The original plan for this weekend was to do an outing to the White Mountains in NH. However, the weather was not co-operating. Still, I felt like doing a mountain somewhere, so I picked the best weather day of the weekend (Sunday), and decided to do something in the Adirondacks. As it turned out, only Caroline could make this one, so we tackled something she needed for her 46er quest: Gothics.

We decided to use skiis to help ease the passage of the boring section along the AMR lake road. Snow conditions were excellent and we made good time skiing up the road.

At Lower Ausable Lake we switched into snowshoes. Weather was actually pretty good. Lots of sun and blue sky mixed in with clouds. After donning our snowshoes, the long and high slog up to Gothics began (2800 foot ascent from the Lake)

Above 3500 feet there was a ton of new snow, and no one had been up this way in a while. Breaking the trail was agonizingly tiring. This slowed our ascent and we ended up summitting around 2-ish. Unfortunately, the weather had also closed in again and the summit was socked in and windy with blowing snow. Still, felt good to have made it to the top - and because of the ADK winter 46er rules we managed to bag a winter 46er summit even though it was technically spring on March 21 of this year!

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