| Summary | |
| Owner | MITOC Gallery Administrator |
| Creation Date | 2006-02-05 19:46:06 UTC-0500 |
| Description | Having been sufficiently hassled about the coming soon status of my trip previous reports, Ive decided that its about time I actually wrote one. Here goes
- Mike Quick Summary Participants: Amanda Morris, Tom Faulkner Leaders: Matthew & Eric Gilbertson, Mike Kokko Trail: Downes Brook Trail Miles Traveled: 9.8 Brook Crossings: 20 Casualties: 1 pair of trekking poles Accommodations: 2 finely-crafted snow shelters Gear we wish we brought: snowshoes, drysuits, kayaks The Soggy Details Matthew, Amanda, Tom, and I left Cambridge at 6am on Saturday and arrived at Intervale around 9:30 to collect Eric after a quick stop at my house to get a roof bag for the car. It was a beautiful day despite the WOKQ weathermans hints of rain starting in the afternoon and lasting till late Sunday morning. Yeah, its January though it wont rain. Especially once we get some altitude. Riiight . We started up the Downes Brook trail at 11:06am and quickly realized where the name came from. More appropriate trail names would be Downes Brook Crossing Trail or better yet, Closed in Winter. It turns out that there are 10 brook crossings on the trail (thats 20 in a round-trip). Matthew put it best after the first crossing, Eric says weve gotta do TEN of those. And so the countdown began. The brook crossings actually werent that bad, and they seemed to get easier as we gained elevation and the brook got smaller. That made us happy because we apparently werent thinking about the hike out When not crossing Downes Brook, the trail was basically what you would expect on a winter hike. We decided against bringing snowshoes because the weather had been really warm and the chances of finding deep snow seemed pretty slim. As we got higher though, we found out where all of this years missing snow wound-up. Breaking trail through ~3 of snow was hard work, so we rotated leaders and made pretty good time. After about 3.5 miles we were greeted by three awesome slides on the western side of Whiteface off to our left. Although they didnt really have enough snow to be skiable, we were intrigued and may return at a later date with appropriate gear for what is sure to be an awesome and rather immediate ascent. We finally reached the junction of the Kate Sleeper Trail about 45 minutes before sunset and got to work building our snow village. Two quinzees, a multi-level kitchen, and a Black Diamond MegaMid were erected with haste. We cooked some rice & beans with chicken, cheese, and butter for dinner while the snow piles compacted, and Eric whipped-up a strawberry cheesecake for dessert. Our luck with the weather started to turn during the qunizee digout and the rain/sleet mix encouraged us to dig faster so we could get inside. Despite some dripping and odd noises, everyone seemed to have a pleasant night (the suspected hungry moose never did come across the brook to attack us). We awoke around 8 or 8:30 to (you guessed it) freezing drizzle in the not-so-crisp 1.8 degree Celsius morning air. The group was divided between wanting to summit Whiteface (0.8 miles further) and just return to the car. After a sluggish breakfast and breakdown, we decided to start back down the Downes Brook trail at 9:30 rather than breaking trail upwards through the sleet. None of us realized just how much one night of rain could elevate the level of the brook we had dodged the previous day. The difficulty of the river crossings increased exponentially as we descended until they became not only annoying but also borderline dangerous. By the seventh or eighth crossing, even Tom (our sole mouse-boot-clad trekker) had frigid water sloshing around his feet. Although just a half-mile from the trailhead, the last brook crossing (river crossing?) proved the greatest challenge. Traveling downstream quite a distance yielded only mildly less-menacing crossings. I think we all wiped-out along the brook at one point or another, but the current at the final step sent a couple of us for an unexpected icy swim. The rest of the group acted quickly, and after bringing everyone to shore we all warmed-up and put on dry clothing. The last half-mile went pretty quickly and I think we were all glad to see the car. Amazingly, the roof bag let us fit everyone into my luxurious Honda Civic without holding packs on our laps. Fortunately there were bridges across the Pemi and Merrimack rivers on the way back to Boston, and we got there without incident thanks to Beef Log and Dunkaccino. Now its time to dry-out gear and play who owns this clothing. |