Full story, photos & video at: http://forums.adkhighpeaks.com/showthread.php?t=23853 or www.mackenziefamily.com/46/46r.html

Duration: 10.5 hours
Mileage/elevation gain: approx. 12 miles/ 4,000 feet
Weather: Snow with 5-10F ambient with -10F windchill (about 30 m.p.h. wind speed)
Partner: Nangaparbat (NP)

What to do the weekend of the 26th…hmm. NP suggested Gothics North Face via the New Finger Slide. It sounded good to me since he’d spotted snow along the edge earlier in the week. This suggested that the conditions might be good enough to at least scratch our way up. Neither of us could have guessed how fantastic the conditions actually were, however. Deep snow at the base, consolidated snow/ice (neve), yellow ice, verglas, occasional frozen turf and a strong wind blowing snow down the face made it a true mountaineering adventure.

In hindsight, this also completed a circuit for NP and I as climbing partners. We climbed Gothics’ East Face, South Face and West Face during the winters of 2012 and 2013; the North Face was an equal adventure. That in itself gave me pause to smile when he mentioned it at the end of the day. It takes a person you trust intuitively to embark upon these outings, someone that always has your back.

We departed from the Garden trailhead at 8:00 a.m. wearing microspikes and carrying crampons and snowshoes. The darn snowshoes never left our packs, but there was a couple feet of snow at elevation so I figured they were required. I suggested using the Southside Trail to avoid the ups and downs of the Phelps Trail. Johns Brook was frozen over, so this worked out well. A few icy sections were challenging in microspikes (like the area before the flume at the former ladder). All in all, it saved time and energy which helped since neither of us felt entirely energetic—at least that’s what we admitted to each other a couple hours later at the Orebed Leanto.