Hough and South Dix

January 12, 2019

I was feeling a bit slothy after the holiday season and needed a mountain fix. Looking at my winter list, I had the whole Dix range clear, so gave my friend Deb a call to see if she was up for a hard day out to see how many peaks of the range we could pull off in a single push. I can always count on Deb for a crazy outing and she was for sure in. The adventure started with the drive down. As we approached Long Lake we found two boys with a snowmobile stuck in the ditch. We stopped to help, Deb taking immediate control of the situation. "Move aside boys, I'm driving, you're pushing. Where's the gas pedal on this thing?" With three of us pulling the skis and Deb reving the engine we hauled the machine out onto flat ground. The rest of the drive was uneventful and we pulled into the Adirondack Hotel, had a couple beers and went to bed.

At 06:30 the next morning, we pulled into the Clear Lake parking area and took a look at the road, hoping to ski the approach into the range. A plowed and sanded road greeted us... that was going to be a no-go. We swapped out our ski boots for hiking boots, freezing our fingers in the process as it was -22 degrees on this fridgid morning. Finally got fitted up for hiking and began the march down the road, trying to warm our hands by balling up our fingers inside the gloves. About 100m down the road, the sand stopped and ski tracks appeared... dang, we could have skied it. Too late now, we were already committed to the walk. We briskly walked along, warming up as we went, finally reaching the summer trailhead where we were greeted with an unbroken trail. Snowshoes on at this point and we spent the rest of the day ploughing through fresh powder. We took a brief break at the Slide Brook lean-to, and then continued on to Lillian Brook, where we decided to make our ascent. Our orignal working plan had been to start via Hunter's pass up Dix, but with the fresh unbroken snow in front of us, changed our minds, figuring that Hough could be the first battle, and a battle it gave us. The trail down low was not too bad to follow, and for the most part we stayed on it, with only the occasional deviation into bushwhack territory. Actually we did pretty well all the way to the Hough/Pough col, after which the herd path became pretty much impossible to follow. In the end we simply found our own way, which turned out to be a fairly asthetic route up the ridgeline to Hough. On one particularly steep pitch, which took some great difficulty to make upwards progress in the loose snow, I swore I saw snowshoe tracks at the top. This spured the push up this, finally pulling out the ice axes to hook trees to gain purchase upwards. The snowshoe tracks turned out to be some sort of canine animal tracks, and though this did not help too much in the trail breaking department, it did follow a nice route on upwards for a while, until we intersected the herd path where there was some open rocks. From here it was a fairly straight forward climb up to the false summit and then onward to the true summit. We did not stay long as it was still cold and a light but steady breeze made standing around somewhat unpleasant. We followed our own tracks back to the col, where we found a sunny patch, sheltered from the wind, to eat some lunch. It was now 13:00, we still had some daylight left, but we had done some pretty hard work to this point. South Dix looked pretty close, so we figured, lets climb that one, and maybe someone will have broken out the trail from Macomb, giving us a path home.

Well, the north face of South Dix really gave us a run for our money. We started on the herd path, immediately lost it, and simply walked through open woods towards our goal. Unfortunately the open woods did not remain open for very long. In fact they became an impeneterable mass of blowdown and tightly woven spruce trees. Upwards progress was completely blocked. We painfully made our way east, figuring the herd path must be over that way. After an excrutiatingly long time to move maybe 50 meters, we gave up and back-tracked, trying a westward direction. No such luck either. Much cursing ensued, but the forest seemed to be thinning a little to the west, so we kept on pushing that way, angling up slope whenever possible. I figured we could at least join the path from Macomb on the ridge if we did not stumble across the cut through this mess on the north face. We never stumbled on the path, but did manage to pull, curse, and scrape our way finally onto the open rock slopes of the west side of South Dix. Relieved at finally being out in the open, away from the accursed trees of doom, we quickly scampered up to the summit. No one had been here and no easy path lay before us towards Macomb as we had hoped. The day was getting late, we had had enough route finding for one day, so we decided to simply head back down to Lilian brook from the South Dix/Macomb col. Again, we started out on a herd path, and quickly lost it. I ceased caring at this point, since the woods were open and travel was easy. Then the terrain got fairly steep, and it sucked us into a nasty creek gully with steep walls and lots of blowdown lying at the bottom. We climbed out of this several times, only to be drawn back down inwards over and over again, as we made our descent. Finally the terrain leveled off, the woods opened up, and we quickly found our path from this morning. From here we could shut off our navigational minds and just plod along the same track we used coming up. We noticed that there were more tracks than just ours, and we hoped that anyone that had followed was heading towards Hough and not the disaster route we put up South Dix. We did not stop moving until we got back to Slide Brook, where again we stopped at the lean-to for a break, just as the sun set. The last couple of hours slogging out was done under headlamp and beautiful moonlight. The moon being bright enough to switch off the headlamps on the open stretches, allowing some peaceful walking in the fridgid night air. The gate at Clear Pond was a welcome sight after twelve hours on the move. Pizza and beer at the Adirondack hotel was fantastic. Being able to crawl upstairs to bed was even better.

Hiking along some open woods. Are we on trail?

Summit of Hough on a beautiful day.

Looking over at the Beckhorn.

Looking back at Hough from Pough.

Summit of South Dix.

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