail continued to S. Twin but could not see any signs of trail. We knew that there was not enough time or energy to bushwack out to S. Twin and back. Just as we were about to leave, we noticed a group of hikers making their way up from the south peak. Our optimism grew thinking that a broken out trail would allow us to continue. There were about 10 hikers in that group. They commented that they did a lot of bushwacking themselves. So now the tough decision. At this same point last year in very cold conditions with high winds we turned back (that is why we were back again this year). Let me just say that maybe next year we will be celebrating the S. Twin summit.
