[at-l] Trip report

[hudsom at us.ibm.com (Mark Hudson)]

I took a shot at Bearpen on Saturday, and just wanted to issue a warning:
for the first time I came up short on a Catskill peak, if you follow my
tracks they do NOT intersect the canister!

I found a spot down near the snowplow turn-around (near, not IN!) where I
could get my car off on the side of the road. The road from there to the
col was packed down by snowmobiles and was easy walking. When I got to the
cabin the snow depth indicated snowshoes. Ground conditions was about 6
inches of beatiful fresh powder over an icy base. Needless to say this made
bushwhacking up the steep section near the cabin very interesting, even
managing to work up a sweat at whatever the very low temperature it was.
Snowshoeing down the ridge was beautiful, and I eventually picked up some
of the old logging roads. They all seemed to run off the ridge though, and
I did some more bushwhacking trying to stay on the high ground. What I
believed to be the summit area was much further down the ridge than I
thought, and the altitude gain brought me into the snow/ice line where
every limb was bent low and covered with snow. I realized that with that
combination the only way for me to find the canister would be to bump into
it, and so turned back.
The most interesting part was snowshoing back down the ledgy area to the
cabin. Perhaps I should have switched to my crampons, but I doubt that
would have been much fun either. I did manage to do some "skiing" on my
snowshoes, and only left a couple of "snow angels".
By the time I reached the col the wind was coming up. I had planned on
doing Vly also, but between the wind and the expection of having the same
difficulty of finding the canister there I decided to bail out.
Regardless of finding the peak it was a beautiful day for snowshoeing! I'll
either return with someone to share the trailbreaking, or more likely wait
until spring has unloaded the trees of their snow and ice.

skeeter