Cliff and Redfield

March 14, 2015

Yesterday I drove down with Andy and Emily, meeting Kellen at the Cloudsplitter Cabins. The plan was to hike in this morning, set up a camp in the Flowed Lands, and then climb Marshall on Sunday. Unfortunately Andy caught the plague during the drive down, and Emily was feeling a little under the weather as well, so it ended up as just myself and Kellen. We decided that we would just do a day hike and see how everyone felt on Sunday. Anyway, we started in from Upper Works at 06:40 under headlamps for the first few minutes until the sun came up. Several other groups had signed in before us, and everyone had listed Cliff and Redfield as their objective so we figured it was going to be crowded on the mountain. The trail into the Flowed Lands went quickly, where we passed one of the groups of nine people while they were taking a break. The walk across the Flowed Lands was spectacular, and the trail even crossed the river as it was frozen good and solid. This saved us from hiking a couple of kilometers of rugged trail to Colden dam. We began to ascend, and at Uphill brook we met forum member Redtail and exchanged greetings. He was headed to Gray and Skylight, so we said goodbye with an invitation to return to his lean-to for a drink later in the day. We arrived at the Cliff/Redfield junction and met a couple hikers who had just completed Cliff and were now headed to Redfield. I had wanted to climb Redfield first, but decided to do Cliff instead so we would not be tripping over each other. Cliff was fairly easily won, using just our snowshoes, however axes were handy for some of the icy ledges. Even though it was overcast, we got some great views as the cloud ceiling was quite high. We reached the summit after four hours hiking and sat down for a lunch. As we packed up to leave, the clouds rolled in and that was the end of the views for the day. On the way down, we passed a lot of people on their way up, including one woman who was slightly offended at my admittedly somewhat out of control glissading. The trek to Redfield was fairly uneventful, the trail being well packed and pretty easy walking. As we summitted, it was starting to drizzle with a bit of ice pellets mixed in for good measure, but fortunately the precipitation never really amounted to much. After a second lunch, we passed the large group again, and then were back on the marked trail heading down beside the fantastic gorges of the Opalescent River. Back at the Flowed Lands we stopped at Redtail's lean-to, but he was still out hiking. We took a long break here and had a friendly chat with a ranger who was on his way into Lake Colden. Redtail did not appear and we had finished polishing off my small flask of whisky, so we headed out on the seemingly never-ending slog back to the parking lot, arriving after a 10.5 hour day. We drove back to Cloudsplitter, and fortunately Andy and Emily had managed to book us in for a second night. Kellen and I drove into Long Lake for supper at the hotel, and finally back to the cabin for another beer and a good sleep.

Walking across the Flowed Lands in the morning.