The weather continued like so many other June days this year, with one low pressure area swirling southeast of us and another approaching from the west, but we got a window of about twelve hours for the Mansfield hike. We headed up Halfway House to the intersection of Canyon and Canyon North, meeting by chance a GMC summit caretaker who was also hiking the route.
We turned on to Canyon North, and then continued on Canyon North Extension, and finally the Subway. The trail went up and down with short, abrupt drops, some exposure, and many places where you really didn’t want to lose your footing. In some places the trail went through rock tunnels. Our intrepid band persevered the entire way, eventually reaching the Long Trail a bit south of the Sunset Ridge intersection. We continued to the summit, arriving after about 3 hours of hiking, and had a short lunch break. The weather was still unpredictable, so we headed down, and got a few rain sprinkles on the way, but had patches of sun at other times. The trip back to the State Park took about 2 hours, for a total trip time of 5 ¼ hours.
Participants – Marc Faucher, Peggy Faucher, Ed Blackwell, Phil Howard, Ted Albers, Sheri Larsen, Trip Leader – Rich Larsen