Trek4DM and I hiked two fire towers today. We started with Owls Head (Long Lake). She was a late add as I thought I would be solo. In our emails I made sure to say that it's only a 10K but might not be as easy as you'd think. The main factor.....has anyone gone there lately.
We left the trailhead at 730 two hikers signed in 8 days ago for the summit. 4-6" snow in the trench and the 1st mile was easy. On a snowmobile path 5 minutes before continuing on the trail.
Once we started the real climb...to the height of land maybe 1/2 mile away from the summit the snow depth steadily increased to over a foot but not over a foot and a half. Might be two and a half feet of snow on the ground. It was the slowest we went all day. If someone had been here recently their tracks did not make a difference for us. After the height of land there follows a relatively gradual and quicker down and then a steeper up to the tower after the site of the observers cabin.
Our return was great. We had packed the snow real nice and bombed down our track on the steep parts.
It took us 2 hours to summit and 1-1/2 hours on the return.
After that we stopped in Long Lake and we both got a big cup of soup at convenience store north of the bridge (name...don't remember).
I wanted to make a short day because I'm going out again tomorrow and so did Trek4DM. We almost bypassed the second mountain Blue in favor of the little Sawyer. But quick thinking and a turnaround just past the parking area corrected this potential dumb omission. The trail looked packed so we suited up again and climbed. Two hours round trip. The trail is in great shape with nice packed snow.
Don
We left the trailhead at 730 two hikers signed in 8 days ago for the summit. 4-6" snow in the trench and the 1st mile was easy. On a snowmobile path 5 minutes before continuing on the trail.
Once we started the real climb...to the height of land maybe 1/2 mile away from the summit the snow depth steadily increased to over a foot but not over a foot and a half. Might be two and a half feet of snow on the ground. It was the slowest we went all day. If someone had been here recently their tracks did not make a difference for us. After the height of land there follows a relatively gradual and quicker down and then a steeper up to the tower after the site of the observers cabin.
Our return was great. We had packed the snow real nice and bombed down our track on the steep parts.
It took us 2 hours to summit and 1-1/2 hours on the return.
After that we stopped in Long Lake and we both got a big cup of soup at convenience store north of the bridge (name...don't remember).
I wanted to make a short day because I'm going out again tomorrow and so did Trek4DM. We almost bypassed the second mountain Blue in favor of the little Sawyer. But quick thinking and a turnaround just past the parking area corrected this potential dumb omission. The trail looked packed so we suited up again and climbed. Two hours round trip. The trail is in great shape with nice packed snow.
Don
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