Wittenberg Cornell Slide Traverse

[Desalad]

What a weekend. Myself and three friends arrived at the Woodland Valley Campground parking lot at 9am on Friday January 21st. We hit the Wittenberg-Cornell-Slide trail around 9:30am and hiked up to the Terrace Mtn Trail. We took the Terrace Mtn Trail to the Terrace Mtn Lean-to and set up camp. We spent the afternoon collecting firewood, we were fortunate to have found a large blown down tree that was resting on another ....DRY LOGS! We spent some time chopping up the wood to prepare the fire.

We also played some catch with a tennis ball while waiting for two others to join us at the leanto. Expecting to find a lot of wet or frozen wood, we hauled in a couple duraflame logs, per a suggestion from John Graham here on VFTT. We started the fire, threw on some small wood and them some of the larger logs and got ourselves a large fire blazing. Our friends showed up, the sun went down, the fire blazed, we ate, we slept, we woke often in the cold.

We woke up at 5am Saturday morning, boiled some water for hot cocoa, oatmeal, and for drinking during the day. Our plan was to traverse Wittenberg, Cornell and Slide Mountains then return from where we came back to camp. At this point we had no idea the huge snowstorm was on its way. Around 6am, on a whim, I tuned in the NOA weather band on my Motorola two-way. Beep Beep Beep Beeeeeep Beeeeeep Beeeeeep!!! The emergency broadcast service was broadcasting. Oh Sh!t. We listened. Sustained winds of 38mph, gusts over 50mph. 16-24" of snow. Storm arriving later in the afternoon. Mind you we had never intended to check the weather report, but something/someone made me decide to turn it on. We decided to go ahead with our hike and set a turnaround time of 12 noon. We planned on going forward with our traverse, hopefully making the Slide summit before noon and returning to camp to pack up and hike out back down to the Woodland Valley Campground.

We left camp at 7:15am, just after sunrise, with extra clothes, food, and emergency supplies should we need them. 9:15am, we make the summit of Wittenberg - it was WINDY and COLD but clear. 10am we make the summit of Cornell Mtn. We keep going. 11:30am we pass the 3500' sign on our way to the Slide Summit. 11:45am we approach a very steep section approaching Slides summit, we aren't sure how much trail is left before the summit, we know we are all tire and dehydrating, running low on water. Its getting colder and windier, and we know the storm is close. Having decided already that we are not sleeping at the leanto, we know we've extended our hike for the day by the 3.5 miles it is from the leanto to our cars. We forego the summit, painfully, and turn around. We climb back up and over Cornell and then Wittenberg. Return to camp, pack up, hike out to our cars, covered in over a foot of snow at this point and promise to come back to summit Slide.

The drive home to Boston was long and slow. We will be back!

Sunrise at Terrace Mtn Leanto

Wittenberg Summit

 

[Desalad]

Lost Crampon...

Oh yeah, and on our hike back out, my right crampon broke. The heel binding plastic snapped. I strapped the broken crampon to my pack with a biner. My biner broke. I didn't notice until it was too late. It's likely that the crampon is buried under the snow. Maybe someone will find it, maybe not. Its a black diamond contact strap crampon, right foot, and its broken. Buried somewhere on the Terrace Mountain Trail.

 

[Jay H]

Nice report...Re; The crampons You could probably PM Warren, he's the Terrace Mountain leanto caretaker and a VFTT member if you don't know him, might not find it til the snow melts.

If you've hit the steep section on Slide, you're getting close. Nice views back towards Cornell when you climb Slide. There's also a ladder just below the John Burrough's plaque, which I presume you didn't get to, cause from there the summit is just a hop skip and a jump.

Nice pictures Desalad, Wittenberg is always nice.

Jay

 

[Desalad]

Nice report...Re; The crampons You could probably PM Warren, he's the Terrace Mountain leanto caretaker and a VFTT member if you don't know him, might not find it til the snow melts.

I've chatted with Warren about the leanto in the past. I'll send him a message to let him know. Although, the only reason to retrieve it would be to not leave the junk in the woods. I actually was able to get my money back from REI for the crampons. I walked in with one crampon and the box. Explained the right one broke on the trail, and fell off my pack due to biner failure. They took the one crampon and refunded my money. No problem. So one broken crampon is no use to me, although maybe I could make a nice piece of art out of it

There's also a ladder just below the John Burrough's plaque, which I presume you didn't get to, cause from there the summit is just a hop skip and a jump.

We did not reach the ladder. I think we might have only been about 3 or 4/10 of a mile away, we were a couple minutes past the 3500' sign. As much as it hurt to turn around, we would have been fools to have kept going with the storm only minutes away!

 

[MattC]

Good report and pics Desalad. Gotta love that pink winter sunrise. No shame in "only" bagging Witt and Cornell in winter. Sounds like a great adventure. I did that W-C-S loop last August and it was kind of a life-changer. After the view from Witt (and the entire hike), I knew I wanted to hike a lot more than I ever had up until then. I also started writing a lyric about Burroughs while I was up there. The whole area is truly inspirational. And lastly, but certainly not leastly, while on the summit of Slide, I met Mark Schaefer, who told me about this website, thus dooming me forever.

Matt

PS Pretty cool that REI took care of you with the crampons...