Snowshoed this route from Mill Brook Road PA with Trek4DM. Conditions were excellent with cold temperatures and 6-10" of dry powder snow.
Trail was packed out to the Lean-to at 1.7 miles after we'd made a long climb and what seemed an equal descent. Thereafter we were walking in the powdery snow for 3-1/3 miles to the summit.
Beyond the Lean-to it's another long climb followed by rolling terrain. It's a hard place to judge because everything looks about the same in all directions.
We had occasional difficulty in route finding mostly when encountering blowdown. The trail discs are few and far between but most of the time there was a faint indication of someone elses track. For a long while we found that a Deer knew the trail and followed it's tracks. We also saw Bear tracks several time crossing the trail.
We were glad when we arrived at signage for the trail from Hill Road. A Facebook post of 12-3 indicated it was broken out from Hill Road to the summit. But alas, today it was blown in for as far as we could see.
I had my newly fixed Garmin (had had a non functioning on-off switch due to rotten rubber) along and knew where we had to go near the finish. But before that it was just us doing the route finding.
Arriving at the summit there was a great track arriving from the opposite direction that stopped. The summit has an interesting Beech with a small pile of stone at the base.
Back at the PA we opted out of a climb of Balsam Lake Mountain figuring to hit that again at another time.
Back home I checked the maps and it seems a more direct route would be using the German Hollow Trail. Would appreaciate comments.
Attached picture is along the trail with the arrow pointing the way.