The Sewards, Part II

The next weekend after we managed to get the two more remote  peaks in the Seward Range, JT and I set out again for the other two: Seward and  Seymour.  No one else opted to go with us after our last trip story at the SUOC meeting.

The CV joint had started to get pretty bad on JT’s car; when we  drove on the highway the week before, we really couldn’t hear each other talking and had opted to blast music over the loud sound.  Instead, this week, we both drove each of our
cars to JT’s house where his brother, a mechanic, would look it over and we would take my car up to the Sewards.   Since we left late, we knew we would end up hiking in, at least partly,  in the dark.  When we hit Corey’s Road, we went along to the “road closed” sign like the week before and we parked my car before it and examined the road to  see if we could get my car to go the extra two miles so we didn’t have to road walk a total extra of four miles.  That  just did not seem appealing.  Then we  noticed that where we had parked, we saw at minimum six signs saying no parking so the snowplows could turn around.  Now we had a true dilemma: park, walk an extra four miles and possibly have my car towed, or go the extra two miles and risk getting my car stuck on the side or in the parking lot near the gate.  While  we debated these two terrible options, a jeep rolled out slowly — with  Pennsylvania plates — and we stopped them to ask about the conditions of the road further down.  The man stopped and told us that it’s doable, but parts had quite a bit of slush on it.  As he tried to leave, the jeep seemed to stall out unexpectedly and he seemed to have a hard time getting it to start and go again.  As we almost went to help him, he got it started and left.

“Ok, first off,” JT started, “Jeeps are terrible in snow.  Second, he’s from Pennsylvania.  Third, I don’t want to walk the road more than we already have to.”

I was a little reluctant, but decided to try it.

“Just get over the bump and if you can’t get over that part, it will be easy to push you back here.   Plus, we have crampons!” JT said.

So off we went, past the “road closed” sign to the gate.  It actually went pretty well and we made it just fine to the rather soggy parking lot.   Pleased with ourselves, got our boots on and set off down our three-mile  road walk that we remembered all too well from the previous week.  It did not take long and we remembered  landmarks to let us know how far we had gone.  We found, to our pleasant surprise, less snow on the road.  Once we hit the trailhead, we took a snack, get the headlamp ready, and put on the snowshoes break.   We set off and once we hit the junction of the foot trail or the horse  trail, we went down the foot trail.   Instead of doing the winter route, we planned on using the summer route
up Seward because it would be easier to hit Seymour that way.  Even in the winter, one would have to take  the summer route over to it.  We joked at  the discrepancy between the mileage amounts between the DEC signs and Adirondack
Journey — and then even between the DEC signs themselves.  Basically, we had to go anywhere between 3.8  and 4.5 miles to the Blueberry lean-to.

As we strolled down the path, we found ourselves quite annoyed  because we kept taking off the snowshoes and putting them back on again due to  large stretches without snow full of mud.   After we finally had to put the snowshoes back on for the last time that night, we started finding things in the spring melt.  This might be the only saving grace to spring  hiking while the snow melts: everything people lost in the winter and could not  find due to high levels of snow appears again!
We hit the jackpot with our first finding, a pill bottle full of green goodness!  What a find!  As we kept walking, our next discovery was a  belt.  Neither of us particularly wanted  it, nor did we really want to carry it out.   After a little deliberation, we decided to leave it there and pick it up on the way out if we saw it.  The sun had  set somewhere in our period of discovery and our last finding while walking was  a full blue nalgene with the water unfrozen.   While we both felt weird about packing out someone’s nalgene, we decided to pack it to the shelter and use the water for cooking.  Since we had no idea if the water had been treated, we figured we’d just boil the shit out of it and then cook  dinner.

Once we finally hit the lean-to, we unpacked and began cooking  dinner.  While waiting for our found water to boil, I heard a strange noise.   “Is that you?” I asked JT.

Looking perplexed he said, “No, I thought it was you.”

We both fell silent and listened.   Something was definitely making noise under the lean-to.  It sounded like the animal was chewing on the wood.  Then deja vu set in.  I had heard that sound before.  Now just to place it.  Aha!  I  heard it on the Appalachian Trail in Massachusetts in the Tom Lenardi  shelter!  What was that thing?  It looked like a zombie.  As I went though this stream of consciousness out loud, JT tried to guess the animal.

