Seward Range - Seward, Donaldson, and Emmons

September 25, 2010

During the very windy and warm night, I got up in the early morning to go pee. As I walked away from the tent, my headlamp landed on several other tents in the forest that were not there when we had gone to bed. When all seven of us got up around 05:30 we noticed that there was a whole city of tents spread out in the vicinity. When I went to retrieve the food, a dog growled at me from the tent I walked by. We cooked, ate breakfast in the dark, and then hit the trail just as the light was coming up. The sky was clear, and we were pleased that it appeared that we would have good weather for the day. The herd path was a short walk from camp and we began the ascent up Seward. It was fairly muddy in parts, but not too bad. In other parts the woods were very dense and scratched at your arms as you pushed through. The trail was easy to follow however, and we also got some good scrambles in a few spots. Three hours later we arrived on the summit of Seward. There was no view to be had here, so after a quick celebration we pushed on down towards Donaldson. As we had been warned from various internet sources, the descent was steep in parts, requiring a few short down climbs on rock and roots. Shortly after we started climbing again, but this was not Donaldson, simply a false summit of Seward. Finally we finished the descent and a muddy hike through the col brought us to the short ascent of Donaldson. At the Caulkins Brook junction we met a woman cleanly dressed in a white t-shirt and running shoes who had just come up the Caulkins Brook trail and we chatted with her about the possiblity of using that option as our descent route. She then sped off towards Seward, while we continued up the final few feet of Donaldson. The best view of the day was to be had here, as we had a full panoramic view to the entire Eastern High Peaks. Another brief break and we were off towards Emmons. This was a muddy downhill slog. It took an innordinate amount of time to get through this slightly longer than one kilometer stretch. The final climb to the summit of Emmons was less than a hundred meters and acomplished very quickly. It was finished with a neat little scramble to the summit, but no view was to be had here. We ate lunch, hunkering down in the trees as it was very windy and starting to drizzle. On our way back towards Donaldson we ran into a lot of people including the woman with the running shoes. Back at the Caulkins Brook trail we ran into the dog that had growled at me this morning and its three hiking human companions. As we were making good time we decided to take the long route back to camp via Caulkins Brook. This trail was quite nice, and a fairly easy descent route as the slope was much more gentle than route up the north aspect of Seward. As we neared the bottom, the running shoe woman passed us. She was covered in mud. She also told us that this was the muddiest she had ever seen the path between Donaldson and Emmons in her total of eleven hikes of this range. We had a brief break on some rocks at the bottom crossing of the brook and then sped down the old logging road towards Blueberry trail. Debbie and Hilary still had plenty of energy so they offered to hike out to the parking lot and fetch the beer that was stashed in Wendy's car. The rest of us head straight back towards camp. An hour and a half later we arrived, somewhat tired but not exhausted after the ten hour day. Debbie and Hilary wandered in an hour later and gave us some bad news that they had taken the wrong trail and got themselves a bit lost, hence there would be no beer tonight. A bit of dissapointment was had by us thirsty folks. Suddenly a bunch of beer appeared on the table with lots of laughter... they had been pulling our collective leg! The dog group wandered in and we had supper and drinks with them around the picnic table. We lit up a big fire and continued to drink and chat. Once we had run out of beer, these lovely folks had brought a massive bottle of bourbon which we gladly helped lighten their load for the hike back tomorrow. Long after dark a whole bunch of young folk from an outdoor club trickled in. They had climbed Seward, some of them being their first time out hiking! Everyone crowded around our fire and a pretty good party ensued with more whiskey, smores, and some good times with plenty of new friends.

Katharina and I posing in front of a huge boulder near the base of Seward.

Boulder scrambling on our way up.

Headwall just before the summit.

Ampersand Lake.

Hilary and I on the summit of Seward.

View south towards Donaldson and Emmons.

Na having fun on the muddy trail.

Summit of Donaldson.

View back at Seward.

View across to Seymour.

Mike on Emmons Summit.

Wendy on Emmons Summit.

Katharina on Emmons Summit.

Our lean-to campsite.

September 26, 2010

Hilary had packed up and gone before the rest of us even had gotten up, as she wanted an early start on the driving to get to Montreal. We ate a lazy breakfast and then packed up camp, while most of the rest of the tent city slept. Said good bye to the dog folk (one of them had struck out earlier to climb Seymour by herself), and then hit the trail. A couple hours later we arrived at the parking lot and drove to the Thirsty Moose for a big lunch before driving back to Ottawa.

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