Hiked by: Tim and Valerie on January 17, 2009 - Via Greeley Ponds Trail and Mt Osceola Trail
Conditions: Driving north, we were taking bets on the trailhead temperature. It was -8F at our house, and -11F in Lincoln. Surprisingly, it was only -2F at the parking lot on the Kanc. So, already that was a good thing! The parking lot had about six cars in it already, so we knew we weren't the only ones to be on the mountain today. The plan for the day was to summit East Osceola, then do the one-mile trek over to the main peak, then back over the east peak again on our way out. The plan didn't quite turn out that way, but more on that later.
The initial 1.3 miles on the Greeley Ponds trail was very nice and easy. This portion of the trail is really just getting us into the "notch" between the mountains, so there is just a little increase in elevation. Valerie wore her snowshoes and Tim bare-booted. The trail was well-packed and we made very good time - about 35 minutes to the junction. Just as the junction sign came into view, the sun peeked out for the first time in the notch. We got this one picture off before the camera froze up. Tim put it into his inner pocket to try to rehabilitate it.
Once we turned onto the Mt Osceola trail, then we started to climb. The Mt Osceola trail is a 90-degree turn off the Greeley Ponds trail, and so if you imagine that the Greeley Ponds trail was going *through* the notch, then this one is going straight up the side of the mountain.
We stopped so Tim could put on his crampons. Valerie was still in her snowshoes. The trail was well-trodden, but there was more loose snow on top. We arrived at the first "steep part", and WOW... we were stymied. Valerie's snowshoes couldn't get any grip at all. Even Tim's crampons were not finding purchase under the loose snow. We were pretty much scrambling up on all fours, and losing some of our progress with each step. Tim also had the added fun of having to pull Valerie up a couple sections where there were no footholds for the snowshoes. We got to the top of this particularly steep section and regrouped. From that point on, there were many sections like that one. Valerie switched over to crampons, and it did help to a degree, but she was getting more exhausted as we fought our way up.
There are no pictures of this part of the hike. Our minds weren't on photo ops.
Eventually, Valerie was ready to just call it a day. Tim suggested we go up around one more turn. We knew we were close to the open slide that we would need to cross. If we made it there, then the summit was not far. Luckily for Tim, we found it just in the knick of time. :-)
The slide, which had been perilous in November - all ice - was now not even as hard as the rest of the trail. It was just 8-10 inches of snow, with a decent trail through it. We got our first good views of the day!
On the other side of that, the trail got steep again for a stretch. Then we could see blue sky ahead, and we knew that we were almost to the view. We put our heads down and pushed up. All the time that we were on that portion of the trail, Tim said to Valerie "You are not going to like going down this". She already knew that.
After a moment near the top to re-group, change some clothes, and catch a bite to eat, we made the final push to the summit. See Valerie next to the world's smallest cairn. It had taken us more than two hours to go 1.5 miles. We obviously knew at this point that we were not making the round trip out to Mt Osceola's main peak and back. Although we made this summit and snagged a checkmark for the day, we knew in the back of our heads that we would need to do this entire trip again in order to get Mt Osceola on another winter's day.
Near the summit, we found a good spot in the sun to eat some more and change socks. The views were just gorgeous!
The trip down was exactly what we expected. It still went faster than up, but it was hair-raising and stressful, mostly for Valerie. We were overtaken by several other people on our descent. It seems that everyone else is more comfortable with some amount of sliding and/or being out of control than Valerie is.
While coming down the same steep part that gave us so much trouble on the trip up, Tim had made it to the bottom and knew that Valerie was about 85% of the way down, so had taken a couple steps back. Valerie lost her footing, landed on her Gore-tex covered butt, and started sliding fast towards the trees/woods. Tim took three quick steps and tackled her, but her forward momentum carried them both down the hill into the trees. Tim hooked a leg around a tree and held onto Val. If you can imagine an embankment in the woods, Tim's leg hooked around a 2-inch sapling, his body sliding around below that - somewhat upside-down. He's got hold of Val who is right-side up and scrambling to get her crampons to dig into the foot or so of fluffy snow. Val got some traction and managed to grab a different tree. We were just trying to get Tim right-side-up when another hiker came down the same slide. Tim grabbed him as he was sliding by. The three of us had just gotten ourselves up and hadn't even made it back to the trail yet when two more guys and a big golden retriever came down. They were sliding on purpose but didn't expect to find us in the "landing spot", so there was more scrambling. All in all, it was rather funny once Valerie got past the stress.
Again, sorry, no pictures of all that. It all happened in what seemed like an instant.
Once we got down off the steep section, it was an easy walk back to the junction with the Greeley Ponds trail. It was earlier than we'd expected to be done (since we'd cut two miles from the trip), so Tim asked if we could go to the pond. We made the 0.3-mile trek down and were happy to find sunshine and no wind. We set out the insulated pad and had a picnic on the ice.
So, today was a mixed bag. It was a beautiful day for hiking, and we got one checkmark for our list. We'll still need to come back and do this all again to get over to Mt Osceola's main peak. We learned a couple things... our 10-pt small-spiked crampons were not enough today. Many hikers today did well with full crampons (10 or 12 point, but longer and sharper points than ours). We also should have had our hiking poles. We leave them at home a lot in the winter, but they definitely would have helped today. We'll bring them when we come back next time.