Sunday, October 6, 2019
Trailhead: Dix Mountain trailhead near Elk Lake
Miles: 15.6
Elevation Gain: 5040′
GaiaGPS track
After waking up at 5am, packing up my wet tent, and grabbing the rest of my gear, I drove the 45 minutes to the Dix Mountain trailhead and started hiking by headlamp at 6:20am. I made quick time over the first hour, since it was pretty much flat. I had a little trouble finding the herdpath trail split up towards Macomb because someone was camping in the middle of the path. I soon encountered the slide on the side of Macomb, passing by a fellow hiker. Once I made it up the slide and into the trees, the cloud cover got thick and the wind picked up. I made it to the summit of Macomb by 8:20am, South Dix by 9am, Grace by 9:30am (where the wind just about blew me off the mountain), Hough by 11am, and then Dix by 11:55am, and then descended down treacherously wet and steep rockface to get down.
I passed by 4 people hiking towards Dix on my way down. There were 50 MPH winds at the summits, and the trail was completely socked in by damp clouds, so there were no beautiful views to distract me from my hiking speed. I took quick selfies at each and continued on my way. I saw the hiker I passed on his way out to Grace; I encountered him again maybe a mile from the parking lot – he’d taken a wrong turn and completely missed Hough and Dix. All said and done, I saw half a dozen people or so, and many of them looked like they’d hiked yesterday and then camped out overnight. I made it back to my car by 3:05pm, despite twisting my ankle and falling less than a mile away from the parking lot.
Transcending Mountains 