Took a nice walk in the woods with some friends on Saturday in the Santanoni range. Trail was nice and broken to the turnoff for the herd path and then it was all about trail breaking from there. We made good time and were up to a windy cloudy summit on Panther in about 3.5 hours.
From Panther's summit we started off towards Couchsachraga. Jim46er did what he does best and broke like no other and lead us out to Couch. After about 4 hours we arrived at the summit after some creative route finding and blazing a path through some neck deep spruce traps. We amassed quite the crowd and had about 15 people on the summit by the time we got there. Once there we enjoyed a quick break and headed back to Times Square.
The crowd at the swamp crossing
From Times Square it looked like someone had broken out to Santanoni, I didn't trust it though and after following the tracks for a few minutes they went nowhere. We were back route finding again. I took off into the woods attempting to find the trail or something that resembled it. We split up into two groups with the larger group going the opposite way from me looking for the trail. After some major neck deep spruce traps I decided to rejoin the larger group. Once again Jim46er did some major trail breaking and we made it to the summit at just below 11 hours for the day. We had two new 46ers in the group on the summit Jimmy a new W46er and I believe his name was Kevin who finished his regular 46 as well, congrats to both. I snapped a few quick pictures and took off back to Times Square, breaking out the express trail in the dark was not in the cards for today.
The legendary "Braveheart" himself Jim46er on Santanoni's summit!
We moved quickly back to Times Square and after a brief break I started to cool down so I took off ahead of the group on my way down. I managed to snap a few pictures on the way down when the clouds that hung over us all day started to clear.
All and all an awesome day in the mountains and a real test of endurance!
Full set of pictures:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/langer318/sets/72157642503185125
GPS and Stats:
13:47'54.2 Hours
19.12 Miles
6161 Feet Ascent
6763 Calories
http://www.movescount.com/moves/move27642780
