A great cold day on Sunday. It was snowing hard around 6:00 a.m. but stopped when we arrived at upper works. Eventually the sun came out later and it wasn't too blustery. Royal blue skies. Even with the wind we were protected by the giant marshmallow trees on the way up. From upper works we crossed a Frozen flowed lands which was awesome and eventually directly to the Herbert Brook lean to which had about 5 ft of snow on its roof.
The hardest part of the hike was not the steepness of Marshall but rather the tediousness and time it took to ascend it mainly because of the high snow pack and constantly ducking under and over bent trees and pushing branches out of our face. We crossed one other couple that was headed for the summit and met one man earlier who was headed for Cliff & Redfield. A couple winter campers were coming out when we were on the way in.
We had the summit to ourselves and the wooden sign was buried to the hilt. On the way down it took time once again and we had a 10-minute break back at the lean to where we soaked in the Sun and ate some food. Back across the Frozen flowed lands it was so sunny it was hard to pick your eyes up. We left our sunglasses in the car but did not dawn the ski goggles in our pack due to laziness.
A great day. My first time up there this year. Number 31 for me.