Seymour Mountain

My son and I hiked Seymour mountain yesterday after getting a late start. We arrived at the summer trail-head and signed in at 8:18. There was one other hiker ahead of us that we would not see until we were halfway up Seymour we met him coming down.

We easily bare booted to the first large brook crossing where we put on our micro spikes due to ice covered rocks. From there we left them on to the summit just to save time. This proved to be a good decision as we ran into more and more flow ice as we gained in elevation. We eventually stopped to eat some lunch near where the trail comes up along side the slide. From this point until the final head-wall up on the ridge it was slow going, but not overly difficult. We eventually came out at the top near the slide, hopped up on the rock, from here it was basically a ridge walk over to the summit. We reached the summit at 1:50 pm, took pictures and had some snacks then headed back down and out at 2 pm.

There was a serious amount of ice flow in the steep section along the slide, so much that we stopped ahead of it and switched out to our crampons to navigate going down that area, then eventually switched back to micro-spikes for the rest of the hike out, there was never a need for snowshoes.
It is always worth the extra time to take some additional precautions and avoid unnecessary risk.
There was only the one other hiker we seen all day.

We signed out at 6:18 pm.

Baxter Mountain

A group of us planned this hike one year for a New Year eve hike. I don't think any of us made the true summit. I realized this when I hiked this as I went a lot further than we did that night.

It's a mostly moderate, 1.2 mile hike to the first summit. It begins at a moderate grade as it passes under a power line, then there's a continuous climb over switchbacks for 0.8 mile, where the Beede Farm Trail comes in on the left. Going straight and work your way up a few steep steps to the first open rock. This first lookout is not the summit — that's a bit farther along the ridge. Past the summit, a lesser-used trail descends to Beede Road in Keene Valley.

2.4 miles round trip

770 feet of elevation gain