Saturday, January 14, 2023
Miles: 20.14
Start: The Ausable Club
End: The Garden
Elevation gain/loss: 8878’/8776′
Peaks: Lower and Upper Wolfjaw, Armstrong, Gothics, Saddleback, Basin, Little Haystack, Haystack
I met up with Katie, Troy, and Alex at 5:30am at the Ausable Club, after meeting Megan at the Garden at 5:15am to spot my car and driving over together. With what looked like a decent weather window, we headed out on the Lake Road. After a few miles, we turned into the woods and started slowly climbing. There had been ~3-5″ of snow the day before and the trail was soft and hard to follow. We put on our snowshoes soon after turning off the road and I then wore them for almost all of our remaining miles. We slogged uphill towards Wolfjaw, and I wasn’t feeling it. My legs were tired, I was too warm, and I was anxious about being with such a large group of people. In short, I was cranky. Partway up the climb, Katie asked me how I was feeling; I said she should ask me later after we were done climbing this first big climb. I found myself in much better spirits after we made it to the intersection with Lower Wolfjaw. I dropped my pack for the 0.3 out and back from the summit and found my legs much less tired. I decided that I’d packed too many self-sufficiency supplies and would ask Katie or Megan to take them when they headed back after Gothics.
With the promise of a lighter pack, and smaller climbs ahead of me, I felt much better facing the day. Granted, the summits were socked in and windy (~30 MPH, windchill as low as ~0); it was lightly snowing for most of the day (which meant we were constantly getting our faces washed by the wind); and all of the trees had snow to dump on us, so the day had many built-in challenges. We summited Upper Wolfjaw as a group and then headed over to Armstrong. The climb up the Armstrong ladder section proved to be challenging for some of our group and we spread out a bit, coming back together on the summit. Then it was on to Gothics, with a relatively short climb that nonetheless was above treeline and somewhat challenging. We made the summit, went a short distance to the trail split, and then Katie, Megan, and Troy headed back down towards the Lake Road. Alex and I headed down the trail, wayfinding as we went in snow that did not look like it had seen other people all winter. Thankfully, with the thaw and freeze, the snow wasn’t too deep. I lead the way down to the rocky slabs that started the sketchy descent of Gothics. The slab at the top only had very thin rime ice, which was not enough for my snowshoe crampons to dig into. As I was descending the first section, my feet went out from under me and I slide 20′ into the bushes. That shook me up enough to make me more careful, which probably wasn’t a bad thing. Perhaps 10 minutes later, after the adrenaline wore off, I realized I’d bruised my knuckles when I fell.
We were thankful for the additional snow fall, because it meant we had a solid base in which to dig our snowshoes. The week before, it had been almost exclusively ice. It was steep enough in sections that we had to turn around and go backwards to take full advantage of our snowshoe crampons, but we felt solid as we descended. We then popped out onto a broken trail at the col between Gothics and Saddleback; we enjoyed having tracks to follow for perhaps half a mile. Then we caught up and passed the 4 people making their way up the mountain from the John Brook Lodge. At the summit of Saddleback, we had to contend with wind, snow, and the Cliffs.
We quickly examined them as best we could and decided we’d go down the ‘winter route.’ In hindsight, I’d have just gone down the summer route and been careful – it was like Gothics, covered in rime ice. We switched to crampons and then Alex carefully shimmied down the 10′ crack, with one rock step in the middle. The start of the crack is really challenging, because you know you should slide off the edge on your belly but once you get near the edge, it’s angled down and impossible to turn around without falling off. So we had to start going off the ledge forward and then twist to put our foot on the step and get our hands on the ledge. Alex helped spot me as I came down, while I focused on not falling and not stabbing him with my crampons. We succeeded in getting down that terrifying section, ducked behind a rock to warm up our hands and secure our packs, and then headed down the rest of the Cliffs. Interestingly, the snow had piled up in such a way that the last two dynamic/large drop moves towards the base of the Cliffs just weren’t there. It was a delightful surprise at a moment when I needed a break. From there, we headed down for a while, giddy that we’d finished both Gothics and Saddleback! The most scary parts were behind us, but we still had some mountains left.
The climb up Basin was incredibly steep, with a number of exposed icy sections that required careful foot placement. The snow was still falling and the wind was still howling, and we were both tired; I kept leading the way, wayfinding as I went. But we made the summit and then headed down, even descending a ladder that was fully visible/usable. Much to our annoyance, we found that we then had to climb quite a bit to get to the trail intersection where we’d take the spur out to Haystack. That was a very long and eternal kind of climb; we were delighted to make it to the intersection where there were other footprints. We dropped our packs, summited very windy Little Haystack, and then carefully descended towards Haystack. There were some exposed sections where I was very careful (and glad to not have the full weight of my pack), and then I paused to enjoy the tree-protected col for a moment before heading back above treeline to climb to Haystack. Then it was back the way we’d come; at our packs, we paused for a few moments before heading out again. There was a small climb and then we were heading down Phelps Trail. We flip-flopped with two other hikers who were also heading to the Garden for the next few hours. The exit took a very long time, but we were back to my car by 7:15pm!
Transcending Mountains 