Today, I took a floating holiday and went up to get my winter Porter (Cascade was done a couple weeks ago, so it was a secondary goal if weather was clear).  I got up to the trail head about 845 and was on the trail just before 9.  When I was getting boots and all on, I looked down at the trail register and the couple of bridges over small streams and all I saw was ice on the trail.  Now anyone that has hiked a popular winter trail will know that the snowshoes compact everything down and what is known as a "monorail" is created.  Towards the end of the season that tends to be all that remains of a trail.  Well, it seems we're starting that turn right now (although 1-2 feet of snow will fall this weekend) as there was no snow on top of the monorail, and in many places there were beautiful ice flows that were also the trail.  The name of the game for today was traction.  It was also warm today, and I spent the vast majority of the day hiking in my fleece without a hat or gloves.

I spent the whole day in microspikes.  I'm not sure if that, or that I started going to the gym again, but I was able to get up the mountain much quicker than 2 weeks ago when I was in the shoes.  Other than seeing a couple people at the parking area at the start, I didn't see another soul until I was on my way off of Porter, which was my first peak.  The trail there wasn't bad.  There were a couple of soft spots that lasted 10-15 feet, but the monorail held and I didn't go more than the depth of my soles into it.  I also seemed to be the first one up Porter today and the views were just awesome even with the light wind chilling me down.

Then my day got annoying.  I was just about off the top of Porter when another group came up.  The guy in the back, probably late 50's or early 60's,  stopped me, accused me of post holing the whole way over, told me he was part of search and rescue in the Catskills, and all but demanded I put on my snowshoes.  If he had taken the time to look at the post holes along the trail, they were not fresh.  They were there at least a day, if not since the last snowfall.  He didn't listen to me that it wasn't me and I'm just as concerned.  He didn't pay attention to the trail he was on and how hard packed it was.  I'm positive that his group was the one that bushwacked around a fair amount of the trail on the way up because the rocks were starting to show and the trail was not really friendly for snowshoes.  It just pissed me off for the rest of the day.  He doesn't know my history (which also includes wilderness EMT training and search and rescue training), and he was obviously just so pissed at seeing the post holes that he was going to blame the first person he saw without snowshoes.  Sorry, with the amount of ice out there today, I didn't feel safe using my snowshoes, even at elevation, I wanted more and better traction, and at a couple points actually considered changing to my crampons instead of the microspikes.  I didn't post hole and I didn't have any issues on the trails.  Sadly that conversation just wore on me the rest of the day.  I just hiked on without putting on my shoes and I'm sure that pissed him off more.  Just before I got to the trail junction with Cascade, I ran into a couple people heading over to Porter and I warned them about a "grumpy old man" that was insisting on snowshoes.

I then headed up Cascade and that was mostly pleasant.  I was accompanied by a guy probably about my age and his maybe 5 year old daughter.  They got to the top shortly after I did and it was nice to see the joy in the little girl's face.  Apparently though, she wants to be ice climbing and was excited to see the ice cliffs on Pitchoff (literally across 73), and I pointed out others over on Giant which you could see in the distance.  Sadly, this was not a completely joyous climb up.  On the way up, after it went bald, I saw someone had tied up Tibetan prayer flags.... in the little bit of vegetation that is supposed to be off limits because they're trying to re-vegetate the peak.  On my way down, I untied them and took them down.  It's one of those things that if they are left to be, they will only get worse.  I just hope that I didn't do any damage to the vegetation.

Then it was a nice hike down.  I ended up passing a couple people mostly because I was confident in my gear and took more of the icy sections down than they were.  The trail was a little softer, but overall it was still a pretty good monorail all the way down.  I got back to my car about 145, and was about 0.3 mph faster than I was a couple weeks ago, even with a longer (5.8 mile) hike.

And so, that's it for winter hiking this year as we're getting snow Saturday and I'm not really going to be available to go up again before the 21st.  So, just need to get in shape for next winter.