Three of us, Kate and Evan Carson and Fred Knight, had a snowshoe hike up toward the base of the Tripyramids on Saturday. The weather was great; the going slow. We abbreviated the planned distance but had a good six-hour jaunt.

Friday's sleet had put a crunchy topcoat on the 3-3.5' of snow, but it wasn't enough to keep from sinking in for the heavier members of the crew. Kate was the lucky one. Once she started leading, she didn't have to plow through Evan's or my shoeprints and could stay on top of the snow (mostly) on the lightly traveled Flume Brook Trail. Evan had the largest snowshoes, which was pretty good unless he postholed. Evan took one straight down to a stream flowing under the snow, which provoked a mild outburst. The difficulty after the infrequent postholes was extracting the snowshoe, which can act like a butterfly wall fastener when stuck under the snow. With my smaller snowshoes, I sunk in a little more than Evan. Luckily, we started on well-trod paths up the Greeley Ponds Trail. The Flume Brook Trail was the winner for difficulty, taking us 2 and 3/4 hours to go 1.3 miles! Altogether we did about 7.5 miles: up Greeley Ponds and Flume Brook Trails and down the Livermore Trail. The final two miles was on the groomed cross country ski track on Livermore Road. Total time was 6 hours. The day was gorgeous with blue sky, warm temperatures, and little wind except at the start.

Watch the composite movie at low resolution here or the full featured movies below.

	Greeley Ponds Trail was fine with just boots on. We put on our snowshoes before starting up the Flume Brook Trail. It was a good idea. The trail was 1.3 miles but it took almost three hours. Up, up! (20-MB movie)
	Finished with the Flume Brook Trail! Whew! Time for lunch. (45-MB movie)
	Back nearing the parking lot after two miles of easy downslope on the Livermore Road (19 MB)