Kane Mountain Winter Hike
Hiking to Kane Mountain Firetower | Caroga Lake, NY | February 2017
I’m sure you’ve all heard about the warm spring-like temperatures that came across the country last week. We gladly welcomed the warmth and the sun with open arms as it melted away our foot of snow, and more importantly, reminded us that spring is coming! In the last couple years, having a high of 60º would have felt unseasonably cold for us in the South/Southwest, but now it had me opening our windows, working outside in the sunshine, and making sweet tea. It’s really a shame that Curtis has been on night shift through all of this, meaning he’s slept through most of these beautiful days…but thankfully we were able to get out and hike just once.
Since his “weekend” between going from swing shift to night shift is only a day and a half long, and usually spent adjusting to a new schedule, we needed an easier hike. We decided to return to do a winter hike for Kane Mountain, which is just an hour away and only 2 miles round-trip. The highs were in the upper 30’s on the trail, which sounds cold but feels so good when it seems we’ve been hiking in single digits too much this season! When we arrived, we found that the area was still very snowy but the trail was completely packed down. It was a little slick, but not anywhere near as icy and frightening as Overlook in January. Curtis told me to try out my Yak Tracks, and they made me feel so much more confident on the trail. (I still had Curtis walk behind me on the way up…just in case, ya know!) I had only worn my Yak Tracks once before (while hiking through muddy and slushy Bryce Canyon 2 years ago!) but they definitely made the trek up and downhill much easier and it was nice to not have to deal with the heaviness of snowshoes.
The last time we hiked to Kane Mountain Fire Tower, it was right at the end of peak colors in the fall, so things looked just a bit different today. 🙂 We opted to hike both up and down the shorter and steeper trail, because we remembered thinking there wasn’t much of a difference in steepness having hiked the loop before. Charlotte seemed to remember everything, and was confused when we didn’t take the other trail back down — she started going down a ways before we finally convinced her to come back down the first trail with us! As we hiked back down, we noticed tracks that ran parallel to the trail that looked like someone had brought a sled up the mountain. That sure sounded like a fun idea on some of the steeper parts!
Now the warm temperatures have passed and we got a little more snow over the weekend, but last week just reminded us that spring is coming, so we need to enjoy every last opportunity we have to snowshoe together. We also need to brace ourselves for what’s coming next…wet, slushy trails as the snow melts from the higher elevations!
