Posts tagged Adirondacks

On the way up. Cold!

Street and Nye on a cold January day

4 months ago

In bullet point form, here it is:

  • I started from Deux-Montagnes at 5:00AM and was at the trailhead by 8:15. At that time the border crossing was a breeze.
  • I missed the “Old Nye ski-trail” branch off (concentrating on some music I was listening) and didn’t realize it until I was 2.5km passed it. Add 5km to the normal Street/Nye hike because of this stupid mistake
  • I was heading back down from summiting by 12:30 and was back down at the Loj just before 3:00 PM
A cold day it was; very cold. Luckily, there were no winds to speak of at the top. The views on Street are good looking across towards the MacIntyre range from a different perspective than I was used to.

The stats

  • Street Mountain stands at 4150 feet and stands at #31 in the 46er list.
  • Nye Mountain is actually below four thousand feet at 3895 feet. You can read about why here.
  • The hike was about 20km and was done in just under 7 hours.

The photos

A view of where I'm heading up towards

A heavy and painful hike up Sawteeth

5 months ago

 

Heavy? Because I had over 50lbs on my back to try out my new pack and see if my body could take the weight on a longer hike. The good news, the pack fits well, and my body was still fully functional after the 22km (13.5m) hike.

 

Painful? I discovered that my boots hurt the hell out of my feet. I’ve been trying to find the cause of this and I’m pretty sure it’s any time I wear snowshoes or crampons for extended periods. Micro-spikes don’t seem to bother me (I hiked 30km with them on 2 weeks ago without any pain being felt). I stopped by the Mountaineer on the way out to ask for some advice and the friendly people there told me to first replace the soles in my boots for something more rigid to see if it would help.

The Hike

I left Deux-Montagnes at 5:00AM and was at the gates by 8:00AM. The hike took me 8h40 and took me up 3650 feet of elevation gain. I started at the Ausable Club, walked the road up to the dam, took the Scenic Trail up to the top of Sawteeth and came back down the other side (the trail that deposits you back at the dam).

I was considerably slowed down both by the heavy pack as well as by the painful blisters that had formed on my heels early in the hike.

A quick note about the scenic trail: I’d never read about this trail and it’s unfortunate. I believe Sawteeth probably doesn’t get much love because of that long boring walk up to it’s base. The scenic trail offers some great views and shouldn’t be missed.

The Stats

  • 22km (13.5m) hike done in 8h40 minutes
  • 3650 elevation gain
  • Sawteeth is 4150 feet and 35th highest in the Adirondacks
  • The gpx tracklog can be found here; the Trimble Outdoors page here.

The pictures

The tracklog


Some more of those beautiful early winter views

An icy nightmare on Basin and Saddleback

5 months ago

I knew this was going to be a long hike, but I didn’t expect it to be this difficult. The target was to do Basin and Saddleback, then decide from the Ore Bed Brook trail if I would continue towards Gothics, Armstrong and the Wolfjaws. Unfortunately, dangerous and unrelenting icy conditions forced me down early.

The highlights

  • The walk towards John Brook Lodge was easy and uneventful
  • I screwed up and took the big bridge leading to the North side of the river (close to John Brook Lodge). I lost 45 minutes before getting back on track on the Phelps Trail
  • The trail up to Slant Rock was also easy and relatively ice-free
  • Getting up to Basin was icy and dangerous
  • If going up to Basin was dangerous, the hike back down was completely unmanageable … I wondered why the trail was completely devoid of other hikers. This explained it. It was icy for ALL the descent, right down to the bottom of the new slide on Saddleback.
  • The somewhat scary wall of rock on Saddleback turned out to be not so scary. It is no where nearly as steep as it looks from afar.
  • The debris from the new slide was quite the sight! Ice conditions on the slide kept me in the woods and hanging onto trees.
The pace going up towards Basin and back down was so slow that it blew my chance at doing Gothics et al. .. Disappointing, but I’ll give it a shot in better conditions.

The stats

  • Basin Mountain stands at 4827 feet and is the 9th highest in the Adirondacks
  • Saddleback at 4515 stands at position 17.
  • The total distance of the hike was 29km (18 miles), done in 10h50m with an elevation gain of 1275m (4183 feet)
  • The gpx file can be found here. Note: the gpx file is here, but don’t follow it! It’s for reference only. Remember, I got lost at the Lodges.

