Day 2: Seward Mtn and Mount Donaldson

Sunday October 11. Today's plan was to hike about 24 miles to the Seward Range. We greeted by a brief sleet shower just before we left the lean-to and hit the trail around 8:30 AM. The trail was nice and a hell lot drier than the trail to Duck Hole, except for a swamp that most of us took of our shoes to cross. We hiked pass many other lean-tos before get to the trail junction to Seward Mtn.

The begining of the trail runs along a brook and it was quite beautiful, but once the trail left the brook, it becomes steeper and we encountered our first sight of snow and ice of the season. My shoes were pretty soaked by the time we got to the summit of Seward. A quick hi and bye to the wooded summit, we made our way to Donaldson. While taking a lunch break at Donladson and enjoying the nice view the summit offers, I began to feel that my core was getting cold, and the wet feet just added to another factor for me to decide not to go to Emmons, the last and viewless summit on the range. Kim joined me in the decision and we came down via Calkins Brook trail, added few more miles to the hike, but it was well worth it.

Two of us took our sweet time strolling down the beautiful Calkins Brook trail. But once we arrived at the junction of the horse trail and the trail to BlueBerry Lean-To, the sign at the junction reminded us of a long 9.1 miles back to Duck Hole. The trail to Blue Berry Lean-To was as bad as the trail to Duck Hole, if not worse. We set one destination at a time in order to break down the 9.1 miles to shorter goals. First the trail junction to Seward, where we started this morning, then the lean-tos along the horse trail (Ward Brook truck road), we figured once we get to the swamp, we'll be on the home stretch.

The headlamp went on shortly after we passed the 2 lean-tos along the horse trail. The hike back to the swamp was long but uneventful. Once passed the swamp, it began to snow lightly. I was so happy to see there were fire at the Cold River 2 lean-to, I just shouted out a "Hi" to the strangers. Next thing we saw was the trail to Bradley Pond followed by the register box and the junction to our lean-to! Wooohoo!!

We cleaned up and made dinner while waiting for the rest to come back. Just when the dinner was ready, we saw headlamp appraoching, they're home too. What a day!