Big Crow Mountain

Big Crow Mountain is another one we hiked back in 2011, with Frankie riding up in the Kelty backpack carrier.  It was super hot and muggy that day, with haze smothering the High Peaks, but it was evident that the views from the summit would be spectacular on a clear day.  I've been wanting to come back ever since, and was hoping we'd have a clear day this weekend to try to get those views.  Big Crow fit our criteria perfectly to continue our first foray into Adirondack winter hiking: it represents a known entity, and is a short hike with views.  The bluebird skies that so thrilled us in the morning didn't end up lasting all day, but the views were still orders of magnitude clearer than our first hike up.  And Frankie got to hike another new peak.

We weren't sure if parking was accessible, but Erwin was able to back into a spot along the side of the plowed stub of road just past the snowplow turnaround.  Summer hikes here start at Crow Clearing, but in the winter there is an additional short hike along the unplowed portion of O'Toole Road.  This road is fairly narrow with no adjacent development, so it is fairly pleasant as far as road walks go, and a good warm up for the real hiking to come.

The trail up Big Crow is short, but it is quite steep in places.  Because of this, and after seeing how well the trail was broken out, we elected to wear microspikes for this hike.  I strapped both my snowshoes and Frankie's to my backpack just in case, but we never ended up needing them. 

The sky was still pure blue as we approached the summit, but unfortunately that was not to last long.

We walked past the first view spot, where the cairn marks the summit, going past it another rocky ledge looking down on Little Crow.  The sun had melted the snow from some rocks here and it was a great spot to dump our packs. 

Once the sun was obscured, we got a little cold just hanging around, so added some layers and started our descent.  This part went quick!  Frankie very enthusiastically slid down all the steeps.  Very few pictures of that, as he was so far ahead and we were rushing to keep up.

Once we got back to the flat section of the trail, we slowed to our more normal pace and stopped to admire the gorgeous lichens.  

back at the car -- another awesome hike in the books!