Seward Range

February 11, 2017

Drove to Corey's road early in the morning. A few centimeters of fresh snow blanketed the icy road as I drove in, but had no problems driving to the winter trailhead. The gate was open, but before commiting a 2wd car to this stretch of road, I figured I should get out and investigate. Road conditions were marginal. It was tempting to make the attempt and drive it, but on the other hand I had not planned for the gate to be open in the first place when contriving of this adventure, and besides, I had skis and the fresh powder looked great for skiing. I pulled into the empty parking lot, and promptly got stuck. A bit of rocking the car and I was free again and backed up into a space. I strapped on my skis and departed at 05:20 down the road. Coasting along the road was divine. I switched off my headlamp for the climbs, and flipped it on again for the descents. A few tire ruts frozen into the snow made me glad that I had left the car behind, and also put my mind at ease, as I am sure that had I managed to successfully drive it in, I would have been worried about getting out the entire day. Numerous animals had tracked out the fresh snow. I followed lots of deer, hare, and some sort of small dog, probably fox or coyote. In very little time I arrived at the summer parking lot where there were two 4wd vehicles parked, both from yesterday as they were blanketed in snow. I signed in at the register and continued skiing up the trail. This was a little rough going, but at the horse junction, no one had travelled it so I decided to take this shortcut. The skiing along here was also divine, although some of the downhills were a little hairy due to blowdown and fast snow conditions. The trail towards Caulkins Brook was also great skiing, and after two hours of travel I arrived at the base of the mountain.

I stashed my skis behind a big cedar tree, switched to snowshoes and started climbing. The walk through the forest here was quite lovely, a previous track faintly visible as slight depression beneath the new fallen snow. As I climbed higher, the track got harder to follow, but navigation was pretty straight forward along here. After a couple hours of climbing, I reached the ridge and started the final push up Donaldson. Up here the faint track came and went, but generally the navigation rule was follow the only tunnel through the trees. I arrived on Donaldson's summit at about 09:30 and sat down for a bagel and gazed out at the grayness. No views today.

I did not stay long and then began the push towards Emmons. This was tough. The trail was very difficult to follow, and the snow deep enough that the tree tunnel was mostly about waist high. The trees were coated in blocks of ice and tended to punch back as I bashed my way through them. I recommend football pads and a helmet for this stretch. For the most part I managed to stay on the trail, the few excursions off being short lived as travel immediately became even more difficult causing me to backtrack until I regained the herd path. I also got very wet due to the constant bombardment of snow and ice from the trees, as well as the numerous times I spent crawling through deep powder to get under horizontal trunks. As I neared the summit of Emmons, I lost all sign of the trail. I whacked around the east side, got stymied by a cliff as I tried to angle back to where I knew the path lay, and continued around until I found a way upwards on the south ridge. A spruce trap or two later, I caught a brief glimpse through the trees which showed that it was all downhill from here if I continued south, so realizing that I must have passsed the summit, turned north, followed the law of up, until I found the Emmons sign on top. This peak marks the completion of the second round of the 46 for me, so I celebrated with another bagel and a chocolate bar. I was now a bit cold and soaking wet, so I did not stay long. I broke out the remainder of the herd path on the way down until I reached my tracks, drew an arrow in the snow showing those that follow the correct direction, and continued back towards Donaldson. My plan was to climb Seward today too, but at this point I was a bit fed up with body checking trees and searching for the route, so figuring that my primary mission was accomplished, I would just head back down at Caulkins.

As I re-climbed Donaldson though, I met a group of guys. They were very surprised when I told them that they were the first people I had seen all day, as they stated the whole range is broken out with about thirty other people on the mountain. This put Seward back in the cards. I popped up on Donaldson, gingerly stepping around a pee hole in the middle of the path to another large group of guys. They thanked me profusely for breaking the trail out, appologized for the pee hole, and then left the summit to me and I found myself alone again. I set off towards Seward now on a well packed path. A bunch more body checking of trees ensued, but overall this stretch was much more open than the Emmons path. My hands were beginning to get cold in my second pair of soaking wet gloves, and wanting to keep my third and final set dry, I opted to open a single chemical hand warmer which I would swap between gloves to warm them up. I had a second warmer, but decided to save it for later in case I really needed it. About 100m up the trail I found a piece of a snowshoe binding, which I pocketed as garbage. Another 100m up the trail I found an unopenned bag of corn chips. I also pocketted this. A third 100m up the trail, I found a chemical hand warmer melting itself into the snow. I stuck this in my second glove. Now both hands were toasty warm, even if a they were soaking wet. Some sort of good karma going on here. On the steep pitches towards the summit, I ran into the hoardes of people. Most of them barely moving up the trail. I asked to pass and made my way around whenever the opportunity to get by on the narrow trail presented. The summit was another crowd of people, but I got someone to take my picture with the knee high summit sign. I left quickly as there were more people than can fit on this tiny summit. After passing the hoarde on the way down, I was then solo for the rest of the day, which is the way I wanted it for today.

Descending Caulkins Brook went quickly as the trail was packed, and once below 3500' or so, the forest opens up enough to walk again standing fully upright. I was now very hungry, but did not want to stop, so mucnched on granola bars as I travelled until I arrived back at my skis. Here I sat down for ten minutes, ate the fortuitous bag of corn chips, and finshed off my thermos of tea. Rewaxed the skis, hitched up the snowshoes to my pack, and then sped off down the trail. This was fast going as I coasted along the snowshoe trench. It was not nearly as divine skiing on the packed trail as this morning, but at least it was fairly effortless. Arriving at the horse trail junction, I was pleased to find that no one had walked this trail, so I again had divine skiing conditions for a bit until re-joining the snowshoe trench, just before the summer parking lot. The lot was completely full of SUVs and trucks, but no people. I signed out and then skied out onto the road anticipating it to be miserable ski conditions for the next five kilometers. I was plesantly surprised to find still a bunch of untracked powder along the sides, and the ski back to the winter lot was fairly pleasant only took about thirty minutes.

I finished the day after about 11.5 hours on the move. Drove back to Tupper Lake and had supper at the Pine Grove restaurant. Tonight I even managed to fit in some blueberry pie after a hearty meal and a wonderful glass of coffee stout.

Lovely walk through the woods on the Caulkins Brook herd path.