Hiked by: Tim and Valerie on March 3, 2008 - Falling Waters Trail to Little Haystack and back the same way
Conditions: We arrived at the Old Bridle Path/Falling Waters parking lot just a few minutes before 10AM. Tim was figuring it would take us six hours to cover the eight miles to and from Mt Lincoln, which was our goal for the day. Arriving at the parking lot, there were already about 12-15 cars. It was *really* windy and cold here.
We took a moment to use the facilities before we headed off. Quite funny - the dip down into the latrine was steep and deep!
The hike up Falling Waters trail starts out nicely. There are three waterfalls along the first mile or so. Today, they were all covered. The highest one, Cloudland Falls, did have some water peeking through, and some beautiful blue ice. All the snow bridges were strong and we had no issues getting across the brook multiple times. Also, across the trail from Cloudland Falls, there must be some springs that run across the trail. The ice spires were fantastic!! There are also several steep portions along this section. It's going to be an interesting hike out.
Once we got past the three waterfalls, then it's just a long (somewhat tedious) walk, back and forth across the switchbacks, for what feels like a really long time. The snow was deep and powdery, and we wouldn't have wanted to be without snowshoes. Sometimes, a step off the trail would lead to a deep plummet and we'd have to pull ourselves back on the trail. Even our walking, and the walking of those in front of us with snowshoes, wasn't enough. It was as if the snow was not "pack-able". Eventually, we reached the cut-off for Shining Rock. No one had been on that path for quite awhile.
After just a few minutes more, we were at treeline. We stepped out, went about 20-30 steps, and turned around and headed for the woods. (Why do we always do that??) We ducked behind some cover and changed into our summit gear. We headed back out towards the summit of Little Haystack. Here are some views near the summit.
At this point, there were multiple things going through our minds. We were wearing all our winter gear and should have been able to make it across the ridge, but...
So, despite the hours of upward trudging, we turned around atop Little Haystack and headed home. As we hiked down, Mt Lincoln did clear off and as you can see in this picture, the hikers in front of us did make the trip to Lincoln. Below are some pictures of Mt Lincoln, Cannon Mountain and also Greenleaf Hut.
The trip down in winter is always faster than up (and always faster than down in summer), but still Val is not that comfortable on the steep sections with tons of loose snow. We think she fell about 27 times on the way down the mountain. Sometimes, she just landed on her butt. Sometimes she fell and slid for some distance down the trail. Gore-Tex pants will do that. :-) Maybe we should call it "glissading" and then it doesn't sound so much like falling.
It took us until 4pm to get back to the car. We'd used our entire expected time and hadn't gotten within a half-mile of Mt Lincoln. Ah well, at least we were safe.
Overall, we saw several groups of two and a couple solo hikers during the day. Two men barebooting were having some trouble. They said they had crampons so probably did better on the summit than they did in the powder. The parking lot was almost empty when we left. Good thing we didn't need to make a phone call.
