Today was a day for winter hiking... although it won't count for winter credit.  The day started with it snowing as I reached exit 24 on the northway, and roads were being a little slick the rest of the way in.  My GPS said I'd arrive at 621 when I started, I got to the lot about 650 after stopping for a coffee and breakfast sandwich... the conditions cost me about 20 min and I was happy that I had left as early as I did.

So we started with a grey sky that was snowing.  At about 2000 feet ( a mile or so in) we decided that the snow was just getting deep enough that we needed to switch to snowshoes, and they stayed on most of the rest of the hike.  We were following tracks from hikes a few days ago (we hiked on the 7th, last trail register was 3rd).  At one point I got the feeling that we were off trail and sure enough we were.  We ended up cutting a switchback short and missing the trail junction by a couple hundred feet.  Not a big deal as we found the proper trail and we did break out to the trail junction on the way out.

When we got to the top of RoosterComb, we the sky cleared up and we had great views of the Johns Brook valley and could see Marcy and Haystack clearly in the distance.  The majority of the great range was visible and so was the Brothers on the way up to Big Slide, but alas the high peak was hidden.  We even got to see Blueberry and Little Porter from the viewpoint.

On the way down, I took a good tumble though.  A few bruises, and I feared I may have broken my pinky, but it just seems to be bruised and not swelling.  Phew!  But I did get a huge cramp in my calf that was fun to try to walk off.

We then broke trail all the way over to the trail junction with Snow, where we found someone had bare booted up from 73 or AMR at least a day earlier.  We propbably should have changed over to spikes, but we were lazy and went up and down with the snowshoes.  The views from the top though were well worth it.  Giant was shining in his beauty, and the slides of Dix called him out.  And, I got to see what the plans were for next week, Round and Noonmark.

Thankfully the hike out from Snow was uneventful.