“A skunk?” he tried.

“No.”

“A raccoon?”

“No.”

“A woodchuck?”

“No,” I found myself perplexed with the name right on my  tongue.  “Go check it out while I cook  dinner.”

“How am I going to check it out?   There is snow everywhere,” JT started.

“Just go bend down and look by one of the sides where it probably got under,” I said stirring the couscous.

As he started to go over I remembered, “A porcupine!” I said, excited that I remembered.

JT stopped, “You wanted me to stick my face by a porcupine?!  You know they can shoot needles!”

“Oops.  I forgot about that part,” I laughed.  “Dinner’s ready  though.”

“Really?  You couldn’t  remember a porcupine?  Seriously?”  He kept mulling it over.

“Where’s your spoon?”  I  said.

“Porcupines aren’t zombielike,” JT kept going.

After eating a late dinner and making use of some of the green goodness, we fell asleep to the sounds of a porcupine underneath us, hoping it  would not decide to come out.  When we woke up, we found a brilliantly sunny and warm day.  So warm, that we both had to take off layers almost immediately.  I only hiked in my base layer because with the pants on, my legs overheated.  We headed for Seymour first.  Of the two, Seymour was supposedly the easiest.  Find the path, then go up, basically.  As we went in search of the herd path, we found the Seward path almost immediately, far quicker than we expected.  Not too long after that, we hit the Ward Brook lean-to and then a path going off to the right.  Because we had not gone far, we doubted if it was indeed the path for Seymour, so we kept going a bit, just to check.  When all the evidence of other people walking went away quickly, we determined it was.  As we began following it, we peeled more layers off.  Running into a few confusing areas evident of people in the past walking in two different ways, we found the path most  traveled each time.  Somewhere between a third and half of the way up, we found a snack log to stop for a few  minutes.  The sun shone brightly and no  clouds blocked out views.

Continuing onward, we followed the herd path most of the way up,  until we realized we lost it somewhere.  Instead of trying to find it, we noticed that we were pretty close to  the top and we just went up in the least resistant way.  After the previous week’s bushwhack, we tried  to avoid thick cripplebrush.  We saw a  more open area off to the east, so we headed up and east.  This proved to be a magnificent decision  because it gave us spectacular views of the inner peaks.  The outer peaks, such as the Sewards can  offer such views of the usually higher, more travelled inner peaks.

We reached the summit in no time and had a small snack.  Offering no solid view, we peered through the  trees, bare from winter, to see a bit.   Deciding to eat lunch at the Ward Brook shelter to have more energy  going up Seward, we headed down Seymour.

Once we hit the shelter between the herd paths for the two  mountains, we found some water and ate lunch examining the map.  This time we had drawn the trails on the map  from the internet so we at least had an idea of where they should lay.  JT dried his shirt of sweat on his hiking poles in the sun as well.  It really had  gotten that warm.  So much so that we both noticed that our tracks going up Seymour had melted almost away by the time we came down.  After about an hour’s lunch break, we set off for JT’s 46th peak  and my 41st: Seward.  It proved to be one  of the hardest fought peaks either of us did.   With great enthusiasm, more on JT’s part than mine, we set off along the  summer route up the mountain.

Within about 100 yards, maybe  a little more, we lost the herd path.   Both of suspected we would end up bushwhacking, but neither of us  expected to lose the herd path that quickly.   We wandered around trying to find it a few times.  Perplexed we reread the guidebook’s description:   follow the stream up until its end, hit a cliff, go left until you can climb up easily and the summit is a ten minute walk.  Hmmm.  This should not be  difficult.

In our wanderings, we found a freshly slain deer in a pit and coyote footprints, hair, and poop surrounding it.  Looking around, we realized why — higher on both sides of us, the coyotes probably preyed down on the deer as it went
through the deer run.  We saw its full  spine and heart sitting there in the pit and the blood all around it in the  murky water.

