The first stretch of trail from the parking lot is wide with railroad ties, a nice walk in the woods. The leaves had fallen from autumn and there was only a dusting of snow. This portion was relatively free of ice, and it's a nice introduction to a day's hike, getting the blood flowing. It was chillly -- about 30 degrees -- but toasty when the sun poked through the trees. That made for several stops along the way to adjust our layers.
At the Red Spot trail turnoff, the path started to get a tad icy, so Ivy donned her Yak Trax, while I put on my brand new Stabilicers for their maiden voyage. I was impressed with how well they worked -- and they were perfect for this kind of patchy ice; crampons would have been overkill and would have actually been a hinderance since the coating of ice wasn't thick enough or prevalent enough to warrant the spikes.
About halfway or two thirds of the way up, we hit the first of the ledges. Then, we reached a point that brought back memories of another hike: I got stuck at exactly the same ledge where once before I also struggled to find a way up! Ivy patiently waited for me while I went through pretzel moves to maneuver my way up. I think I muttered quite a few times: "Ugh, I hate ledges!"
Soon, we were above treeline and back to donning our Gore-Tex shells, hats and mittens. And by the time we had the summit in sight, the winds were howling at our estimate of 40-50 mph. At one point, I was literally on my hands and knees wiggling across the rock, and feeling like I was about to puke. My left knee tweaked. I called out above the wind to Ivy up ahead of me, and told her I was heading back down. I figured she'd go on ahead of me, tag the summit and then meet me below treeline, but she graciously came back down and we decided to find the cutoff to White Dot for our descent.
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