Cliff 2/23/2014

The day started out well with a Bobcat siting at around 7:30 near Tawanis. I was driving slow along an icy road. The cat was walking on the side of the road and didn't immediately take off into the woods. I got a good look. Very cool.
The plan for today was to climb Cliff by cutting across the flowed lands. This looks good on a map and would cut off about 4 miles from the 16 mile trip. Since the days are getting longer I started out at 8 from the trail head. Nice to have the light since I got turned around on the start of this route when I went up Redfield. The hike up to the flowed lands (4.5 miles) went fairly quickly. It was a very nice day with blue sky, sun, and temperatures in the 20's. I went out onto the flowed lands (lake) which looked very safe and there were plenty of tracks. There were however no tracks going toward Cliff. I started in the direction of Cliff and soon found that breaking trail was a lot of work. 2+ feet of snow and many areas with large drifts from wind the last few days. Looking up at the route and seeing how much trouble it was to break trail I decided to give up on saving the 4 miles and back tracked to the broken trail.
After crossing the flowed lands I came out at a lean to and then hit the main trail across Colden dam. Very nice trail following a frozen river up to the start of the Cliff trail. Cliff is a trail-less peak but someone had been up it in the last few days so there was a trail to follow. There were a number of downed trees that had to be crawled over/under and some pretty steep areas that were interesting in snow shoes. Surprisingly good views on the way up Cliff and at the summit itself. Another peak with a treed top that had good views.
All in all a very nice day to be in the ADK's. The trip back to the car was long but still sunny and a lot of frozen waterfalls, mountains, and streams to look at on the way back.

Colden from Flowed Lands

Marcy from Cliff

Top of Cliff