2024-2025 Winter Hiking in Review

This winter has been a very successful winter for hiking. The weather has mostly cooperated with only 1 weekend that I really had to not hike due to a snow storm. I hiked with some new people, and with many people I've hiked with before. It sure has been a good winter for me.

I had some new experiences this year. Mostly, this revolved around trail breaking. I had broken trails before, but not anything as deep as what I faced this winter, especially starting with my Dix hike. I also never had broken for multiple miles in deep snow, so that was a good experience to have, and to find out that I can do it and keep a reasonable pace while breaking and route finding. I had to find the route a few times too, and was overall successful with that, even bringing out the old compass to help with the Lillian Brook herd path. I haven't faced the chest deep fluffy snow trail breaking that I saw some people did at elevation this winter, I wasn't avoiding it, I just didn't come across it.

I hiked in some of the coldest weather I have ever hiked in. More than once I started the hike with the car saying it was single digits or negative degrees F. My Panther and Couch hike, someone had a digital thermometer on them, and they measured it down to 8 degrees. I found out how hot I actually hiked too, as I was on Panther and Phelps with high winds and negative double digit wind chills with only my base layer on top and my balaclava while my hiking companions were in their shells, puffers, and even goggles. I'll admit, I should have gotten the goggles out on Panther though. All that though, and even with my base layer's shoulders freezing solid like shoulder pads, I wasn't that cold. My base layer is rather wind proof, and held my body heat well. My phone actually got too cold and shut down, and I was fine.

I also got to experience spruce traps for the first time as real threats. One of my hiking companions sunk in hip deep and had to be dug out. Another did the same, but got themselves out, and I eventually did the same thing and was able to get myself out, and then we both sprung a few while quickly stepping out before they could catch us. These things are obvious where they are in hindsight, but on the way down the trail, they just sneak up on you.

At this point, I'm rather confident in my skills for winter hiking now. I know I haven't seen it all, but I have a good handle on how to do it safely. I have a good idea of when things get to be too much for me and to turn around. I've gotten better with figuring out what the trail conditions will be like before I get out there. Apart from hiking on the bald peaks, I believe I know what I'm doing, and even with the bald peaks, I know what to do, I just haven't had a chance to do it other than on Cascade (and I guess Whiteface, but that's so built up...).

I also have a summer project to work on. I will be going out and trying to map all the navigational cairns. I should be able to put them into Open Street Maps, which is the data source for all the hiking apps. So, they should show up on the maps a few weeks after I put them in. This means I'll have to do a lot of climbing, but I will try to make it interesting by going different ways. But this is all about preparing for next winter, so I can navigate the bald peaks safely in the event of whiteouts.

There was another thing that came out of the winter hiking. I have come to see the range of experiences out there. I almost ended up on a hike with a relatively new hiker that would have been absolutely horrible for him, and I would have taken responsibility and let the others go on, and turn around and make sure he got back to the car. Thankfully, with 3 of us talking to him, he decided to do something easier and we gave him directions on how to get to the trailhead. I have mentioned it to a couple people that I am going to start offering "beginning hiking" hikes where it won't be a difficult hike, there will be some kind of beautiful destination, and we will take a few stops along the way to discuss hiking things like the need for the 10 essentials, how to use a map and compass, how to prepare for hikes, how to hike safely, etc. I know that some of the chapters of ADK do similar hikes, but there are a lot of people that can't afford to join, don't want to join, or don't know about them and find everything online. I've mentioned this to a few hiking companions and they have said go for it, so once winter is over, I'll start planning to do such hikes.

By the numbers:

I did 14 hikes and summited 17 peaks. 4 of them were in the Catskills, the other 13 were in the Adirondacks.

I am now at 26/46 for the 46ers and 19/33 for the Catskill 3500s winter rounds. As I have things planned out, 11 more hikes in the 'Daks and 6 more hikes in the Cats and I am done. So I won't finish both next winter, but I hope to finish the 46.

I hiked at total of 154 miles with 40,880 feet of elevation over 111 hours.

I had 2 hikes I turned around on because I wasn't feeling well. The first being an attempt at Lower WolfJaw and the second being an attempt at Allen.

I exited very late 2 times. Once because I didn't follow my turn around time, and once because a hiking partner was struggling.

The hikes in order of my hiking were:

Hiking with *Ghosti-

Adventures and Friendship through Hiking

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