March 14th, 2020
~ submitted by John Young
Snow in the trees, again! My sixth excursion in the last two months, and each time has been beautiful, and always in different ways. This one, we had clear skies with snow decorating the trees, and glorious vistas, not only from the summit, but from the viewpoints along the way.
When we pulled into the parking lot at 8:30, there was only one other vehicle there, and on the climb up we didn’t see anyone else. Crossing McGarrigle Creek was easy, as there hadn’t been any rain recently and it had frozen overnight so the creek was low.
We didn’t encounter much snow until almost 10 a.m., and shortly after that we donned our traction devices. Soon after we came to the logging road trail, we took the trail to the right, the outer route, and there was more snow, although not so much that we wished we had packed snowshoes. There was enough, however, to make following the trail a little difficult, resulting in us taking 4 hours to reach the summit.
It was beautiful up top, but a light breeze chased us off for cover where we ate our lunch.
It was icy on the descent, but I’ve seen it lots worse, and after two hours we were back at the parking lot, with about 20 vehicles there now.
