Climbing Race Mountain with Randy Brown. Started at YMCA Camp Hi-Rock, and we had a little bit of fumbling around at the start in terms of deciding which way to go in order to get to the ridge. One we got there, the AT had been snowshoed already (prior to the most recent storm), so it was packed down a bit. Snow was probably waist-deep or more in some places, and I was glad that I had the larger Yuba snowshoes and at times wished I had the humongous antique ones. We were actually out for almost three hours, but some of that was standing still while Randy texted with the people at his business and made adjustments to his snowshoes. On the way back we tried an experiment where he went back down the way we had come, and I took a more direct route. We arrived back at the car at almost exactly the same time, though my route was absurd breaking trail through deep, loose snow, and with a lot of laurel. The purpose of this expedition was to scout out whether this would be a worthwhile place to try hang gliding (it was used in years past, but nobody has been there recently). Seems like it would be a nice site, but one that would involve a lot of work to get the gliders up to. With snowshoes but no luggage to speak of, it was about a 35 minute hike to the first place along the ridge that would be launchable. Figuring that we'd need to do 1.5 round trips trips (one with harness, one with glider), and that realistically could mean 2 hours to get to launch with gear. If we didn't have a driver, then it would be about 2.5 miles uphill through the woods to retrieve the car (from what looks like the best place to land), or if we stashed a bicycle, it's about 16 miles around by road.