The pictures

 

The Tracklog


May not look it, but it's ridiculously windy. Not the time for fun loving brotherly love. Time to GTF back down.

A 360 horizon on Algonquin peak

6 months ago

Thankfully, this last Sunday was the time change; that meant that the 5AM wake up call would literally feel like it was 6AM. A friend from work and I wanted to get out to Iroquois (ok, I wanted to get out to Iroquois; he wanted to get out) and take our time to appreciate the views, the company and the time away.

With the 5AM start, we were at the trail head at 8:55, on the top of Algonquin at 12, Iroquois 50 minutes later, and back at the car just as darkness was falling at 5:15.

The day was PERFECT. A 360 degree horizon. We could see the whole of the Adirondacks, the peaks in Vermont and the Whites way over out West.

The stats

  • Algonquin Peak stands high at 5115 feet. It’s the 2nd highest in the Adirondacks, second to Marcy. 
  • Iroquois Peak, at 4843 feet is no slouch either. 
  • We hiked the normal route which starts at the Adirondack Loj, goes over Algonquin then to Iroquois. The trip back is to simply retrace your steps. An alternative to going back would be to take the trail back down to Colden lake, but we weren’t too sure of the conditions of it, so we kept to what we sure about. Many people would also bag Wright Peak on a trip like this, but given that I had already done it last winter, I didn’t mind skipping it.
  • The hike is exactly 17.12 kilometers (10.6 miles) and has a total elevation gain of 1252 meters (4100 feet).
  • My gpx tracklog can be found here, and the Trimbleoutdoors page here.

The Photos

A few more stats


After about 2 hours, I'm at the North end of Avalanche Lake

A lonesome cowboy in the Trap Dike

9 months ago

Today, with no climbing parters, Trap Dike was the target. Ever since reading about it in Adirondack Rock, I was wanting to climb it. I wasn’t really nervous about it, it being 4th class scrambling coupled with a 3rd class slide. But I was definitely excited about getting to the top of a 4700 foot peak by means of rock only.

To the start

Getting started wasn’t an easy task. Late wake up, semi-long wait at the border, no parking at the LOJ … I finally settled on starting the hike from the South Meadows trail.

Having never started a hike from there, and because there were so many cars parked at the intersection, I thought the parking was at the Adirondack Loj Road. This cost me 2 extra miles in the day; it turns out that you can drive down South Meadows Road an park directly at the trail head that brings you directly to Marcy Dam.

I got started at about 11:10 AM and was at Marcy Dam at noon. Saying that the South Meadows trail is easy is an understatement: flat, rockless, mudless and view less.

The Dike

After a small bushwhack (as usual, I lost the herd path) from the south end of Avalanche Lake, I was at the base of the dike at 1:30.

The dike itself is a nice scramble; a lot of 3rd class with a few 4th class sections. There are a couple distinct cruxes both of which you don’t want to be falling off of… Most of the climbing is done beside (and sometimes in) a waterfall which really ads to the pleasure of the climb.

Finding the exit was a bit tricky; and I didn’t find it (I sort of bushwhacked when I thought I was about there). Exiting the dike to get the slide was the crux of the day.

The Slide

At 2:15, I was out of the dike and starting the slide. The slide is pretty obvious as you can see the boulder at the top of Colden. This also ads a great dimension to the climb with a very clear goal.

Slides, or me, are soooooo tiring. I have yet to figure out why, but I figure it’s because they are sustained.

The top was reached at 3:00.

Descent

Nothing special to say except that I took my very sweet time; I stopped on the north sub-summit of Colden for some sunbathing; stopped at Lake Arnold for a break; stopped at Marcy Dam to dip my feet in the stream.

I was back at the car at about 6pm with a 25km hike under my belt. A very satisfying one at that.

My GPS didn’t give me a lock all day, so I don’t have a tracklog

 

 

As you can clearly hear, I find slides to be tiring. I sound like an asthmatic chain-smoking cow. But hey, I got to the top!

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