My biggest group ever (18!), with a lot of new folks joining the trip through meetup. Fourteen of us met at the Richmond park & ride at 8:30, consolidated into four or five cars and headed up to the Burrows trailhead where we met three others, plus one who’d been late for Richmond and caught up with us. We took some time for introductions then started out, doing the connector to Forest City trail and then heading up it. It was sunny and cold (not much above 0 F) as we started out around 9:30.

The trail was fairly well packed, but had a dusting of snow, and most people opted to start with snowshoes for traction. Keeping ice from building up on snowshoes and microspikes was a bit of an issue, since the trail crossed several wet spots that had flowing water despite the cold temperatures.

We reached the Long Trail junction around 10:50, and had two or three brief route finding problems as we made our way up to the Camels Hump summit. It was very cold and windy up top, and the group had gotten a bit spread out, so we summited in waves, with the trailing group summiting around 1:30 and gathered again (and for the last time) at the hut clearing. I’d started with a group count of 17 (probably inadvertently omitting myself) so took a moment to try to figure out who we’d picked up when our count at the hut clearing kept coming up 18. When the last of us reached the cars around 3:15,three had already left, so our group picture is short 4 (the three who’d left and me, taking the picture).

Participants: Jill George, Vikki Monroe, Dana Bolton, Susan McDowell, Chris Luczynski, Steve Titcomb, Phil Hazen, Mike Senna, Kimberly Parisi, Heather Hinman, Jonathan Breen, Tom Mowatt, Liz Ford, Melissa Barber, John Holm, Matthew Brewer, Greg Bostock, David Hathaway (leader).