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| Starting out, in ski masks, in 18° temps. |
I've heard about the maniacs who, after becoming a "46er" by climbing all 46 of the High Peaks, then set out to become a "winter 46er." I'm not too interested in risking frostbite, so I said confidently that I'd never do a mountain hike in the winter. But December 2015 was incredibly mild and snowless, so I decided we'd give it a try, with a shorter, one-peak hike. We picked Big Slide.
Of course, the one day that we had available to us was the day the temperature took a dramatic drop, with a forecast of 18° at the start of the hike. I didn't know what that was going to be like, so I said up front that if it got to be too brutal, we'd just turn around and do it another day. At least it was not going to snow.
Big Slide can be done as a loop, with one leg being the gradual slope along the range called The Brothers and the other leg being the nearly level trail between the trail head and Johns Brook Lodge, plus a steep trail on the mountainside. But the Johns Brook trail is boring and muddy, so we decided to go up and back along The Brothers. (Solid line in this map.)
I had tons of clothes on, but I'd underestimated how much heat I generate lugging my flabby body and pack up a mountain. In spite of the weather, I was stripping off layers before long. Then it started to snow, despite the forecast. That was actually nice, because the shallow layer of snow made it really easy to follow other people's tracks. (Hopefully they were going the right way.)
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| On the way up. |
Everyone comments on the great views from The Brothers, but of course it was foggy, so we didn't see much on the way up. I'd forgotten my camera and Ian's batteries died after a couple of shots, so there's not much of a photo record.
I didn't realize what a short hike this was-- we got to the peak in less than 4 hours! In desperation to get something like our traditional peak photo, I pulled out my crappy old phone and got a couple of pictures that were actually OK (with a little Photoshop help.)
By the time we headed back down, the clouds were lifting and we got to see some of those great vistas we'd been hearing about. We also passed quite a few people who were coming up, since they knew it was a short enough hike that they could get a later start.
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| Confession: Someone else took this photo, but this is what it looked like on our way down. |
Turned out to be a really nice hike. I think Big Slide would be my recommendation to anyone who wanted to try a High Peak without committing to a really long day.
