Wright Peak

December 31, 2009

We got up a little later this morning and drove to the ADK Lodge trailhead for a 09:00 start. The day was fairly warm at about -7 degrees as we strapped on our snowshoes and begun up the Van Hoevenburg Expressway. There was five of us; Myself, Katharina, Wendy, Andy, and John. We reached the Wright junction and shed a layer prior to beginning the ascent. The trail on snow shoes was much easier in winter than when we had come down the same trail a month earlier on rock. The snow filled in all the holes and crevaces. After a couple hours we reached the junction for the final ascent to the peak. We continued on snowshoes until we broke above the tree line, at which point we switched to crampons. The bare rock was very icy and the wind was howling as we trudged up the last couple hundred meters to the summit. We took a break to regroup while hunkered down out of the wind behind some rocks. John had to turn back because his ice climbing crampons were not gripping properly on the thin rocky ice we were dealing with. The rest of us summited and then quickly descended back into the shelter of the trees where we met John again and switched back to snowshoes. We continued descending down to the junction and took a long lunch break as it was sheltered here and the day was now fairly warm. After lunch, Andy spied a small rocky outcrop a little way off the trail, so Andy and I decided to climb it. The other three went down directly as they had no interest in this side trip. The two of us bushwhacked throuogh deep snow to the base of the rock face and then walked along it until we found a spot that we could scramble up. The snow was incredibly deep and we were esentially wallowing and making very little progress forward. Eventually we managed to slog onto the bare rock of the small summit, and I named the bump Adler Peak, as it was Andy who had the brilliant idea to come up here. Going down was much easier in the deep snow as gravity was now on our side. Nevertheless we fell a few times and it was difficult to get back up. We rejoined the real trail and made a quick descent the rest of the way to the Van Hoevenburg junction where we took a final break and chatted with an AT skier. We got back to the trailhead after a six hour day, met the other three who had arrived slightly before us, and then drove back to Keene Farm for celebrations of the New Year.

Sorting out the equipment in the parking lot.