Be Careful Of What You Ask For

With the amount of time I've been in Connecticut, I pretty much missed most of the good snow hiking periods this winter so far. But Wife told me that they had a good snow Tuesday night and Wednesday morning just before I returned on Wednesday night. On Thursday morning there was still lots of snow in the foothills (it frequently melts off within hours) so I was hopeful that there would be more snow on the other side of the mountain where I usually go in search of snow hiking. Friday, and the signs were still looking good.

I got up early on Saturday and headed out. When I got to the parking lot there was no one there. And there was snow right from the very start. That's pretty unusual so it boded well for the rest of the hike.


The first part of the hike was what I expected with the train pretty beat down and turning into ice because of the melt and re-freeze. What I didn't expect was after only about 15 minutes of hiking to suddenly find the foot prints starting to dwindle.

And dwindle

Until I got to a spot only a half a mile into the trail when the foot prints stopped all together. Trail breaking - Fresh Snow from this point on.





Going through fresh snow is not the easiest thing to do. There was a mixture of snow that had developed a crust that you kept breaking through and just powder. With all my time at sea level, I'm not in the best of shape. Plus this kind of hiking you end up going half the speed and requires twice the effort.

It kept getting deeper...

...and deeper!

Finally I came around a corner where the sun was shining on the untrammeled snow. This picture is not touched up. It literally looked like a field of diamonds.

After about an hour, my legs were really tired and I decided I'd better let discretion trump valor. I didn't see a soul until I got back to the parking lot. Sweet hike.