Copy/Repost Hike

With no other interest in the trip and the fact that the forecast for the weekend was not originally looking very good, I decided to do Snowy Mountain on Thursday, March 13th as I was in the area anyway.  It was a decent enough day...warm but overcast.  I headed over to the trailhead off Rt. 30 south of Indian Lake village and began the hike at about 9:30AM.  The trail starts off into the woods just opposite the small parking lot there.  I waited to put my snowshoes on until I was about 100 yards in as there was good snowcover away from the road.  The trail meandered alot through the woods with little elevation gain for roughly the half the distance to the peak.  Along the way there were nice views of the cliffs on Squaw Mountain and a couple of crossings of Beaver Brook.  It did seem like a long way before there was any significant grade to the trail.  The trail at this point did start to ascend more moderately until I got to an elevation where there were mostly pines (before that it was largely deciduous forest).  Here the trail levels out for a short distance as it traversed over to the southern flank for the final ascent up to Snowy Mountain.  This final quarter mile is very steep before it emerges onto a wide open ledge with beautiful views of the entire Indian Lake and into the Siamese Ponds Wilderness.  After a short break here, I continued onto the summit.  Here there's a restored firetower, which towers over the thickly treed summit...in fact, I couldn't even see the tower until I was practically on it.  The tower's stairs and landings were thickly covered in ice and snow, but I managed to get up about halfway for the panoramic views into the surrounding areas.  The white-capped high peaks could be made out to the north, but it was very hazy.  I had a snack up here and then looked around the rest of the fairly broad summit.  There are fine outlooks to the west into the West Canada Lake and Moose River Wilderness(es).  I believe, that the prominent peaks to the west are Buell and Panther Mountains.  At about noon, I started back down.  The steep section of the trail leading down from the ledge worked out to be a terrific uninterupted slide.  Afterwards the rest of the hike back was fairly uneventful all the way back down the same way I went up.  I reached the trailhead again by 2PM and headed back to North Creek, where I was staying.  All-in-all a great mountain to snowshoe over in this area!

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