The shortcut was also well-packed out and easy to follow. Soon the steep resumed, as we began our final ascent to the summit. Here and there we started to get limited views to the landscape around us. It was still beautiful and clear, and thankfully, there didn't seem to be much of a wind.
We continued to enjoy several limited but beautiful views as we climbed the last few hundred feet to the summit. Overall the High Peaks region was still clear, although we could see a bit of a cloud bank lapping against the far summits of Algonquin and Wright.
Lower Wolfjaw Summit View
Brian's pace seemed to lag a bit as we approached the summit, which we reached at a somewhat late-ish 1:50pm. This was Brian's 30th Adirondack winter 46R summit - a significant milestone. Brian's remaining to-do summit count - sixteen - started to feel a lot more reasonable and achievable. Congratulations!
Lower Wolfjaw Summit View
courtesy BConnell
With the summit achieved, and with nearly 2/3rds of our loop completed, our attention turned to the last third of our route. The completion of our loop required us to continue east along the Range Trail (which runs over the top of Lower Wolfjaw and which we were now on), down to a point near the summit of a minor peak (called Hedgehog Mountain) further east down the ridge. Before reaching this minor summit, we'd branch off down the W.A. White trail, a connector that leads back over to AMR land. However, we wouldn't be going all the way back along its length - instead, we would turn off where the W.A. White trail runs within a few hundred yards of the Deer Brook Trail. And once on that trail, it would be less than a kilometre down to the Deer Brook Trailhead on Route 73.
After a round of handshakes and photos, we made ready to continue east on the Range Trail. It was, after all, getting on in the afternoon and it would require a decent pace to make it the final six-ish or so estimated kilometres back to route 73 and the completion of our loop before sundown. We immediately noticed one major obstacle to a high rate of speed: the trail east of the summit was not broken out. It was instead a sea of smooth, fresh snow.
Gino floated the idea of heading back down the way we came, but with my predilection for loops, I still wanted to give it a shot. Brian was of his usual no-strong-opinion, and Gino, being one not to raise too much of a fuss when he doesn't feel too strongly about something, then agreed to continue on.
Brian in Winter Wonderland
Off we went eastward. It was immediately harder to make progress, but overall, didn't initially seem too bad. It was slightly challenging to follow the trail markers with very little indication of a track (well, mostly no indication of a track at all), and that bit of extra trail-finding work slowed us down yet more. We descended into the flat ridgeline between the two bumps of Lower Wolfjaw, then laboriously broke trail up a few tricky and steep sections to the lower bump of Lower Wolfjaw's summit. Definitely hard work.
After Lower Wolfjaw's lower subsummit, the grade all the way down to the junction with the top of the W.A. White Trail was never too troublesome, and mostly fairly steady and moderate. The snowpack became trickier, however, with a soft layer of powdery snow above a hard, not-quite-icy layer. This layer would alternately hold your weight or resist and then break, causing a lot of unstable walking and extra effort. It was also rather tricky on steeper slopes, where the snowshoes would slide along this layer for a bit and then suddenly break through. We were starting to get pretty tired of this state of affairs when we arrived at the Range Trail / W.A. White trail junction shortly before 4pm. Gino and Brian noted the large distances marked in all directions and I tried (and failed) to reassure them that our route would not be taking us to any of those ultimate destinations, and that our remaining distance was less (which they didn't buy).
After a short snack-and-drink break at the junction, we wearily turned our attention to the hike down the W.A. White trail. This was also not broken out, and the tiring snowpack conditions persisted. The light was starting to fail now, but we were able to slowly make our way to some nice lookouts midway down the trail, where we caught the beautiful final light of the sun on the gleaming white summit of nearby Giant Mountain.
Giant and the Gibbous Moon
Continuing on beyond the lookout, the trail descended some steeper (and tricky, with the state of the snowpack) ledges, then eased up into an open forest. We had now donned headlamps in the deepening twilight. We strayed off the trail a couple of times in the dark but always managed to regain sight of trail markers after some careful sweeping of the surrounding forest.
Shortly before 6pm, we arrived at the trail junction with the short connector trail over to the Deer Brook / Snow Mountain trail. I was super glad to have arrived here, because my ankles were taking quite a beating from all of the unexpected articulation from the random break-through nature of our snow-shoeing. Turning back northwards, we crossed over a low rise and in a few minutes reached a junction with the Deer Brook Trail.
I had hoped that a few parties would have broken out the Deer Brook trail leading to Snow Mountain today (which has a very pretty view towards Giant and is a very short climb), but alas, no, there had been absolutely no one up the trail today. We therefore began more laborious trail-breaking, following the now-blue markers downhill. We were following them fairly easily and then lost sight of them. Simultaneously, we saw a building-like shape in the distance and decided to angle for it. I turned out to be an Adirondak Lean-to (not sure which one - didn't notice a name), and stopped here for a quick break. We noticed a faint ski track leading down from the Lean-to and decided to follow that, assuming that it might re-join with the Deer Brook trail (we didn't feel like re-tracing our steps back uphill to the last known trail marker). The tracks soon lead to a large lodge-like structure and the top of a plowed road. Wow - a plowed road! such a luxury after endless trail-breaking. We headed over to it if for nothing other than to get a few solid steps in.
Stumbling onto a lodge thing
I knew from memory that an unmarked side road led up route 73, and that this must be it. I wasn't entirely sure if the road was private or not (I didn't see any signs). Certainly it would likely be faster than trying to regain and then trail-break down the Deer Brook Trail. Brian and Gino had strong opinions on this decision: just walk down the damn road.
Decision made. We ditched the snowshoes and bare-booted down the hard-packed, sanded road, back and forth down a few switchbacks. It only took about 15 minutes to descend, and we arrived back at route 73 at about ten minutes before 7pm. A few more minutes and a few hundred metres of walking north along the highway brought us back to the car. Mission accomplished... if perhaps a bit later than we'd planned.
Congrats again to Brian on his W46R #30. A nice day out for sure, even with the four hours of trailbreaking difficulties. I think we need to try and up the body count on any future winter outings where there may reasonably be trail-breaking. There's nothing like many sets of snowshoes to help quickly pack out a trail!
Interactive trackmap with photo points - Lower Wolfjaw Loop - click map to view
Lower Wolfjaw Loop - Hike Data
Start Time:
9:14a.m.
End Time:
6:50p.m.
Duration:
9h36m
Distance:
14.93 km
(9.28 mi)
Average Speed:
1.6 km/hr
(1.0 mph)
Start Elevation:
1137ft
(346m)
*
Max Elevation:
4209ft
(1283m)
*
Min Elevation:
1049ft
(320m)
*
End Elevation:
1049ft
(320m)
*
* : +/- 75 feet
Total Elevation Gain:
3237ft
(987m)
*
Total Elevation Loss:
3285ft
(1001m)
*
* : +/- 75 feet
Elevation Graph
