March 8, I attempted the Santanoni range.  This range is one of my favorites in the high peaks, and it surely didn't disappoint on Saturday.

Started off a bit later than desired as a solo hiker a bit past 630.  I caught up to a group of 5 that left a bit before me on the road in, and eventually joined their group for the remainder of the hike a bit past the bridge (maybe 3 miles in).  The trails were in great condition, well packed and quite obvious.  The hike up to Times Square was good.  There was one point where the people before us lost the herd path and did a bushwack for a couple tenths of a mile.  No big deal.  We got up to Times Square about when I expected and went up Panther.  It was a frozen tundra the whole way up, and the cold wind was blowing.  I didn't get my goggles out, nor did I put on any extra layers other than my balaclava, so I was a little chilled, but not that bad.  My phone on the other hand got cold enough it shut down until I got back to times square.

Then it was the long hike out to Couch.  This was a slow hike.  I believe there were 3 people before us that did the routing and broke the trail.  For the most part it wasn't a bad route.  A couple side attempts here and there, but overall, considering how deep the snow was, I can't complain.  The bog was fantastic.  Absolutely frozen solid and covered in snow.  If it wasn't knowing what it looked like in the summer, you wouldn't have believed it was a mud pit.  Then the climbs up to the false summits and eventually the summit of Couch.  Not as much snow there as on Panther... the sign was a few feet above the snow instead of at snow level.

At this point I realized that Santa was not in the cards for the day.  It took us a lot longer to get to Couch than I had expected, and our slowest hiker wasn't doing that well.  It was a slow hike back to Herlold Square (moved a few hundred feet closer to Times Square by the crew that broke out the ridge) and we decided that we had to get back to the cars, and Santa would be another day.  The hike down Panther was pretty uneventful, and we got to see the sun set on the central high peaks.  Overall the views on the hike, when the clouds lifted, were just spectacular.... something you don't get in the summer as you're a good 4 or more feet lower... but the number of branches to the face....

We eventually got out a bit past 930, said our farewells, and I was home by midnight.

This puts me at 23/46 for my winter.  GPS total of 16.27 miles bringing me to a year to date total of 112 miles over 82 hours and with 5.5 miles of elevation gain and loss.  This sadly is probably the end of winter hiking this year too.  It is looking like its going to warm up significantly next week, and we're probably talking mashed potato snow for the next few weeks.  Yuck.