Myself and two friends, Brad and Jay, went to the Adirondacks on February 20-22, 2004 to climb a mountaineering route up Mt. Colden known as "The Trap Dike". The Trap Dike route ascends 1800 feet from Avalanche Lake to the summit of Mt. Colden. Approximately half of the vertical gain takes place in the dike which is a narrow alley that ascends the west face of Mt. Colden. The remainder of the ascent is on the Colden slide which an open slope that resulted either from avalanches or mud slides in past years. We climbed the route under moderate snowfall and the outside temperature was around 25F. There were 2 pitches that required rope work, otherwise it was just steep snow travel, approximately 35-40 degree slopes. We climbed to the 4400' contour at which point we were felled by heavy snow drifts. Without snowshoes, we were postholing to our waist, which made for exhausting travel. We could have summited, but as Jay said, "Discretion is the better part of valor"...at least for today. It would have been exhausting to climb the remaining 300 feet, and time was against us, so we descended the route which required 2 abseils and several nice long glissades. We were back at our lean-to before dark where we ate and crashed around 7:00 p.m.