Marshall

December 8, 2013

Slept like a rock last night despite what sounded like a blizzard outside the tent at one point. Awoke to a fresh inch of snow, and after packing up the sleeping arrangements, we trundled on down to the lean-to where Pat and Grant were beginning to stir. Spent the next couple of hours fixing breakfast and boiling up enough water for the day. At 08:00 we started up Mount Marshall, from the conveniently located trail junction right at the back of the campsite. We followed the trail up Herbert brook, losing it a few times, but quickly regaining it. Remebering the mistake I made in 2009, I warned everyone not to stray too far up the left side on a false path. Well, not too much later, we all were climbing far up the left side on a very well defined trail. As expected though, it petered out into a maze of footprints through the snow in every which direction... and we resigned ourself to our self inflicted bushwhack. At first we tried to contour around, to regain the brook without losing elevation, but that proved to be near imposible in the impenetrable mess of spruce and fallen logs. In the end, we just let gravity do its thing, and we dropped some elevation until we popped out onto the standard herd path along the creek. No further navigational issues were had, and we ascended to the col between the two peaks fairly quickly where we took a break before the final summit push. One tricky set of ledges were climbed, but nothing too challenging, and then we broke out on the summit where we took a few photos, and checked out the lookout towards what I believe to be MacNaughton. It was pretty windy up here, so we descended back down. The descent went quickly, with just enough snow for plunge stepping. We found our bushwhack route, but continued along the herd path for a bit and then stopped for a quick break. We could hear voices above, and they must have heard us, as they called down to ask if we were on the trail. We encouraged them to come back down along our trail, and eventually they popped out of the woods onto the standard route. We apologized for the slight detour we created, they said that it looked like we were not the only ones, and then we parted ways. In a short time we arrived back at the lean-to, had a quick lunch, and then packed up our gear for the hike out. This went quickly, with Shaughn and Eric scooting ahead. Pat, Grant, and I made our own time, which was also reasonably quick, as two hours later we were back at the parking lot, even with stopping a couple times to analyze interesting animal tracks that we found in the snow. Drove into Long Lake, and stopped at a pub for beer and burgers before driving home. The hiking time today was about 6 hours total.

Shaughn and his stylish skeleton onesie.

Our view while eating breakfast.

Climbing Herbert brook.

Grant and I, summit of Marshall.

Nice view of Iroquois spotted on our way down.

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