Seward Range - Seymour

September 23, 2010

After work, Pat and Wendy came over and we piled our gear into Wendy's car for the drive down. The border crossing was quick. Stopped in Canton for a bite to eat which was not very quick. Arrived at Coreys Road shortly after 22:00, where we had rented a cottage for one night. Drank a couple beers and then went to bed.

September 24, 2010

Woke up lazily after a great sleep in the cottage. Now that we could see the outside of it in the light it looked like a nice place, however we were not staying. Cooked up a big breakfast of bagels, eggs, sausages and a boat load of coffee before piling back in the car and driving down to the trailhead at the end of the road. Hitched up our full packs and the three of us started hiking down the Blueberry trail towards the lean-tos at the base of the mountains. Moments later the skies openned up in a down pour. Even though it was fairly hot we donned rain jackets to avoid getting completely soaked and continued on. Fifteen minutes later, the sun was shining and we were stripping down to avoid getting completely soaked with sweat. The trail is quite a nice walk through the woods along here. The only visual annoyance being the "NO TRESPASSING" signs every fifty feet along the north edge of the trail. We made sure to step off to the south side when we had to go pee. After a couple of hours we arrived at the Blueberry lean-to where we found Debbie and Hilary's sleeping bags. We set up tents behind the lean-to and ditched all unecessary gear inside. After a quick snack we hitched up the packs again and continued on towards Seymour Mountain. Finding the herd path was easy, however the Ward Brook lean-to is not in the correct location on the USGS topo map. We started up the mountain. It was a steady but gentle climb at first along a well trodden but good trail. We met a couple women on their way down and we asked them if they had seen Debbie and Hilary. They said they had met our friends several hours ago while Debbie and Hilary were descending. We had thought we would run into them on our way up, but now we wondered where they were off to. Anyway we continued. The climb got quite interesting with lots of rock slabs and scrambles. The summit was fairly easily won after a couple hours of hiking from the camp site. Although the summit itself was treed in, just below it there was a great lookout facing the main Seward range where we sat and ate our lunch. The descent and hike back to camp took another couple of hours. We arrived back at camp and met Debbie and Hilary. They had gone off on a side hike after finising Seymour to check out the Camp Four lean-tos, hence we missed passing them. Cooked up supper and then hung out around a nice fire. We were expecting Katharina and Na to show up at some point as they were driving down in the afternoon and hiking in during the evening. At around 21:00 I decided to go for a walk down the trail towards the parking area to see if I could meet them. Hilary joined me, and about ten minutes from camp we saw two headlamps bobbing towards us. We all rejoined at camp, and then went to bed as we were planning an early start the next morning.

Domestic chores after breakfast in the morning.