Moving on, we continued to follow the stream as best we could until the brush got annoyingly thick.   Thinking, we had to move left at some point, we tried moving left a bit earlier and began bushwhacking through the most open path we could find.  We tried walking over an unbelievable amount of spruce traps, falling in a few of them.   Frustrated, we paused and talked through a plan.  After some deliberation, we went back toward  the stream and tried to follow it a bit more closely since we had gone so far left we could barely hear it anymore.

Not too long afterward, the brush became too thick again and we found ourselves forced left again.  Once we got a view of the mountains to the north/northeast of us, we tried to  pinpoint where we were and guess our elevation.
Unfortunately, we had not gained much elevation and thought we had over a thousand feet to go.  Frustrated, we  decided to just go toward the most open path.   Occasionally we found a little ribbon tied to trees and thought we might  as well follow that.  We even found part of a plastic bag tied to one.  Then, JT  found a Sunto visor on the ground and tried to convince me that we should go  that way since people had been there before.

Pushing on, we found another drainage to the east of the one  where the herd path supposedly was.   Pondering our options, we decided to just follow this drainage up  because a.) it was clear, b.) it went up, c.) it was still frozen over and we
could walk more quickly.  At a few points we could hear water underneath us and we hoped the snow wouldn’t break through.

For the first time in a while, we found ourselves making progress.  Then it opened up and we could  see what we thought was the summit.  The  only thing in our way was a large 300 foot (or so) slide covered in a  significant amount of snow.  We took a  snack break as we checked the snow pack because we knew this could take a lot of energy.

JT started upward, kicking in large steps.  He yelled down that it was difficult, but the  snow held just fine.  The only issue was that it stuck to the snow shoes making them much heavier, the same problem as last week.  Every few steps we had to  lift each snowshoe and either shake it or hit it with a hiking pole for the sticky snow to release.  We went one at a  time up the steep sections so we didn’t overload the snow.  Forty-five minutes later and me getting slightly freaked out, we
reached the top of the slide.  Looking behind it, we got some of the most spectacular views that I have seen in the High Peaks region.  All because we weren’t anywhere near the trail.

As we paused to take the views in, we also noted the cripplebrush we would have to plow through up to the summit.   The profanities began to drop as we climbed through trees, over spruce  traps, under large branches, and over five false summits.  Yes, five.   When we got to the last one, both of us thought the next one was actually  lower than the one we stood upon until JT spotted the familiar yellow  disk…about two feet above the snow pack about 40 feet away.  We clamored over to it and took a sigh of relief.  We had 360 degree views because we stood on at least five feet of snow.  We laughed  that the yellow disks are usually about two feet above my head in summer  conditions.  It had taken us five hours  to bushwhack up what should have been a two-ish mile trail.

JT sat on his pack and drank the 22 he brought up to celebrate getting his 46th peak.  I gave him congratulations as I ate a cliff bar.   Checking the time, at 7:45, the sun had begun to set and we watched as  it lowered beneath the foothills in the distance and the glow that it placed  over the inner peaks in the opposite direction.   As much as I cursed the snow hiking up Seward, I thanked it for giving us  more of the terrific views, especially the ability to see 360 degrees on a  summit which was not bald.

After half an hour and a sunset, we gathered ourselves to go down.  We saw where the herd path should  have brought us up, but we decided to follow our own tracks down because we  knew they got us to the trail at the bottom.   JT made a good point when he said that not following our tracks down would probably make us spend an unexpectedly cold night in the woods.  Then we realized that he had forgotten his headlamp at the lean-to and we had to share mine.  Luckily, I had just changed the batteries and it gives off a startling amount of light.

We bushwhacked back to the slide slowly, but surely, following our  footprints and decided to slide down the slide on our butts one at a time.  Excited to make up some time, JT went first, bit by bit.  When he got down, I  went.  The ride proved quite exhilarating  as each of us had paused to slow our momentum and make sure the whole thing  wasn’t going to let go after us.

Continuing downward, every time we crossed a spruce trap, I  turned around so JT could see where it lay.   It went like that until we hit the trail at the bottom and we checked  the time.  It took us three hours to get down, making Seward an eight-hour bushwhack.   The tiredness had hit us both and we meandered back to the lean-to where  we each ate a cliff bar and went to bed.   The day was my second longest hiking day: fifteen hours and fifteen  minutes, falling only fifteen minutes short of my longest day.

