Rik
New member
Up the Creek
Well it all started off on a warm sunny day…..Not! After spending Saturday night in a motel Neil, Eric, and I took a crack at the Sewards. It wasn’t enough that we would stay up chatting when Neil arrived so we set the clocks ahead an hour for daylight savings which would mean an hour of lost sleep. We were slow getting going in the morning but started out down the Corey’s road a few minutes after 6am. It was raining lightly and we all carried umbrellas for the road walk to stay dry without having to put on rain gear. The road was mixed ice and dirt which made the going a little slower than we would have liked. This would be a recurring theme through the day. Everything took longer! There was only patches of snow in the woods down this low and we wouldn’t put snowshoes on until about 2500 feet. Of course we were still postholing but in mud instead of snow! When we got to the crossover route to Calkins Creek we left the umbrellas. The rain had stopped for now. The flagged route to Calkins Creek seems to have more flagging than I remembered. I wondered whether a new tradition had started similar to carrying rocks up Skylight where hikers are to add a piece of flagging to keep it from raining. Calkins creek was roaring! We had to shimmy across a fallen log to get over which we did without incident. Once on the traditional herd path we started to run into snow along with some serious melt, rain, runoff,… We soon put on our snowshoes and climbed. The snow was soft and got deeper as we went up. We were all sinking in pretty good but that was just a sign of things to come. The path up was easy to follow and the faint remnants of an old treadway was visible most of the time. Now going over to Seward would be a different story as we could not stay on the herd path nor in any old snowshoe tracks. After a couple of minutes I was in a spruce trap which would require Eric unhooking my shoe to get me out. I would later need to help Neil out of the same predicament. If you plan to go to Seward soon it should be easy to follow the spruce traps all the way from the shoulder of Donaldson to Seward. Our route was anything but a straight line as we zig-zagged our way over. I think it was after 2pm when we reached the summit. There a celebration followed as this was #46 for Eric. He was given a patch, champagne and smoked salmon were enjoyed. I was glad to empty the champagne bottle and lighten my pack! We took some pictures, Neil got naked, and a good time was had by all! We all agreed that we would follow our tracks back even though we could have maybe taken out some of the turns we would need to break more trail and find more spruce traps. We still found some!
It was snowing off and on up on the mountain but was fairly mild. Views came and went with the clouds blowing past. We had gotten a great view of a rainbow below us at one point and hopefully it will show in the pictures. By the time we got back to the Calkins herd path we were all pretty wet. We wore our snowshoes down to the point where the crossover route meets the herd path. Again we shimmied across the log and walked back down to our umbrellas. Then it was just a long walk back to the cars. The Blueberry foot trail was a stream as it was now raining lightly but steady. The Corey’s road feels so long after a day like this and it was just after 8pm when we reached the gate. We were all exhausted. After changing cloths we broke out some 46er IPA’s and enjoyed a well deserved beer. A very challenging day to say the least. Eric earned his number 46! The drive home in the fog was also pretty challenging with us being so tired. Eric asked me to drive which he never does so I knew he was pretty tired. He also wasn’t enjoying the ball game on the radio as much as me but then again Boston fans never seem to enjoy it as much as Yankee fans! What a great day! No surprise that we were the only ones foolish enough to be out there in these conditions.
Well it all started off on a warm sunny day…..Not! After spending Saturday night in a motel Neil, Eric, and I took a crack at the Sewards. It wasn’t enough that we would stay up chatting when Neil arrived so we set the clocks ahead an hour for daylight savings which would mean an hour of lost sleep. We were slow getting going in the morning but started out down the Corey’s road a few minutes after 6am. It was raining lightly and we all carried umbrellas for the road walk to stay dry without having to put on rain gear. The road was mixed ice and dirt which made the going a little slower than we would have liked. This would be a recurring theme through the day. Everything took longer! There was only patches of snow in the woods down this low and we wouldn’t put snowshoes on until about 2500 feet. Of course we were still postholing but in mud instead of snow! When we got to the crossover route to Calkins Creek we left the umbrellas. The rain had stopped for now. The flagged route to Calkins Creek seems to have more flagging than I remembered. I wondered whether a new tradition had started similar to carrying rocks up Skylight where hikers are to add a piece of flagging to keep it from raining. Calkins creek was roaring! We had to shimmy across a fallen log to get over which we did without incident. Once on the traditional herd path we started to run into snow along with some serious melt, rain, runoff,… We soon put on our snowshoes and climbed. The snow was soft and got deeper as we went up. We were all sinking in pretty good but that was just a sign of things to come. The path up was easy to follow and the faint remnants of an old treadway was visible most of the time. Now going over to Seward would be a different story as we could not stay on the herd path nor in any old snowshoe tracks. After a couple of minutes I was in a spruce trap which would require Eric unhooking my shoe to get me out. I would later need to help Neil out of the same predicament. If you plan to go to Seward soon it should be easy to follow the spruce traps all the way from the shoulder of Donaldson to Seward. Our route was anything but a straight line as we zig-zagged our way over. I think it was after 2pm when we reached the summit. There a celebration followed as this was #46 for Eric. He was given a patch, champagne and smoked salmon were enjoyed. I was glad to empty the champagne bottle and lighten my pack! We took some pictures, Neil got naked, and a good time was had by all! We all agreed that we would follow our tracks back even though we could have maybe taken out some of the turns we would need to break more trail and find more spruce traps. We still found some!
It was snowing off and on up on the mountain but was fairly mild. Views came and went with the clouds blowing past. We had gotten a great view of a rainbow below us at one point and hopefully it will show in the pictures. By the time we got back to the Calkins herd path we were all pretty wet. We wore our snowshoes down to the point where the crossover route meets the herd path. Again we shimmied across the log and walked back down to our umbrellas. Then it was just a long walk back to the cars. The Blueberry foot trail was a stream as it was now raining lightly but steady. The Corey’s road feels so long after a day like this and it was just after 8pm when we reached the gate. We were all exhausted. After changing cloths we broke out some 46er IPA’s and enjoyed a well deserved beer. A very challenging day to say the least. Eric earned his number 46! The drive home in the fog was also pretty challenging with us being so tired. Eric asked me to drive which he never does so I knew he was pretty tired. He also wasn’t enjoying the ball game on the radio as much as me but then again Boston fans never seem to enjoy it as much as Yankee fans! What a great day! No surprise that we were the only ones foolish enough to be out there in these conditions.
