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Mt Tom - page 5 of 5

Beyond this point, my footprints had completely disappeared except in a few particularly shady areas, or where I had postholed. Other than that, I had to rely on the sparsely located blazes and an occasional hole from the tips of my poles. But I thought I remembered the way pretty well, at least until I starting getting close the steep-walled ravine not far from the Avalon Trail junction. I had wandered too far downhill toward Crawford Brook, and ended up retracing my steps quite a distance uphill. 

Back on the right trail again, I finally reached the ravine. It was much steeper on this bank than on the other, and the trail went straight down, which made it difficult descending in snowshoes. Even though I took careful sideways steps, the snowshoes turned into skis, my feet slid out from under me, and I careened downhill about 20 feet before I could dig in and stop my slide. It would have been a good place to use my ice axe if it weren't still strapped to the back of my pack. During the fall, I had dropped my poles. One of them was right next to me; the other was nowhere to be seen. I stood up and looked all around, but it had disappeared into oblivion. I gave up looking and continued carefully downhill on one snowshoe, using my other foot to dig in and keep me from skidding again. It worked, but I ended up in a couple of deep postholes because of it.

Crossing the bottom of the ravine, I noticed that water was flowing not far below the surface crust. I didn't hang around long to see how strong it was, but quickly found the angled path up the other side. Soon I was back on the Avalon Trail, where I figured it would be smooth sailing back to the notch. Unfortunately it didn't work that way. I missed the first brook crossing and wandered a bit down the steepening south bank of Crawford Brook for some distance before I knew that I should be on the other side. Once again, I retraced my steps, found the crossing, and continued on my way. Luckily, the rest of the trip back was unremarkable. I took a side path (the Cascade Loop), but didn't find the cascades to be anything special. Finally, after crossing the brook one last time, I staggered out of the snowy woods and across the tracks back to Crawford Hostel.

After returning the snowshoes and telling the ranger (who had been getting a bit worried because I had expected to be back by 2:00) about my difficulties and filling her in on trail conditions, I walked back to the car and headed home, stopping only once for a couple of sodas and a snack. It had been a much tougher climb than I had bargained for, but I was glad because I hadn't given up, but persevered to the top.

Mt Tom from Crawford Depot. Although not very impressive from this angle, it had a definitely been a long hard climb. 

mt tom from crawford depot.jpg (264566 bytes)

Map

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