Started the day with Mt. Jo before 5am to make sure we could park in the Loj parking lot. Up and down Jo in the dark with some light showers. Hit Pitchoff second because parking there fills up early on weekends too. Dark and rainy for most of Pitchoff. We were in the clouds for most of it which made the headlamps much less helpful and slowed us down in the wet conditions.
By Baxter, we no longer needed headlamps and got a really nice sunrise on the summit. Sean took a nasty fall on the wet rocks coming down and had enough swelling we were concerned he may have broken his wrist but he said it didn't hurt too much so we decided to continue on. Got a few more brief showers headed up Hurricane and we had snow and hail and wind and fog on the top but the conditions didn't slow us down too much. Sun came back out for Big Crow and the weather was great for the rest of the day. As usual, Bear Den was a bit of a struggle being late in the day and being one of the steeper, more unrelenting climbs of the day. The way down Bear Den had some slick leaves but we took it a bit slower and didn't have any issues. Energy seemed to come back a bit for Catamount and the last couple easy kilometers made for a nice pace to the day.
Weather was a little wet in the morning but the temperature was great; it hovered around 6 degrees Celsius all day.
Our route was optimized for not having to worry about finding parking. At other times of the year or on a weekday, you could likely shave 15 minutes off the driving time by taking a more optimal route but we didn't want to get to Mt. Jo halfway through the day only to be unable to find somewhere to park.
We found the driving breaks made for easy nutrition, only really eating on the trail during Hurricane. Chicken nuggets, crackers, bars, bananas, chocolate, candy and Pepsi powered most of our day.