Again, we fell asleep to our downstairs neighbor who I supposed was a porcupine.  However, we didn’t hear  it too long.

In the morning, we took an incredibly lazy morning and read the  lean-to log, which unfortunately only had about six entries in it.  One of which we found went to SUNY ESF and  called himself “Bird Man.”  We wracked our  brains trying to figure out who it could be, but came up empty.  We enjoyed the last of the green goodness and headed out slowly.

Once we hit the road, we noticed the distinct difference in snow as we could walk on dirt for a majority of it.   This excited us both immensely because both of us wanted to put the snowshoes on the shelf for a bit.

However, this adventure did not end when we reached the car.  Far from it.   We put everything in the back and changed clothes and shoes.

As much as we found ourselves enthused that the snow had mostly melted off the road, we found ourselves not enthused that it had melted around the car.  I managed to back up about two feet before the front tires dug themselves into muddy, slushy holes and spun out.  Fantastic.

At first, we did not think this was a big deal and began trying to move forward out of the holes.  This  failed.  We tried stabilizing the drive wheel that spun and JT pushed.  This  failed because my car became stupid and switched its drive wheel  from the  stabilized one to the spinning one.  We  tried stabilizing the other wheel.   Fail.  It switched again.  We tried sticks, we hacked the ice out with crampons and the butt of the snowshoes.   Then we tried boards from the signs that were near us on the  ground.  Fail.  Finally, JT gets it forward a bit out of the  holes, but it won’t grip there either.   During this process, it began to rain, worsening our situation.  We got back in the car and tried to think.  Then we remembered we got minimal cell service there.  Enough to text, not enough to call.  Then I decided to try Karen because Tupper Lake was only about 15 minutes from us.  The text read: “Hey Karen.   JT and I were wondering if you knew anyone free in Tupper that could  unstick cars from snow.”

She messaged back: “Oh no!  Let me call my dad and Will’s friend.”

I texted: “Thanks!  We’re at the gate to the Seward’s trailhead, from Rt 3, take Corey’s road back, then we’re two miles past the road closed sign.”

A few minutes later: “My dad and uncle are on the way! They will  be there in about 20 minutes.”

I responded: “I owe you big time!”

True to the text, twenty minutes later, a red truck came out with  her dad and uncle who were cheery, loud, and extremely helpful.  We explained what happened and they laughed and said, “Well, let’s try pushing with three of us and see if that works.  If it doesn’t we’ll work something else out.”

I got in the car and the dad, uncle, and JT pushed.  On the third heave, I eased the gas and we  got back enough to get out.  Cheers all  around!  They decided to go ahead of us and make sure we got out past the road closed sign.  Before they passed us, the uncle leaned out the window and jokingly said, “Did you miss the road closed sign?!”

Slowly but surely, we got the car out and thanked them again for all their help.  We had tried for two hours before we gave up and texted Karen.

Moral of the story: don’t take a two-wheel drive car past a snowy road closed sign.  And, of course, Karen to the rescue!

Read Full Post »

The Sewards, Part I

Over April Fools weekend, JT, Andy, and I headed out for the Seward Range.  One of the most remote ranges in the High Peaks wilderness, the winter conditions made it even more remote.  Yes, winter conditions still left between four and five feet of snow; but, the snow had a wet, sticky quality to it, not nice, fluffy snow.

It took us, as usual, longer than we thought to get there, partly due to the fact that when we started the trip, Andy had to get in the backseat only one way because one of the back doors had been tied shut with webbing so it stayed closed.  During the trip, the other door decided it didn’t want to open anymore so to get in and out, Andy had to climb in and out of the window.  This did prove constant amusement for not only us, but for all those who watched this operation in action at every gas station.

Once we made it to Corey’s Road, we hit a “road closed” sign about five miles from the trailhead.  We had JT’s CRV, so we just went past it and into some mushy, slushy snow, not too deep, but enough that it took the concentration of Rage Against the Machine for JT to drive up to where the gate closed the rest of the road off.  From the parking area by the gate, the Rackette Falls trailhead stretched out and would also get us to where we wanted, but would add mileage.

