My daughter Shannon was up from Charlottesville for a few weeks to work at Seabrook Station and was hoping to get a hike in during her stay before the outage started in full swing. So Saturday so we woke up and decided what the heck lets to go for it.

I only had one pair of modern snowshoes so I pulled my fathers old wooden snowshoes from the beam and grabbed my new MSR Lightnings for Shannon and we were off.

Due to the late start we made the Macomber center late a like 10:30. Our goal was to do Mt Avalon, If things went really well and we made good speed we could consider going on to Mt Field or even Mt Willey but i felt that was unlikely. You see this was my first snowshoe hike and although I had been up trails snowmobiling , really didn’t know to expect when hiking. Also due to the late start and short winter day we didn’t have a lot of daylight to work with.

We started in on the trail…It was very packed and we booted it up most of the way until i started to post hole as we went onto the Avalon loop trail. I grabbed the old wooden snowshoes and placed them on, tightened the buckles and Blap, the leather strap broke. You see leather dry rots from not being used i didn’t think it looked that bad. So Shannon forked over the MSRs, she wasn’t wearing them anyway and we started off again.
The snow seemed quite deep and when he cam across this sign we new we had alot of snow still in the woods. These signs are typically 8 feet or so up . A couple guys coming of the summit were kind enough to take our picture on their way by.

We ran into a few people on the trail and the summit. I am always amazed at the traffic the trails have and here in March it isn’t any different. We made the summit about 2:30 and ate lunch. The summit was cold and there was a steady wind. I wanted to make coffee but it was so windy and cold we decided to have it off the summit back in the trees. I really didn’t notice my hands were getting cold until we started down and i became concerned. We stopped to make the coffee. i fired up the stove and we couldn’t find the coffee. I offered to make Shannon pine needle tea but she passed and we packed up and moved on. One benefit was my hands had recovered holding the warm water.It really wasn’t a bad day overall. It was cold, my bladder line had frozen earlier and i routed it inside my coat. This however didn’t equate to being uncomfortable since most of the day we sweated most of the time. My hand getting cold was my own stupidity keeping them out of my gloves way to long on the summit.

On the way down i tried different maneuvers with the snowshoes, walking off the track onto fresh snow and they floated very well. I must say i was very impressed with the snowshoes. I particularly like the heel elevator for the steep accents. It takes a lot of the pressure off you’re calf and makes it seem like you are walking stairs. Shannon was a trooper and even with the pack never post holed all day even though she didn’t have snowshoes. Given our gear trouble it all worked out for the best. I can’t wait to snowshoe again, what a blast.

Here is link to all the pics from the trip