Last night, it got unseasonably warm. Snow turned to rain. And then the skies cleared, and we got a beautiful, pleasant day for a change.
I went hiking up Middle Mountain Trail, where I've been snowshoeing before. The trail is pretty beaten down, and the rain has made the snow soft and a bit slushy. I started out without traction, then put on snowshoes as the trail steepened. This kind of snow might be best traversed with snowshoes rather than microspikes. With the latter, you may still be sliding on slippery snow.
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| view on the way up Middle Mountain Trail |
The only difficulty I encountered was a significant ice bulge that covered the trail, about a mile in:
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| ice bulge covers the trail |
Everyone seems to go right. You can grab the trees. I also grabbed an ice pocket down at the bottom. This is a steep section, so you don't want to lose your footing here. This was the only difficult part to the trail.
I hiked up to the intersection where you meet the Peaked Mountain Trail, then turned around. It's a half mile to Peaked Mountain from here, and 0.8 miles to Middle Mountain. Some other day...
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| Peaked Mountain - Middle Mountain Trail Connector |
It doesn't get much better than this! Hiking back down was a lot easier than hiking up.
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| View on the way down Middle Mountain Trail |
The hike was a total of 2.4 miles. It took about an hour and 25 minutes, for a pace of about 1.7 mph.
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