winter in NY

PostedJan 26, 2015 at 5:17 am

It was indeed a fun trip!

I was starting to doubt my sanity/wisdom a couple of times on Hopkins, having to resort to rest stepping a few times.

We should have some nice conditions in Harriman very soon so it'll be a much quicker trip to the snowy woods. However, the drive for me door-to-trailhead for this trip was 3.5 hrs which isn't bad at all.

Bob Moulder BPL Member

PostedFeb 5, 2015 at 5:03 am

Tentative plans for a quick overnighter with some friends if anyone else is interested. Yes, the dates are Sun-Mon and this is correct, which unfortunately makes it harder for most people.

Although intermittent snow is forecast for both days (1-3" Sunday and again Sun night), at this point it still looks do-able unless it turns out to be a larger event than forecast.

Plan is to park on the circle at the end of Johnsontown Rd (N 41.1800 W 74.1637, dd.dddd format) and go north into moderately easy terrain. This is a snowshoe trip. As usual, trail conditions often determine how far one can go in a day, and avg pace of 1 mph (or less!) is not unusual. However there are camping and bail-out options galore.

Keeping a very close eye on weather and will confirm go/no-go ASAP, but that might be sometime Saturday.

Bob Moulder BPL Member

PostedFeb 10, 2015 at 5:27 am

Serendipity strikes again.

When the weather forecast is kinda semi-iffy/crappy, and the approaching system isn't one of those big, organized monsters that's downright moronic to mess with… well, that's when we might get some fun weather for sneaking in a snowshoeing and camping trip.

And that's exactly what John, Scott, Larry and I got for this short trip. We encountered snow, sleet, freezing rain, fog and a little wind, but never so much as to be nasty. And Nature timed it all so perfectly that we were granted blissfully calm, precipitation-free periods for making and striking camp and for enjoying dinner and breakfast. We kept our goal modest, going only about 5.5 miles north of the parking circle on Johnsontown Road, so a reasonably hasty retreat would have been possible had the weather turned very ugly.

Caltopo track: http://caltopo.com/map?id=3306

The trails were also in relatively good shape, having had one or two snowshoers knock down the soft, heavy snow a bit. But unfortunately they had also been mangled pretty badly by some postholing idiots, which made for annoyingly choppy and uneven strides much of the time. Postholing is such backbreaking labor that I almost feel sorry for the people who do it, until observing the muck they make of what could be a perfect trail. Still, it was far easier than breaking a fresh trail.

We had great time, took in some views and experienced some weather that the average fair-weather hiker never sees.

. first hill of the day One of the nice things about this hike is that we quickly gain a bit of elevation and get a pretty panorama early in the hike. John and Larry near the top of Dater Mountain (a very modest hill, actually!).

. camp 02 In our foggy camp… Scott, Larry and John.

. at our foggy camp The visibility was greatly reduced at times and the freezing rain that fell melted pretty quickly with the temperature right around freezing. Really wasn't that cold at this time.

. testing EB stormdown jacket It was a good time to test the EB stormdown coat with DownTek treatment. I was impressed that it actually worked with the melting ice pellets making it pretty wet… but later in the tent it dried much more quickly than I would have expected.