Wednesday, 12/30 Idea

Proposal from tMail: the great Carter-Moriah attack (south, middle, north and Moriah):

19-Mile Brook Trail to South Carter
Follow ridge to North Carter
Return via Imp Trail

Mutha's Trip Report (pics here): No report, man. Got too busy and never wrote one up. Read tMail's - it says it ALL!!

tMail's Trip Report (pics here): Well 85% of the intended goal / traverse has been completed in December of 2009 for Carter Moriah.

DogMan, Mutha and myself tackled the all the Carter’s except Carter Dome which was previously done by Mutha and myself in early December of 2009. The weather was fairly warmer than the last outing but the quality of air and snow texture was outstanding.

We started off on the 19 mile brook trail and worked our way toward Zeta Pass and had to do some route finding in order to find the Carter – Moriah trail. We probably spent about 15-20 minutes looking for the trail. There is a good amount of snow up there and this was before the last couple storms so I would imagine it is significant by now.

The trail from Zeta Pass to South, Middle and North Carter was not broke out, we took turns breaking trail. This trip I did a much better job of food, lots of peanut butter crackers, all types of nuts some salted some not and I have two snicker bars that I had in the upper pockets of my pants that stayed somewhat soft but were beginning to harden after 45 minutes.

The recent cold weather that we have been in has brought some real food challenges. I am sticking with the peanut butter crackers, large amounts of almonds, cashews, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds and high salt items.

As far as gear, I think I am tying my inner boot to tight I have had feet problems lately, while ascending but when coming down my feet are nice and toasty. This last trip I had Darn Tough Ski socks on with Smartwool Mountaineering socks and everything was still cold, beats me suggestions?


New Patagonia R1 fleece hoody was outstanding and worked well, I have also used my shell jacket a lot more below tree line while hiking as there is tons of snow on branches and trees and the jacket has kept me warm and dry.


I continued the philosophy of not changing and everything dried out and I stayed warm. I have added a smartwool short sleeve shirt to my arsenal as a base layer it worked awesome!

Hats off to DogMan for his first big winter hike nice work!

Redfox was top notch again as we had pizza, nachos, beer, all their break and salads and had conversation about Kmart, St J Co op, NASA, the lunar landing, Pink Floyd, the song Frankenstein, solar power, Rush and Mutha’s old radio show on PBS.