My second backpacking trip and back to back! They way I planned out my finishing of the quest for the 46 was to get as many of the less desirable hike, ie trailess mud-fests, out of the way so that I would be able to finish on some of the "fun" ones, with great views. In order to do that, I needed to knock out the Seward Range and by doing so that would leave me with only one trailess peak left out of my last dozen or so. Because of the distance traveled to get to them and the nature of the trails for them, it was an easy decision to make this a backpack overnight to get all four done. Myself Jim and Patrick went in at Coreys and ended up setting up camp at the Ward Brook leen-to. Our plan was to hike in, set up camp and hike Seymour on Tuesday, hike the three in the Seward Range on Wednesday and depending on time and energy hike out on Thursday. Once we dropped our backpacks and tackled Seymour we made good time. It's not that long of a trail, it just happens to be very steep and muddy and rugged. Also, these couple of days were unfortunately very hot and humid. In fact with temperatures cresting in the 90F range and combined with the high humidity and very rugged terrain, this was the most grueling hike I have ever done. Well, not Seymour specifically, that was just super sweaty and tough for a few hours. We happened to cross paths with a group of 6-8 middle school-high school kids who were away at camp and were going to back the same mountains as us. Impressive and great to see kids getting out and tackling the mountains! We enjoyed a really nice fire at camp that evening as we relaxed and rested up for the long day that was coming.
We ate our breakfast the next morning and hit the trail sometime around 8am, and began our climb up what I am calling the most rugged and consistently steep trail I have every climbed and combined with the oppressive heat, least favorite trail...Ward Brook trail up Seward. I don't think I've ever disliked one stretch of trail as much as I did that one, on that day. Given cooler temps, maybe my opinion would differ, but for know it stands. Well sure enough, we made it to the top of Seward, Jim and I a bit after Patrick who is a mountain goat, lol. Not too much for the way of views from Seward, so down the steep rocky chutes and over to Donaldson for the best views of the day and lunch. Our trek over to Emmons went fairly uneventful, with the exception of me jabbing my head pretty hard on a branch as I was navigating part of the bog. Oh well, it happens. By the time we reached Emmons we were whupped and wishing we could take a helicopter ride back to camp, but unfortunately that was not the case. Back we went, up and over and down, retracing our steps. Unforntunely the way back didn't shrink at all even though I kept thinking, the trailhead HAS to be just around this bend. Eventually we did make it back to camp, and as I calculated had moved at the slowest rate of speed of any hike I have done, close to 10 hours for just over 8 miles! Yah, it was a beast. Well, another night in the woods, and we broke camp in the morning and were so glad that we didn't try to hike out the night before. By the time we reached the car we were craving some non-camp food and ice-cream! It's amazing what a few days in the woods can do. Hurrah, the last of the trailess marathons are done!
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