For the past two years I have tried to summit Bigelow Mountain in the winter. Neither time have I made it. The first time I brought my pops. We made it a ways, but ran out of day light. Last year I was slowed down by having to break trail the entire time. This year was different.

In the winter time the access road becomes a snowmobile trail. So i decided to bring my old classical skis and ski in. This saved me a huge amount of time! The 2 mile hike in on snowmobile trails was an easy ski in.

Once I reached Stratton Brook Pond I ditched the skis in the woods and strapped on my snow shoes. Before I could get going I had to cross the not so frozen brook, which had a few rocks sticking above the water, but were also covered in ice!

After making it to the other side of the brook I realized no one had been on the trail since the last storm. This meant breaking trail for the next several hours. Here is a picture that kills any cyclist

 I was making good time to the trail junction of the Firewardens trail and Horns pond trail. Its a lot easier to go up Horns Pond trail and over to west peak, but that isn't fun. I decided to take the firewardens trail and go straight up the mountain. Here is a pic at the Moose campground, Only one mile before you reach Avery Campground. One long ass mile!!

 I've never maid it to Avery Campground. From the moose campground to Avery the trail go straight up! The last time I was here the snow was so deep and the trail so steep it was almost impossibleto climb. The snow was still waist deep in some spots, but I continued to move on. I was covering about 1 mile per hour going up! Here is a pic of the snow covered trees up around Avery campground

From Avery Campground it is either .4 miles to Avery peak, or .3 Miles to West Peak. From doing the hike in past falls, I remembered it was a little sketchy going over to Avery Peak. Since I was hiking alone and running out of time I decided to go over to West Peak (the higher of the two peaks I believe. And here I am 4,150 ft high on top of west peak!

Now what took me almost 6 hours to climb only took me about 3 hours to come down! That was a really long day! If you want to hike Bigelow I have set a good trail going up the mountain, so it shouldn't be as tough!  You just need to go before it dumps so again.