Five of us met at 9 AM at the Richmond park & ride and drove up to the winter parking area for the Couching Lion farmsite in Duxbury, where we met a sixth. The last person who had signed up wasn’t there, and we thought they might have driven up to the summer parking area, which was still accessible (and has had its lower section hugely expanded). Instead, the trip leader got an email saying he’d gone to the wrong trailhead (Huntington instead of Duxbury), and would drive around and maybe he’d catch up with us at the top. Weather was around 30 and sunny as we started up around 9:50, and the trail looked pretty packed out, so we left snowshoes behind, but (almost) everyone put on microspikes. We followed the Monroe trail past the junction with Dean trail, stopped to admire some of the ice on cliffs near the trail, and continued to the Alpine trail junction. The advertised trip was to go up to the summit first, then follow the LT south to the Alpine junction and take it back to Monroe. But we decided to reverse the loop, heading up Alpine first. This was only partly packed out, but the snow wasn’t very deep, so there was no need for snowshoes. We kept looking for the plane wreck, but the snow must have covered it up, and we reached the LT without seeing it. There we all layered up for the wind, which was pretty intense at the top. After tagging the summit we headed down to the hut clearing where we finally met up with the last of our group, and all headed down Monroe to reach the cars around 3 or 3:30. Participants: Liana Edwards, Julie Cimonetti, Susan McDowell, Jill George, Jonna Tufts, Joshua Golek, David Hathaway (substitute leader). Photos: David & Susan.