Mount Zealand in Winter

March-10, 2008

Flurries fell lightly on us as we light-heartedly geared up for a dayhike to Mount Zealand. Ah, if only we had known of what was ahead. We breezed up the road and enjoyed the hike, Zealand trail's beautiful scenery was lit in a soft light. The sun tried to poke through. Incredible mounds of snow heaped up making the bridges an extra 5 feet higher. We arrived at the hut at 10:50, ate lunch #3 and prepared to head out. We were encouraged to learn that two other hikers had set out for Mt Zealand

20 minutes later we cramponed up for the climb up Twinway to the Zeacliffs. Near the top we entered a tunnel of trees, the snow was deeper here but footing was great and we didn't posthole. It took us 55 minutes to reach the Zeacliffs and we were feeling great about Mount Zealand, now just 1.8 miles away.

Leaving the Zeacliffs is that confusing flat area, it's windblown so all tracks were obliterated. It's nice to have had some experience here in summer and Eric and I found our way pretty easily. The Zealand ridge was barely visable but clouds seemed to be lifting.

When we entered the scrub, the hellish maze of twisted tree branches greeted us. I'll have a hard time describing it with words. We were hiking on at least 6 feet of new and old snow.

Sometimes you'd crawl, sometimes bending over worked. Anything sticking from your pack was snagged by ice encrusted branches. It was a painfully slow process. Our turn-around time was 3pm. By 2:20 I was losing hope and when we saw those other two hikers who's tracks we'd followed for so long, we thought it was over. They were headed down and looked defeated.

It was so close, we were on the ridge and that stupid sign to the spur path had to be around here somewhere. Eric convinced Greg and Kevin to turn around and try for the summit and they were up for it. I kept looking at the clock, it was nearly 2:30 when we found the mostly buried sign.

This nice little 1:10th of a mile walk in summer is a bit different in winter. We lost the trail and just circled around trying to find the high spot. We split up and then one of the guys shouted out that they found the sign! It was 2:40pm.

We toasted Eric's 48th winter summit, took the pictures and hung out till about 3:15. It was cold and I knew we still had a battle ahead of us. For the trek back I switched to snowshoes and was glad to have them. Eric postholed but we were never on the official trail getting back to Twinway so it didn't matter. We just wanted to get out of there.

On the back side of Zealand's summit, standing on who knows how much snow, we saw incredible views open up. the round Mount Guyot and one of three Bonds appeared and seemed so close, then the two graceful Twin mountains appeared. It was a unique view that I'd never seen before. Of course I was too tired to take my camera out.

On the trek back up over the knob that I named "Stupid Knob PUD", we battled more branches shaped like ice chandeliers, duck, crawl, weave, smash, crash, but it went better and soon we were at the beautiful Zeacliffs. I'd never seen the winter view from here so we spent 20 minutes here just soaking it all in, grateful that for the most part, "it was all downhill from here!"

Except for one steep part where I butt-slid out of control, the descent went very well and we were at the hut for 5:30. We celebrated Eric's success with two wonderful Cokes I'd packed and some home-made chocolate chip cookies. Just 6.whatever miles to go and we're done

We flew down Zealand trail and rested at 7pm, finding headlamps for the road-walk. The road is a hard-pack and the hike from the parking lot to Hale brook went well, we still moved quickly. Here we slowed down and the slog to the plowed part of the road was trance-like (think zombies) and never ending. We arrived back at the car at 8:20, ending our 12 hour and nearly 20 mile journey.

#45 in winter for me

Thanks to Kevin and Greg for helping blaze the trail, and to Eric for inviting me along