Gray

April 6, 2024

Looking at weather forecasts on Wednesday evening indicated a large late season dump of snow followed by a stellar weather window of clear skies starting on Saturday. With the pathetic winter now behind us I could not resist the temptation to go play in what might be real snow before switching gears to summer activities. The forecasted snow lived up to all expectations. Unfortunately the weather window did not. Nevertheless I got down to the ADK for a romp in the best winter hiking conditions of the year.

Arrived at the Loj just before 06:30 and after checking the trail conditions, strapped the big snowshoes onto my feet in the parking lot and left the MSRs milk crates in the car. My primary goal was Gray Peak, but figuring I would be doing a lot of trail breaking I surmised that if I found the going too tough, Colden would make a good secondary objective. If by some unlikely reason the going went easy (haha!), maybe I could tag Colden on the way back from Gray. As I signed in at the register I was pleased to note that there were two entries ahead of me; one party of two heading to Gray, and a solo hiker heading to Colden. I could not believe my luck here. All those years performing community service to break out trails after snowstorms might finally pay off!

The trail into Marcy Dam was well travelled by skiers and a few hikers, so travel went quickly and easily. At the remains of the Dam I broke out a path to a rock hop above the dam and skipped across to the second sign-in register. Travel continued to be good until I hit the Avalanche pass ski trail, where all the skiers had turned off. Nevertheless, three people on snowshoes in front of me had packed a decent trail and the going continued to be good. As I approached Lake Arnold, I met the Colden hiker coming down. He had found the trail breaking too tough past Lake Arnold so had pulled the pin on his day.

The view from Marcy Dam shows that I am unlikely to get views up high today.

Arriving at the Lake Arnold, the track went down to basically big prints in the deep powder of the two people in front of me. I hoped they were game to keep going and followed along. The track took me on an interesting bit of bushwhacking around some of the impassible sections of the dead marshes, but the route they had chosen around these areas of the doom worked out well. I finally caught up to the pair just after turning upwards towards Lake Tear and joined forces with Andrew and Elena to break out the remainder of the mountain.

Following a pair of trail angels.

The crux of Feldspar on this day.

They stopped for a well earned water break as I continued on upwards, happy to be finally contributing some of the effort on this day. Even though the snow was deeper than the length of my pole the going was not quite as hard as one would imagine. The snow, though powdery, was fairly dense and the 30" shoes did a fine job of staying near the surface. It was not long before they caught up to me again and we swapped snow wallowing duties all the way up to Lake Tear where we stopped for a quick break in the fog.

Virgin snow.

Lake Tear in the clouds.

The short bit of herd path to the summit took us almost an hour, losing the trail once or twice, but with the aid of Andrew's magic wrist watch, managed to regain it pretty quickly. I felt a little silly carrying my compass around my neck when this marvel of technology simply tells you at a glance that the trail lies about 10 meters to your left or right. We hit the top of the mountain but with the view of white in all directions were not entirely sure. I felt like I remembered this as the place from my last visit in 2016, while Andrew checked his watch and stated that we were there but Elena wanted to check further. Immediately after starting eastwards, she almost stepped on the summit sign in the snow at her feet. I celebrated with a photo as this peak marks the completion of my third round of the 46.

3x46! I swear this mountain is always in the fog.

Me and my new friends enjoying the typical view from Gray Peak.

We descended together and in the fantastic powder and within few minutes were back at Lake Tear where we all sat down for another break. Andrew and Elena wanted to head down to Lake Colden and I wanted to return the same way I had come so we parted company here. As I descended towards Feldspar, I noticed my hands were getting rather cold and I was having trouble gripping my poles. I put on some overmitts, but that did not seem to help and I figured I better do something about this before it got serious. I pulled out a package of chemical handwarmers that had been riding in my pack for the year of no winter and resorted to tearing open the package with my teeth as the frozen fingers were no longer functional. Within minutes they had activated and I endured a long interval of painful hell as the circulation and warmth returned to my icy digits.

As I crossed back across the dead marshes it began to snow, and I was starting to get tired as I made the climb up towards Lake Arnold. Here I noted that the trail to Colden was now a packed highway, and I briefly considered climbing it. The aching feet, falling snow, and dense cloud cover made the decision to simply head downwards fairly easy to make though. I briefly enjoyed a smooth packed trail until I met an endless string of post holers which made the trail not so nice. While signing through the Marcy Dam register, a shirtless guy (?) asked for directions to Avalanche pass, after which I scampered the last bit back to the parking lot ending a 9.5 hour hike.

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