New Years Snowshoe trip

The other day Rob, Don, Keith, and myself headed out to do some snowshoeing, and see if we could make it up to Pechuck lookout. Jimmy, Jessy, and Jimmy's son came too but only to play in the snow. We made it to about 2300ft and Keith was starting to push snow(2.5ft) with the bumper of his pickup. Keith found a wide spot in the road to get turned around, and Rob got tuned around and figured we would start from there. Sense Jimmy was only up there to play in the snow he decided that they would see how much further they could go in his jeep. This turned out to be a big advantage for us in our snowshoes. With Jimmy plowing through the deep powder his axles were packing the snow just right for us to float on top. If you got off in the fresh powder we were sinking about 4 inches with our snowshoes. Don and I kept a pretty steady pace as we followed Jimmy's tracks. Rob and Keith had an much slower pace as we found out later. Don and I were surprised that Jimmy was still plowing his way up the road. There was about 8-10 inches between the top of the snow and the middle of the tracks where his axles were plowing the snow. After about 3 miles of following Jimmy's tracks, Don and I caught up with them. At the trail head no less. The snow was about 4ft deep at the trail head, but Jimmy still made it with a little work. Don and I were only about 5 minutes behind them. We sent Jimmy back down the hill to find Rob and Keith. Jimmy found them about a mile down the road and soon returned with Rob and Keith hanging on to the back of the jeep for dear life. We started making our way up the trail. This proved to be much more work than following the tracks from the jeep. But we pushed about an hour and a half only reaching the ridge about a mile from the trail head.


Don pointing the direction we need to go.


Rob making his way up the trail.

It was still another mile and a half to Pechuck Lookout and it was already 2:30pm so we turned around so we wouldn't have to hike out in complete darkness. As it was we didn't get back to the pickups until 5:30-6pm(in the dark).


Me on the way back.

It was a good trip. All total I estimate we snowshed about about 8 miles. This made for a long tiring hike and I'm a little sore, but still a very enjoyable trip. Sorry there aren't more pictures, but between forgetting to recharge my batteries and it being so cold I was lucky to get the few shots that I did get.