The plan for the day was to start early and go up the Beaver Meadows trail to get Gothics and Armstrong.  If we felt good about it, we would continue on to Upper Wolfjaw and Lower Wolfjaw if we were feeling it.

The day started good with a quick hike in to Beaver Meadows Falls, which were frozen and spectacular.  Then it was the steep climb up Beaver Meadows trail.  It starts almost vertical, and it doesn't feel much better the whole way up.  Amazing views along the way though.  When we got to the ladders, either the packed trail was skipping them, or they were just so buried in snow and ice we didn't see them... except for the last one, which is down.  This one was scary.  The rock on top was icy, and it was going to be a good fall if you slipped.  We all changed out of snowshoes into spikes of some kind.  I chose to use the crampons for the first time, and they worked beautifully.  We changed back to snowshoes 100 feet later when we hit the state range trail again.

We turned left and went up Gothics.  On the way up we went over what looked like it was a big boulder.  I didn't remember there being anything like that on the ridge, but I'd only gone this way once before.  Turns out, it was a clump of trees.  Being in snow shoes, we were fine.  Someone that wasn't in shoes found the spruce trap before we have been through.  The summit was beautiful, and the skies were absolutely clear.  The trees though, on the way up were so full of rime ice, it just amazed me that they could survive.

We then went over to Armstrong, and the trail is short and sweet, with our heads in the trees because of the feet of snow we were walking on.  Once again, Armstrong was beautiful, and the view of Gothics that we just came down, it was one of those, "We did that?" moments.  At this point we accessed how we were feeling, and decided to go on to Armstrong, with a small fear of the ladder.  Turns out, that ladder was intense.  It was all iced over, and we started going down in the trees off to the side.  I got out my 50 feet of webbing, wrapped it around a tree, and used it to help us get down the slope.  All of us made it down in one piece, and at this point we had no choice but to go on.

The climb up Upper Wolfjaw was not a bad hike, and the views, which are in the other direction from Armstrong, were also amazing.  The climb down was steep, and when we got to the Wedge Brook trail, we took an assessment of how we were feeling.  Lower Wolfjaw, while only 0.8 miles and steeply straight up was not something we were going to do.  So, down the Wedge Brook trail we went, and when we got to the lot, we were happy that we didn't add the 4th.  It was a long day, but so worth it.

This makes 13/46 Winter peaks.