Wright Peak

December 6, 2015

Awoke at a civilized hour of a quarter past five and fumbled around in the dark fixing breakfast and packing up the tent. It was substantially colder this morning at -7, and my wet boots from yesterday had frozen completely sold. Rather than trying to thaw them on my feet, I decided to just wear an old, nearly worn out pair of hiking boots that I had brought along in case of such mishap. This would prove to cause me grief later in the day. I drove to the Loj and hit the trail at 08:00. Travelled quickly down the Van Ho to the Algonquin junction and then started climbing. The ice started much earlier today. At about 2700 feet, I slipped on a patch with one foot, did a fancy dance clear off the trail, grabbed a partner (a convenient small tree) and she swung me around and finally ungloriously tumbled me arse over tea kettle into a pile of leaves. I put on my microspikes. It has been a while since I have hiked this trail. It is really quite a mess with round boulders everywhere and a muddy stream running through it all. A few nice icy scrambles up higher though, and I began to actually think about putting on crampons. At the Wright spur junction a steep icy trail awaited and decided me to switch footwear to the pokey shoes. As I was sitting on my pack strapping them on, a young woman decended while wearing nothing at all on her feet for traction. I felt a bit of a fool, but continued tying up the pons. As I climbed though, I felt less of the fool as I was very glad for having real traction in more than one instance. The summit cone was mostly bare so I scratched up this, not bothering to change footwear again for such a short distance. The views were spectacular and I found a nice sheltered spot out of the wind for lunch. The fourth summit this weekend which I had to myself... note to self, hike more in December. Scratching back down to treeline was a little more delicate than coming up, but once there I could stomp with authority all the way back down to 3800' where I switched back to microspikes. It was now that my old boots started to bother me by causing an annoying bruise on my ankle bone. Downward I went, and the more I went down the more the boot dug into my ankle. This became very painful, but it did not seem to matter whether I walked slowly or quickly, so I opted for a fast pace as this would minimize the time until I could take this torture boot off. Once I was back at the Van Ho, the going was easier as it did not dig in as much on the flats, and did not hurt at all while climbing. Arrived back to the car after a five hour day. I chatted with a couple guys who had just come back from an overnight to Marcy, and after relief was found by changing into running shoes, drove back to Canada.

Pretty icy waterfall along the trail.

I think it was here I decided to put on crampons.

Climbing the summit cone above treeline.

Final stretch.

View from the top over towards Colden.

Heart Lake, where I had started about 3 hours prior.

A funny looking guy I met on top of the mountain.

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