It Sure Was a Hoot of a Day!

"There’ll be two dates on your tombstone and all your friends will read ’em but all that’s gonna matter is that little dash between ’em."

The plan was to meet Rob and Mike at 7:00am at Lincoln Woods, like always though we are early to arrive. It's 6:45am and it's still dark. We get our stuff together and decided no headlamps as daylight was right around the corner and snowshoes the entire way.

We hit the trail around 7:00am for the 3.6 mile flat walk in to the Black Pond Junction. Here we stopped for a quick break and change up layers as needed before heading the next mile to Black Pond. This was the first time I had done Owlshead in the winter and used any of the bushwhacks to get there.

When I completed my first round of the 48, I wanted to access the summits be the actual trails. For starters, I truly don't care to be whacked in the face my branches on the regular for miles on end, or posthole into spruce traps with snowshoes on. I knew that the trail had been broken out be previous hikers the day before so I was feeling good about this whack.

The trail leading to Black Pond was absolutely gorgeous and I cannot wait to visit it in the summer months now! Once we hit the whack, it was roughly a moderate mile back to the trail. This allows you to avoid the 2 major river crossings which was refreshing. Once we popped back out onto the trail at the second river crossing we noticed they were fairly well bridged over and passable.

Took a quick snack break and headed toward the Brutus Bushwhack, about another 2 miles up the trail after 2 minor stream crossings. After the second stream crossing the whack jets off to the right and climbs up the side of Owls Head. Before we headed up this whack, I asked Rob if I should not keep me additional layer on. He responded with don't. I asked how steep it was, he responded with "f*ucking steep".

We start to head up the Brutus, it started off nice and gradual with a bit of an incline. This wasn't so bad. But then, it was this straight vertical climb up the side of this mountain. In some sections my snowshoes were taking one step forward only to slide 2 steps back. Mike and I falling behind as Rob scurried his way up like the man beast he is. Going up I managed well, but was certainly terrified of what it would be like coming down this trail.

We finally hit a point where snow had blown over the tracks from the day before. We did some scoping around and I finally found them again. We climbed through some pretty thick brush towards the end and eventually popping out almost a half a mile from the summit. The actual Brutus typically pops out lower down and on the trail. However, we missed that left somewhere due to following other tracks.

Once on the top we quickly made it to the summit breaking through some deep drifts, some being almost waist deep. The wind was howling and temps were dropping. We went all the way to the end, verified we made it to the actual summit and quickly turned around and headed down.

Ricky Bobby, just wanted some cookies but I made him wait until we got below the wind and trees again. He was such a good dog.

We hit the Brutus again to head back down, we slowly and carefully made our way down the steep sections, holding onto trees, sliding on our butts, and whatever else to carefully make it back down without tumbling.

Before I knew it, we were down and headed for the long haul out. By the time we made it back to Lincoln Woods Trail and had 3.6 miles to get back to the car I had some of the worst hot spots and blisters on my feet. I was more than ready to take those damn snowshoes off and my winter hiking boots.

We all refused to stop though and continued back to the car. Once back at the car we were stoked we just rocked a 16.2 mile hike in 6 hours and 43 minutes moving time!

And just like that my Winter Owlshead is complete and so is Ricky's- I think I will take a break from this peak for a few years now. It's always fun, but very anti climatic in my opinion.

Until the next adventure.