Nippletop and Dial

January 27, 2018

Inaugural Winter-Palooza weekend. Somewhere around fifteen or twenty of us descended down on the ADK for this ACC Ottawa winter outing. A few went ice climbing, a lot went skiing, and a few of us decided to knock of some winter ascents of 4000ers. I volunteered to lead the advanced hike in which four of us set out to hike the Nippletop loop. Four of us (Cori, Joey, Rachel, and myself) set out from the AMR at 07:00 and walked down the road to the gatehouse. After signing in we immediately donned microspikes as Lake road was a sheet of ice over gravel. Several others were hiking in and even a few hearty folk on skis. While I usually love the skiing aspect of Lake road, today was not for me in that mode of transport. We crunched on upwards and in short time we arrived at Gill Brook where we began the real hike. Conditions were thin and microspikes were the order of the moment as we hiked along this lovely trail, and stopping to inspect several of the beautiful ice formations along the brook. At the Indian head junction we took a quick break and I proposed the side trip to this fantastic lookout above the Ausuble Lakes. The decision wavered both ways, but in the end we decided to save our energy and simply push on towards the main objective and nipple of our desires. As we climbed higher we met a couple guys coming off of Colvin, who had had to turn back due to icy conditions, reinforcing the reason I had everyone pack crampons for this trip, though these folk were in some sort of yak-trak like contraptions that really did not look like they would provide much traction. After a short break and a slight complaint from Cori about being too slow, we pushed on into Elk pass, with Cori setting a fierce pace that we struggled to keep up with. On the steep section up towards Nippletop it began to get icy, though not too seriously. Joey and Rachel had never used crampons before, and though the ice could have been negotiated in microspikes, when we came to a particularly good stretch, I decided that this would make a good teaching moment and declared that we should try out the pokey shoes. Everyone swapped footwear and we climbed the rest of the way to the ridge spending our time aiming for the icy parts, practicing, and experimenting with the gear. At the summit the wind was howling, but at least the temperatures were just slightly below freezing so we could stay a bit for a few photos and appreciation of the view. We decided to head downwards for lunch though and try to find a more sheltered spot. The ridge had about a meter of compact snow, which crampons were no longer useful for, so we switched now to our snowshoes. Travel was easy in these and we descended quickly into the Dial col and found a spot in the woods for lunch. The climb up Dial went fairly easily with a few icy patches negotiated in the snowshoes and another windy summit greeted us which made it difficult to take photos due to being blown over. We scampered on down, then over Bear Den, and down some more until the snow got too thin for snowshes. We switched to micros again, descended some more, and finally took a last break in the pretty swamp before the Noonmark shoulder. Here the weather changed, right on forecasted schedule, fogging in with a light snowshower. We quickly finished up our repast, and continued onwards over the Noonmark shoulder, wanting to get down before it started raining. The rain never really manifested until much later in the evening, so we finished the hike comfortably dry after a nine hour day.

Gill Brook.

Refueling prior to the final summit push.

Climbing the Nipple.

Summit of Nippletop.

Gothics and friends.

Some hikers having too far too much fun on Dial.

Climbing Noonmark.

Looking back at our route as the weather moves in.

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