It's no secret that winter took a long time to arrive in the east in December 2015. When my husband and I booked accommodations in Keene, New York with friends for around New Year's, we expected to be spending most of our time ice climbing and skiing. When we arrived, there was very little snow, so we decided to do what we always do in the Adirondacks: Hike!

After our New Year's Eve festivities, we selected Hurricane Mountain as our New Year's Day 2016 objective. With a late start at 11AM after sleeping in and chowing down on a greasy breakfast, we decided to do the hike as a traverse instead of an out and back.

We set up a shuttle with two cars, leaving a car on route 9N at the Hurrican Mountain trailhead, near the Baxter Mountain trailhead. We drove to our starting point on the Hurricane Road, and turned right onto O'Toole Road that took us to a trailhead that also provides access to the Nun-da-ga-o Ridge and Big Crow Mountain. The actual road to the trailhead itself was not fully plowed, which added an extra 5min walk on a snow covered road to the actual trailhead. We decided to forego signing in at the register, as we knew doing a traverse we would not be returning to sign out. 

The route started with a flat mile or so warm up on a broken trail. Once turning right at the junction and rock hopping over a brook, the trail gradually ascended the 2000ft over 2 miles or so. Temperatures were around -8C/17F. The trail was snow covered, so I wore my microspikes the entire way for extra traction. The ascent travelled through beautiful birch forests, and we all remarked how enjoyable the trail was. Nearing the 3600ft height, the winds picked up and the temperatures plummeted. We stopped at the junction about 100ft below the summit, donned our down and windshells and ascended to the open rocky summit just to be blown off by 50mph/80kph winds. 

Bennies Brook slide on Lower Wolfjaw Mountain near Keene Valley, New York was created by Hurricane Irene back in late August 2011. This moderate grade 'slide', as they are called in the Adirondacks, is essentially a wide path created or enlarged by a intense weather event and the steep topography (avalanche, mudslide etc). For adventurers, it's another way to summit the 4173ft/1272m peak of Lower Wolfjaw. The slide path climbs 2000ft/609m and finishes close to the summit.

With the late arrival of winter in 2015, we chose this moderate objective because the snow and thin ice cover left steeper slide objectives out of the question. Our group members were all well equipped with the proper equipment for the winter conditions we were facing (crampons, ice axes, etc), and we all had previous training and experience with mountaineering.

The most popular way to approach the slide is to park at the Garden parking lot outside Keene Valley and use an abandoned trail to get to John's Brook. After reaching the brook, you simply cross it by rock hopping, then walk along the Southside river trail and reach the base of the slide an hour or so later. Unfortunately today John's Brook's river flow was too high to cross with the recent snowfall and rain, so we had to return to the main trail to the John's Brook Lodge area and cross the bridge and then having to backtrack about 1km. In total, this probably added about 1km/0.6miles to our day. Temperatures were slightly above freezing at the base and slightly below freezing at the summit.