ell its already been a week since I got back from the dacks, but I still can't forget it. Unfortunately, Danielle got the flu bug the week prior to the trip and had to bail. It was really weird backpacking without her, as I haven't hiked without her for a good ten years. But Mark, Barry and I still headed up Sat bright and early at 4:oo am. We had a filling breakfast at the Noon Mark Diner in Keene Valley, great blueberry pancakes worth the wait! The whole ride up I was starting to freakout about this being my first overnight camping experience in the wintertime. The car thermometer dipped down to -8 by the time we got there, and Barry was talking about the backcountry forecast he found that said it would be between -10 and -20. I was going to be using an extra sleeping bag Barry had, that was rated to only zero degrees. I was envisioning myself going to bed with every last ounce of clothing I had on me and still shivering the entire night. But we got on the trail by 9:30 and getting into my hiking rhythm, I was able to shut these negative thoughts out and enjoy the beautiful scenery of freshly fallen snow throughout the forest. We completed the 2.3 miles to Marcy Dam around 10:30 and found a site to setup camp, just east of the lake. We stomped around the site with our snowshoes until we had a level spot for our two tents. After setting up our tents and getting everything in order, we set our sights on Phelps mt. an short 4-mile round trip from our site. Danielle and I had just done Phelps this past November, so it was quite familar, yet completely different, as it was now covered in a few feet of snowpack. We made it to the top without much difficulty, there was only one sketchy spot with ice that we had to make a careful traverse across. The view from the summit was gorgeous, we had beautiful weather and I spent a good fifteen minutes on the summit, just taking it all in. The picture on the left below shows Tabletop in the foreground with Marcy behind on the right, and what I thought was Basin, but I am not sure. The other is obviously me, enjoying my second winter summit, with many more to come, we hope!!
After hiking back down to camp, we were still early for dinner time, so Mark 
and Barry went looking for an accessible water source, and I took to digging out the floor of our tent vestibule, so that we could sit up better for cooking and eating. It was perfect duty to get me warmed up after standing around for a little bit after the hike.
Well, all my worrying in the car that morning was for naught. I got in to the bag at 8:00, with my thermal top and bottoms, fleece pants, down booties, a fleece shirt, and a fleece vest on. But, at dinner time, we had heated our nalgene bottles and thrown two in each sleeping bag. Everyone had told this was the trick to sleeping warm, but I never realized how effective it would be. They were in there for about an hour before I got in. I immediately was too hot and spent the first half hour stripping layers, and waiting for the chill to come. Finally after an hour, I was down to just my thermal top and bottoms and booties, and still nice and toasty. But by this time both Mark and Barry were rhythmically snoring. Once I fell asleep, I slept quite well until waking and realizing I had fallen asleep on one of my arms, which was now quite numb. Another period of sleep and I awoke to Mark stirring to get up to relieve himself. I fought the urge to do the same, thinking it had to close to morning, if I could just fall asleep, I could ride it out. Unfortunately, I realized I couldn't fight the urge any longer, just as Mark returned and attempted to get back into his warm bag. The two of us stirring around so much sent the frost built up on the inside of the tent flying, needless to say it was a rude awakening as I was just trying to hurriedly stumble out to take a pee. This was at 5:40 am. Not long after, we could hear Barry outside swearing as he tried to light his stove. Apparently, he awoke with the need to fully relieve himself, and froze his behind off in the pit privy. He was in a fabulous mood to say the least. In addition to this, we could hear winds whipping about above us, threatening us to dare get out and hike in them. With these events, we took it slow getting ready, and didn't head out of camp until about 9:30, with still a loose goal of hiking Marcy, but with the realization that we would probably half to settle for Tabletop which spurs off halfway up the Marcy trail, and is much more sheltered. After the Phelps trail spur exited, the trail steepened some and slowed us down. Sure enough, by the time we got to the junction with the Tabletop trail, it was quarter of twelve, and the winds were still just as ferocious sounding. Realizing we could probably do Marcy but it would be a tough battle, we only had three of us, me with little winter experience and to top it off Barry forgot his headlamp in the tent and it would definitely be an after-dark return, we decided to take the safe choice, Tabletop. It turned out to be a great decision, it was sheltered well enough for us to never be too exposed to have to worry about facemasks, etc. yet there were some open ledges with views of the Macintyres, Colden and where Marcy entered the clouds. The summit was an anticlimactic one, totally socked in by tree cover. But I continued down the other side about 200 yards and found another open ledge looking out to the Great Range.
Certainly worth the hike!
We didn't stay long, as it was obvious the weather was slowly closing in on us. We got back down to camp at 2:00, and decided to pack up and head out, instead of staying overnight and probably packing wet tents and gear in the morning. We hit the trail by 3 and with a glance up to Marcy and the black clouds she was engulfed in, we realized our earlier decision was definitely a good one. We made it out to the car by 4, showered and drove home, stopping for dinner along the way.
On the ride home, I realized how weird it was that Danielle wasn't with me. I am so used to chatting the whole ride home with her about the parts of the hike that we each enjoyed most, and planning our next hike already. It was definitely an odd trip because of that, yet I still had a blast. To top it off I found the weather report for sunday morning at 6 am, it was -12, not bad for my first night in the winter woods.
