A few years ago my wife and I took our son and nephew and niece to Baxter State Park to do some hiking on a Saturday. It was a very nice day on the second week in June. About 75° and sunny out and the sky was blue as far as you can see. It looked to be a beautiful day for hiking.

When we arrived at Baxter my wife and my niece went their own way to Chimney Pond avoiding any trails that were too difficult. My son, nephew and I decided we would go up to do the Knife Edge. So at the head of the Helon Taylor trail we decided to split ways with my wife going one way and me going the other. 

The hiking was really nice. Of course with two young colts running ahead of me I was getting pretty tired trying to keep up. It was only a day hike and I was the only one with a backpack to carry the food for all three of us so they thought they would give me a run for the money. I had brought some gear because i knew that the weather could change pretty quickly on the mountain. I advised both the boys they should probably carry some extra things just in case but they decided they would be ok with what they had. We traveled pretty quickly to the treeline and as we were coming out into the opening you could see the start of some clouds surrounding the peak ahead.

At this point we took time to take a small break. We ate our lunch and decided to continue up. About 20 minutes above the treeline the clouds started coming fast. We started wondering aloud to each other if it was going to start to rain. At that point the temperature started to drop pretty quickly as the wind started to pick up. Another 15 minutes later it started snowing. I don't mean the light little flakes floating down either. It was an all out blizzard. The wind had picked up to about 30 or 40 knots and you could not see anymore than about 5 or 10 feet in front of you, if that much. And this stuff stung when it hit you. I had brought a knit cap and a couple of extra shirts so we had a little extra to put on but it was not near enough for full protection.  While we climbed up we were darting between crevasses and rocks to protect ourselves from the weather. After what seemed like hours, but was probably closer to one, the weather started easing up. Once we got to Pamola peak we found that Knife Edge had been closed down. The weather was still pretty bad so I don't think we really wanted to try that anyway. So we hiked across to Chimney peak and down to Chimney pond. 

Once we were closing in on Chimney Pond the weather started clearing pretty good. We stopped at the ranger cabin to warm up a little bit and then headed back down the trail towards the gate. About halfway out we met up with my wife and niece and continued on our way. It was quite the hike that day. It was pretty hard, but I would not have missed it for the world. It was kind of a letdown that we missed being able to do the Knife Edge, but it was definitely an adventure without it.