North Twin in Winter

March-8, 2009

Gotta love daylight savings, this was my first winter hike this year started after 9am! It had poured up here on Saturday night and the Twin Mt area showed lots of open grassy areas. Bill, Stanley, Bob, Jeb, Dave and I left the Seven Dwarfs after paying Franz his parking/guide fee.

So after following this never ending snowmobile trail for 20 minutes, I knew I'd made a mistake and checked my compass. North West??? Oops. Turn back guys, sorry! I'd done this once before 3 years ago so the mistake was my fault. Anyway, if you decide to hike this and you reach the gravel pit, you know you've gone too far!!

We went back to the gravel pit and called Franz who said, yep, parallel to the stream and after our 1 hour mistake we were on the right snowmobile trail. Usually you follow this to Haystack Rd, then go left. But someone had broken out a nice short-cut through a raspberry, alder, maple field and we took that.

We arrived at the North Twin trail just before 11am Some of us were in our shirtsleeves, it was pretty warm. 1.9 now of flat stuff to the last crossing. We'd read Rocket's great report about the bushwhack around the first two crossings. The trail was packed but loose and mushy so snowshoes were the key today. We flew past the flats, down the bushwhack over several interesting crossings. Some were bridged, others were a hop across. We saw where it looked like an ice dam broke upstream as a funnel was smashed through the snow. Our final crossing was interesting but the bridge held.

Stanley wants to go up!

Now we begin to climb, it's over 2 miles from here to the top of North Twin. It starts out pretty mild but turns into a hard uphill. The higher we went, the firmer the snow got and we made great time. We figured to be at the top for around 2pm. Bill with Stanley the dog hung towards the back of the group so they wouldn't leave us in a cloud of dust..er snow.

Bob set a great pace and we meandered along up and up through a beautiful forest of fir and birch. I hate this trail in the summer but its' not so bad in winter. We climbed up and over the humps and the snowshoe crampons bit in easily. I was trying out my new snowshoes, they worked great. We met a group of three hikers heading down, they hadn't done South Twin.

This is one of those peaks I've been on about 5 times and have never had a decent view from. Once again, I was shut out. I put on my shell as we reached the S. Twin spur and then walked over to the outlook. We pondered South Twin, it was 2pm and I knew it would be a 1.3 mile battle through ice encrusted branches. Nobody wanted to go anyway, this was our objective. Bill was on his 43rd winter peak and Jeb was at 41. I think Dave hit his 6th and Bob hit the halfway mark.

The hike back down was a blast, we glissaded a few of the steep sections and snowshoe skied a few others. We came down the ridge pretty fast and had our first decent break down in a sunny hollow. We were all starving and getting hot again. Time to layer down.

At one smaller crossing later on down, we actually did break an ice bridge but it was a pretty short hop across. The sun was shining and we could now see the top of the ridge with the clouds streaming across. The higher summits were still in the fog. Bill had been letting Stanley go off leash here. This is a dog with a mind of his own and has run off in the past. Sure enough he got a gleam in his eyes and took off through the woods with Bill in hot pursuit. Fortunately Stanley was tired and the chase ended with Bill grabbing him further down the trail.

We re-traced out steps back along the river and through the maple grove back to the inn and our cars. Great day guys despite my earlier error.

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