State Brook Mt Snowshoe Hike

Wednesday the 24th was a pretty decent day so Randy and I joined our hiking friends Kathy and Gail and the Schenectady Chapter of the ADK on a snowshoe hike to State Brook Mt. All together, 12 of us were on hand and there was about 5 - 7 inches of snow. All the trees and bushes were covered with a layer of ice from previous ice storms and a layer of soft, light, puffy snow from the last 2 days. We even had the sun peeking out now and again to turn everything sparkly. We got started about 0930 and made a fairly gradual ascent up State Brook Mt. There was one tricky spot, really steep that had nearly no purchase for the snowshoe cleats. One woman had a really hard time there and finally got up it by crawling, her husband pushing from behind and Randy pulling her up with his walking stick. We lunched at the summit in a beautiful little clearing among a stand of snow covered spruce. Then we hiked east along the summit and down the east side of the mountain. As we recrossed State Brook, one of the guys fell thru the ice. He was the 8th person across that brook so it was just bad luck that he was the one who went thru. His wife, who was right behind him, got across on some tree roots at a narrow part of the stream and I followed her. Randy, last of the group, tried going along the ice on the side of the stream but that broke and his foot got a good dipping. At any rate, we were only about a mile from the trail head, so the guy who went into the stream just decided to hike out, wet. We got back to the cars about 3:15, so it was a pretty long day. The temp stayed pretty good, about 25 degrees and we had a nice light snowfall most of the day, making it a really pretty day.