Cabin Mt. Wanderings 12.20.11

I had an extremely taxing weekend so I made a nice fire and spent some good family time relaxing on Monday. With all that time doing very little you would think that I would have had time to make plans for the next day. I instead gave it very little thought with the expectation of winging it in the morning. By the time I got motivated it was nearly 10 am giving me a sparse amount of daylight hours. I was hoping for a quick efficient climb of Cabin Mt.  via the North. I used the Cabin Creek Road via Easton and had some trouble finding the best place to park. The roads were not exactly matching my map and I lost considerable time before parking .25 short of the turnaround and followed a well travelled road that was heading in the general direction of my intent. In the future I will access this area from the Cabin Creek Road from I-90 cutting down on the amount of walking

   The road led to the train tracks which were heading directly in the direction I wanted to go. Walking train tracks was a new experience for me and it took some experimenting to find the most efficient method. I even tried just walking on the rail which was the easiest but soon lost it's appeal. Once I reached a road that led to Cabin Creek Cabins I left the railroad tracks for a logging spur heading towards the power lines. Once I reached the powerline road I followed until I reached a high point. I switched to snowshoes and left the road for the nice consolidated snow of the clear cut. The snow made for an enjoyable climb as I used the sparse trees as slalom cones. The snow covered all the unpleasantness of what lay beneath it. I angled towards some larger standing timber that looked rather choked so I paralleled the clearcut in the dripline of the trees making for even easier travel. Finally I ran out of clearcut and entered the trees. After 200' of climb I popped out on another road that had been driven on making for easier travel. Since the road wasn't on my map I was curious. Since the road was rather steep and packed I felt like it may be the fastest method to reach Cabin Mt's summit.  I resisted a few times where there were options to leave for a more direct line. At around 4200' I reached the end of the road. Looking up and seeing another 600' to go and without the time to reach it, I decided to head back. I had to be back early and I knew I wouldn't be able to make the summit in my allotted time.

  The weather started to move in and became quite windy, thankfully the wind abated as I descended lower. Making my way over the most varied terrain was quite enjoyable on the way out. I was very happy to get out and stretch the legs and give the dog a good run even though nothing substantial was achieved.

Approx 6 miles 2000' of climb 3:30 car to car