North & South Hancock, Our First Two Peaks Of The Winter

Somebody is tired. Actually, two somebodies are tired. The only difference is that he's already asleep and I will be joining him shortly. Today was a rough hike. There's a lot of snow in them there hills. I chose the Hancocks in part because we typically fly through this route and secondly because I received a report it was broken out and that is good for Atticus. You will see from the slide show that the trail is indeed broken out, until we reached the steepest part, a climb of a 1,000 feet in elevation gain in 0.7 miles. It was really rough. Then once we topped out on North Hancock we had to break trail across the ridge to South Hancock. From South on out it was broken out again. You will note that Atticus has his boots on, and then off as the hike went on. He simply could not get any grip on the way up the loose and deep snow on the major climb so I took them off and he did much better. This hike typically takes us less than five hours to cover the 9.8 miles. However, today it took us nearly eight because of the deep snow. Now you'll excuse me while I join my friend in deep slumber. Hopefully I will not snore as much as he does. North Hancock was dedicated to the residents of Flying Collie Farm, past present and future. South Hancock was dedicated to Finn (pictured above) and "for Whittles and most especially for Lil, forever the fearless leader of all the collies at Flying Collie Farm." The other photos above are of Atticus at the summit of North Hancock and again on South Hancock. Our photo slide show can be seen here.