It seems like most people who hike Giant and RPR start at Route 73 in the west and hike east to RPR and then backtrack to the beginning. But if you have a second car that you leave on Route 9, you can keep going east until you get to that car, and the views along the way are supposed to be nice. So that was our plan.
At the beginning, we had perfect hiking weather-- sunny and just a little cool.
After a while, we started to see some snow on the ground and then later on, we found that the trail had about 2 feet of packed down snow. Some of the steep, rocky parts were iced over and we were really glad that Ian had rented some microspikes to slip over our boots.
By the time we got to the top of Giant, there was snow and/or sleet in the air and the wind was strong. It was winter! We moved on towards RPR and when we got to that peak, the weather was so fierce, we didn't even want to take the time to get the tripod out for our usual timed photo, so we each just took a photo of each other and headed off the peak.
We quickly discovered that the trail going east of RPR had not been broken in. I was sinking into the snow up to my hip! In May! We didn't have snowshoes, so this clearly wasn't going to work. We headed back over Giant and then back into spring weather.
