Our hiking party today consisted of five members of Hiking Mates. We started out of the Loj, and made our way up through Avalanche Pass and Lake, over to Lake Colden, up the back side of Colden and then down to Lake Arnold and back to the Loj. This was my first time to Avalanche Lake when it wasn't frozen and so therefore my first time having to use the hitch-up-matildas. That was a pretty cool experience and very scenic, although the path along the lake was as rugged as any stretch of "flat" trail there is; kinda reminds me of the bottom of the Scenic trail to Sawteeth Mt. We started out the hike with an overcast sky and a few misty drops, but were suppose to have clearing skies as the day went along. We took a quick little fuel-up break at the trail junction at Lake Colden to give us some energy to finish the assault of Mount Colden and it's a good thing! The trail from that direction is one of the more consistently steep trails in the 'dacks, and most of it was over rock slabs that had water running down them. Thankfully they weren't slick like that of Allen, and the footing was surprisingly good. Slowly but surely we all made our way up to the ladder, and attacked the last open rock scrambles to make it to the top. There was one tricky scramble were a couple of the hikers didn't think they could make it, and one trekking pole didn't, but with a little bit of courage all conquered the mountain and made it to the top! Once on top, and the cameras came out, I unknowingly started a summit photo ritual by deciding to pose on the top in the "Captain Morgan" pose. lol Also, just as we reached the summit the clouds finally broke and gave us some quite spectacular views towards the MacIntyre Range and over to Marcy. God's creation sure is amazing!
Our journey down from the summit went happily uneventful, past stinky Lake Arnold and down to Marcy Dam and back out. This was a nice change of pace from the last hike I did through the Santas. We also has the cool experience of meeting a man, his son and team that were in the process of attempting to set the world record for the fastest time summiting all 50 state high points, by doing it in 50 days! They bagged Marcy that day and were off for Mansfield and Katahdin next. Cool stuff!
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