My backpacking buddy and I left the Sewards summer trail head at about 2 pm on August 21 with full overnight packs for a 5 day thru hike to Upper Works. We passed the already taken Blueberry leanto, then quickly made it to the occupied Ward Brook LT around 5 pm. There were 18 college outdoor club members signed in at the trailhead, so we did the math and assumed that the rest were at the No. 4’s. We whacked a few hundred meters up the drainage near Ward Brook for a peaceful night except for a lost college student who wandered by with an armful of wood, a headlamp, and a map. My buddy pointed him towards the leanto.
At 9 am on Day 2, we started hiking up the drainage towards Ouluska pass, but the drainage kept heading south towards Seymour’s summit as opposed to south-southwest towards the pass. We presumed that the drainage we wanted was to our west and we angled in that direction until we could begin to see the shoulder of Seward and some of its famous cliffs. Up to that point the hike was reasonable as far as whacks go, but that was soon to change. Things suddenly got very tight as we pushed through seemingly endless spruce and balsam thickets with blowdown, while carrying 50 lb packs. (I had heard that there was a lot of blowdown from a 1950 storm here, but saw nothing like I see around High Falls/The Plains in the five ponds region from the 1995 microburst.) We eventually ended up in an open fen (see photo), which gave us our only unobstructed views of the day of the awesome cliffs of Seward and a small one on Seymour. We dove back into the thick evergreens and continued slowly pushing on. According to my SPOT tracking feature between 10 am and 2 pm (see figure below with times), it took us 4 hours to go approximately 1 to 1.5 miles up and over the height of land, after which it stopped tracking. The going was getting so tough that I had thoughts about an unplanned night in the woods before we finished the hike to the NPT. To find an easier path, we angled further west towards the drainage which would eventually turn into the Ouluska. The stream bed was very dry, but at the boulders were quite large and with some blowdown (see photo), both of which occasionally sent us back into the thick pines. Further down, we happened to see some orange flagging on the east side of the drainage which we followed for maybe a half mile before we lost it near a cluster of old clearings. We then got back into the extremely dry Ouluska creek bed which we mostly followed to the Ouluska lean to for the night.
The whack had taken us 8.5 hours and covered maybe 4.5 miles—I never plan to do this one again although we will never forget it. Since it was relatively warm heading in the 70’s, I made the mistake of wearing only a sun hoody, which ended up with many tears and holes. On the positive side, it was very dry and mostly bug free. It was also easy to navigate and we only used our compasses a few times early on during our drainage confusion. The cold river was the lowest I had ever seen it, so we could only splash water on ourselves to get rid of all the pine needles that had gone down our backs. I still can’t get them out of the mesh of my Osprey pack. For dinner we grilled tortilla and pepper jack cheese sandwiches on a grate over an open fire--delicious. After my friend went to bed, I sat out by the river and enjoyed the stars.
On Day 3, I awoke to see that all the little nicks and scrapes on my arms, legs and torso had turned into scabs—a reminder of yesterday’s bushwhack. Our plan today was to head east up the NPT, cross the cold river and spend the night at the pair of Northern lean tos. I had not stayed there since 2020 and my friend had never been on any of the horse trails south of the river! At the cold river crossing, we were able to rock hop in our boots! The two mile section of the horse trails to the LT’s was the driest I had ever seen! During the evening as we sat by the cold river admiring a view of Seymour, a humming bird flew by and hovered in front of my face for 2-3 seconds apparently attracted by the color red of an emblem on the front of my cap.
On Day 4 we hiked to the Henderson Lake LT. On the way, we saw a memorial sticker on the trail register at Duck Hole for Brendan Jackson, the Assistant Forest Ranger who passed away earlier this summer. I recalled bumping into him for the first time near Shattuck’s clearing in 2019. I had just returned from camp Santanoni after exploring the horse trails and he was the first person I had seen in 5 days. We discussed some of his bushwhacks in the area, including Couch from the horse trails! (On a later trip to the 5 ponds area, I also saw the accounts of his bushwhacks in some of the lean to registers.) After signing the register, we headed over to the Preston ponds area and enjoyed the primeval rocks and moss in some narrow areas. While it looked like rain all day, we arrived at the lean to dry, but tired, and got another fire going before a thunderstorm came through
late at night.
Day 5 was a short hike out to my friend’s car at Upper Works and a lunch in Long Lake before returning to Corey’s to pick up my car. One of our cooler trips.
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Attached Files