Flume and Liberty

January 4, 2014

Claudia, Andy, and I started out to a beautiful but -28 deg C morning. The forecast called for some warming which was fortunate as we were not looking forward to another day like yesterday. We arrived to an empty trailhead parking lot except for one vehicle, where a dude and a French Canadian woman greeted us. They warned us that our route was up an icy slide. This was news to us, but we were prepared with crampons so decided to check it out. As luck would have it, we were the first ones on this trail since the last snow storm and we would spend the next six hours breaking trail up to the summit of Flume. It started with a walk parallel to the highway and then onto a groomed snowmobile trail for a few hundred meters which was annoying, but quickly surpased. A seemingly endless traverse finally had us begin the climbing which was gentle at first but got steeper as we went. The trail seemed to cross the same stream several times, which was never an easy crossing, one of them across a narrow log high above the water, balancing on our snowshoes... training for the climbing to come I guess. At about 3000' we came to the base of the slide. This was a narrow and icy scramble, but we got up the first section on snowshoes. There was 12-18" of fluffy unconsolidated snow on top of the ice, which made it challenging to find foot and axe placements, but after a bit of hunting around, a step usually revealed itself. I climbed up to a ledge and after scraping the snow off the slope, realized there was a traverse at about a 30 degree angle of glare ice. This was not going to be accomplished with the tennis rackets on the feet, so I called down to the others to switch to crampons. Perched upon my ledge, this was awkward as I was in a stable position, but in very cramped quarters. After some snowshoe-backpack yoga, I had pointy things on my feet, poles and snowshoes put away, and axe in hand. Now for the fun part. About 500 feet of steep ice and deep snow slog straight up the mountain. At 4000' we had blown our turn around time of 13:00, but at this point, the steepness was starting to slacken and we figured it would be much easier to continue than to go back. Had a quick break in a sheltered spot and then continued the snow wallow up more gentle terrain to the ridge. Now the wind was howling so we put on warmer clothing and then traversed an exposed ridge around a massive slide gully to the summit. We saw our first and only person on the trail here, just the back of his head briefly as he turned to leave. We rejoiced as it meant we were not going to have to do any more trail breaking today. At the summit we were rewarded with fantastic views in all directions. Due to the cold wind though, we did not stay long. Fortunately the trail to Liberty was back in the trees, and once we got into their shelter, the cold passed. We now moved quickly along the well trodden trail, and in less than an hour were on top of Liberty, again with fantastic views. The wind up here was substantially less so we spent a lot more time taking photos and soaking up the sights. Nevertheless, the sun was approaching the Kinsman Ridge and we decided to go before it got dark on us. We flew down the mountain on the well packed trail, Claudia and I on snowshoes, and Andy via crazy carpet. I think snowshoes were easier (and less painfull) but sliding looked a lot more fun. The last 30 minutes of the day was under headlamp as we got plunged into the night. Arrived back to a deserted parking lot after a very successful day of just over nine hours of hiking.

Liberty (left) and Flume (back center) as viewed from our motel.