Last year, I did this hike about this time of the year with a friend and I was greatly impressed with these two little mountains.  Doing something once doesn't make it a tradition.  But doing it twice?  Well, it's a tradition now, along with the hike I'm doing next weekend.

Saturday, I lead an ADK hike up Rooster Comb and Snow.  A total of 8 people went on this hike, well 9, but they caught up to us on the trail and left early while never signing the paperwork, so she wasn't on our hike.  We were the first on the trail since 12-3, but there were a fair number of people after us.  Trails are well broken at this point.  We decided to put the snowshoes on a bit past the trail to Snow as it was getting to be about 4 or 5 inches there.  Not legally required, but a good call for us.  We failed a little at the route finding up Rooster Comb, and those familiar with the trail can probably guess where.  The ladder wasn't buried, but still tricky in shoes.

Coming down the Flume Brook trail we started getting into drifts that were easily the 8 inches required for snowshoes.  The crossover was not bad, and the climb up snow was doable in shoes, but we should have switched out to spikes.  We did on the way down.  The rest of the flume brook trail was 4ish inches dropping to a couple about half way to the Rooster Comb trail, where we switched back to spikes.

As we were reaching the Rooster Comb trail, I spotted a doe grazing around the trail, and then a second doe's head popped out of a brush pile.  I stopped, got the people behind me to stay quiet, and pointed them out.  We then slowly walked to the trail junction and they just meandered a little bit up trail from us.  Amazingly enough, we didn't spook them, they just meandered up trail a little bit.  They looked like yearlings in size, and unless they do something stupid today, they'll probably survive this hunting season.

Overall, great day, great views, and not horribly cold.  6.7 miles over just under 7 hours including breaks for food and views.  This brings me to 314 miles over 212 hours.  It also is the start of winter weather hiking.  It felt good to get out in deep enough snow to glissand downhill a bit.