Hiked November 5, 2007 by Tim and Valerie via Greenleaf Trail
It's been six weeks since we did a 4000-footer, and we've felt our summer fitness just slipping away as root veggies and crock-pot meals take the place of our giant summer salads. We decided that we needed to do a significant mountain, just to prove we could. We've never done Lafayette via the Greenleaf trail, so we thought it would be an interesting route.
The time changed this weekend, so it should have been easy to get an early start, but we took our time getting out the door, and were standing in the Cannon Tramway parking lot at 9:30am. It was 38 degrees F. Now, here's where things started getting ugly. The trailhead description in our guide book said that we needed to follow the bike path to the underpass (under the Franconia Parkway). So, we went north on the bike path and couldn't find an underpass. Then, back at the parking lot, we went south on the bike path, *found* an underpass, and followed that for much too long. We never found the trailhead. So, finally, back at the parking lot at 10am, we just followed the road over to the entrance ramp to the freeway, and there it is!! What a waste of daylight!
The trail started out without much elevation gain, but very rocky. Giant boulders to climb over and around as we followed the "notch" south. Finally, we started climbing up, through some switchbacks. Val was huffing, but we kept moving. We made it to Eagle Pass, right at the base of Eagle Cliffs. It was beautiful! Interesting rock formations and also a great view of Cannon Cliffs.
We continued up. More switchbacks. Then ice-covered switchbacks. Finally, the trail moderated as we approached the hut. The trees were a little frosted. At Greenleaf Hut, we sat on the steps, had a snack and regrouped. Should we try for the summit or just head back down? Valerie is so worried about having to hike out in the dark, but it's only 12:15pm. It will take at least 2 hours to get up to the summit and then back to the hut, then a couple more hours back to the car. We decide to go for it. We can see many other hiking parties on the rocky trail between the hut and the summit.
From the hut, we hiked up with a solo hiker named Troy. We chatted, but eventually he headed off ahead of us. Everyone travels faster than we do. There was only one place along the way that we somewhat scary... a frozen waterfall where we had to cross. But we made it without any slips. At the top, as *always* it was very cold and windy. We found a sheltered spot and took a moment's pause out of the wind.
After our break, we put on our "summit" clothes including balaclava and mittens, and headed down. We need more clothes for the downhill trip because we just aren't working as hard. It was a cold and blustery trip back to the hut. The hike down to the car was relatively uneventful, except for the last couple tenths of a mile. We could see a parking lot through the trees, on our side of the freeway, so we bushwhacked our way down there and followed the bike path back. Funny, the place where we came out of the woods was only about 0.1 miles from the place where we *turned around* when we made the bad decisions on the bike path in the AM.