The plan was Balsam from Lost Clove on a Saturday afternoon/evening. We knew a lot of the hike would be in the dark. NJ-GearHor & I came up from Jersey and knew you guys had some snow Friday night and down by us we pretty much had freezing rain and just a little snow.
We gambled and brought the 30-inch snowshoes instead of the 25 inch and they were too big but we wore em anyway. No one had been on the trail and we were the only car in the parking lot at 4 p.m.... I have never gone from this route before, one of the few trailheads I have not visited. It's an old Woods Road and it's steep. Reminded me of the start at Malden Ave.
Well instead of carrying snowshoes, we wore em. We were breaking Trail in 4 inches of snow with 30" snowshoes (yes, you read that correctly!)
Made it to Blue Junction at 5:10pm. And there was actually a perfect Snowshoe track going up that trail. My buddy was complaining the whole ride up that he felt exhausted and he was just not himself this hike. I think he was getting sick. His breathing was labored and we barely spoke on the way up. We started talking about how Balsam might not be in the cards for him. We were going to make the trip shorter by just doing Bellaire. We soldiered on and it was getting darker.
It was 30° down below and then as the sun went out, it was 15° up higher. Felt even colder with no sun although I was only wearing a light base layer at that moment.
My buddy kept saying how crappy he felt so I told him, hey if you want to just turn around and call it, we can..... And that's what we did, when we finally made it to the Red Trail at the former site of the old fire tower. That was our turnaround point.
Was very close to Darkness and we started hustling back down the trail. Finally at some point I had to put a headlamp on but not for a while. Back at the car at 7 p.m.. I drove his car home while he slept. He was not feeling good.
4pm-7pm... 4 hours of driving for 3 hours of hiking. Hey sometimes that happens.