Max
New member
Date(s) Hiked: Saturday, March 5, 2005
Trails(s) Hiked: Castle Trail
Total Distance: 8.6 miles
Difficulty: 8 or 9 on a scale of 1-10, not a beginners winter hike!
Conditions: Temp in teens, 20 mph wind, drifted snow
Special Required Equipment: Snowshoes
Trip Report: Well, the object today was to summit Mt. Jefferson and check one of my "final four" off the list. I didn't quite accomplish the task, so I'll have to return for another shot.
I started out via the Castle Trail at 7:45 AM. There were one set of tracks ahead of me. I bare-booted it until the stream crossing, then put on the snowshoes for the climb. At the 3.5 mile point I caught up to the guy in front of me at the junction of the Link Trail. I took over the trail breaking from that point as he was stopping to change clothes. That's about the point that the hiking got serious. Scrambling up the steep ledges was pretty tough. Once onto the Castles, it got even more difficult. It was a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. Leave the snowshoes on and avoid the spruce traps and chest deep drifts, but suffer while scrambling over the rocks, or take them off and move quickly across the boulders yet curse the heavens every time a drift looms. I kept them on.
I plugged away until just a short ways below the Cornice, perhaps .2 miles short of that junction, and then just ran out of "gas." I think it was a combination of only 4 hours sleep the night before, plus not being fully recovered from last Sunday's Hyannis marathon. With the wind whipping up and my glycogen stores becoming depleted, I took the noble route and headed back down. A couple hundred yards below, the other hiker was slogging towards the summit.
Perhaps in retrospect, I should have gone up via Lowe's Path, as the open boulder field on the Castle Trail really sapped my energy. Ahh, it'll be there still and after coming down and seeing how wiped out I was, I'm glad I didn't push the extra .7 miles (and back), since that part would have been as difficult or more so than the Castles section below. It was a lovely day up there, though the high summits were getting socked in a bit and the wind was a bit brisk, but not so much that it was energy draining.
Max
Trails(s) Hiked: Castle Trail
Total Distance: 8.6 miles
Difficulty: 8 or 9 on a scale of 1-10, not a beginners winter hike!
Conditions: Temp in teens, 20 mph wind, drifted snow
Special Required Equipment: Snowshoes
Trip Report: Well, the object today was to summit Mt. Jefferson and check one of my "final four" off the list. I didn't quite accomplish the task, so I'll have to return for another shot.
I started out via the Castle Trail at 7:45 AM. There were one set of tracks ahead of me. I bare-booted it until the stream crossing, then put on the snowshoes for the climb. At the 3.5 mile point I caught up to the guy in front of me at the junction of the Link Trail. I took over the trail breaking from that point as he was stopping to change clothes. That's about the point that the hiking got serious. Scrambling up the steep ledges was pretty tough. Once onto the Castles, it got even more difficult. It was a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. Leave the snowshoes on and avoid the spruce traps and chest deep drifts, but suffer while scrambling over the rocks, or take them off and move quickly across the boulders yet curse the heavens every time a drift looms. I kept them on.
I plugged away until just a short ways below the Cornice, perhaps .2 miles short of that junction, and then just ran out of "gas." I think it was a combination of only 4 hours sleep the night before, plus not being fully recovered from last Sunday's Hyannis marathon. With the wind whipping up and my glycogen stores becoming depleted, I took the noble route and headed back down. A couple hundred yards below, the other hiker was slogging towards the summit.
Perhaps in retrospect, I should have gone up via Lowe's Path, as the open boulder field on the Castle Trail really sapped my energy. Ahh, it'll be there still and after coming down and seeing how wiped out I was, I'm glad I didn't push the extra .7 miles (and back), since that part would have been as difficult or more so than the Castles section below. It was a lovely day up there, though the high summits were getting socked in a bit and the wind was a bit brisk, but not so much that it was energy draining.
Max