After parking, the three of us set off for a three-mile road hike, then a little over a mile trail hike to a “campsite.”  The sun began to set as we walked down the road which we bare booted, but slid around.  As we walked, there were two small hills that we went down and I noted that I knew when we came back they would be a bitch.  They weren’t hard by a long stretch, but they seemed like after a long hike, tiredly walking back, I would not find myself thrilled with their existence.

When we hit the trailhead, we stopped to put on our snowshoes and headlamps.  A large sigh came out of all of us as we put on our snowshoes; all of us wanted summer.   As we started walking, we joked about how awesome mud is.  Only a little over a quarter of a mile, we came to a junction between the walking trail and the horse trail.  At this point, we were still walking off the map and had not entered the outdoor realm of the High Peaks map.  I found myself confused because I did not see where the easiest point was to get to the Caulkins’ Brook Trail.   JT insisted that he knew where to go, so after a small argument, we followed JT’s plan.   He was right.

About a mile later, we came to another junction where the Rackette Falls trail joined the horse trail.  Supposedly, somewhere just a bit away from this junction was a campsite.  Since it was already just before 10pm and we all wanted dinner, we found a solid flat spot and just set up the tent, hoping that no DEC officers decided to come by since the spot lay not too far from the trail outside of the designated campsite, if it still existed.

We cooked up some couscous — the rice so nice, they named it twice!  I found it difficult to sleep that night because I had tried my first 5-hour energy and I’m sensitive to caffeine.  I discovered it to act more as a 10-hour energy and I did not sleep much.

The morning came and would could see patches of blue sky, motivating us to actually get out of the sleeping bags.  We managed to leave somewhere between 8 and 9 am.  We trucked on down an old logging road trail toward Caulkins’ Brook.
Finding some water in another stream, we picked some up and put the good old iodine in it to purify it.  Gotta love that taste that makes you still seem thirsty after you drink it!

When the trail, or rather old logging road, made a sharp right turn, we went to the left where the herd path extended up alongside Caulkins’ Brook.  We followed some faint footprints along the brook until we saw an arrow to cross over it.  Usually when someone takes the time to make a large arrow in the snow, it’s generally a good idea to follow it even if you want to cross a brook about a quarter-mile in and you know you haven’t gone a quarter-mile.

Poking at the snow banks extending over the brook with the hiking poles, we determined we could walk across some of them to another rock and jump to the other side.  We found the snowshoe prints again and followed them on what seemed like a fairly easily discernible path.  JT led because he was super psyched as these were his last four mountains of the 46.  At some points we found ourselves perplexed as to where the path went and we guessed and usually found a snowshoe print or two somewhere.  It’s always hard because you don’t necessarily know if the people who made those prints knew where the path went or if they just bushwhacked up.

After a while of hiking and a few glimpses through the trees, we knew we should be close to the split where one herd path goes north to Seward and another goes south to Donaldson and Emmons.  We already knew we wanted to head south to knock out the two more remote ones first, but we kept going and no junction coming up and no more snowshoe prints to look for.  Finally, we just looked at Andy’s iPhone to see where we were on the phone’s GPS.  From there, we realized that we had passed the junction, wherever it was and were only about 100 yards from the summit of Donaldson.   JT took a bearing from the GPS and we just went straight up and over some trees and steep banks up to the summit.  When we go up there, we stopped for lunch in a protected area where the wind could not batter us.

We knew that either Donaldson or Emmons had a big boulder on top for the true summit, so we searched around and found it just beyond our lunch site.  Marked with a small disk, we rejoiced, “one down!”

According to the map and Andy’s phone’s GPS, the summit of Emmons lay about seven or eight-tenths of a mile away.  We set off excited.  Unfortunately, we did not know exactly where the herd path left Donaldson and the weather started to change to the more cloudier side of things.  We saw a bump off in the distance and bushwhacked over to it.

Excited, we reached it, but found no summit disk.  Discouraged, we found no summit disk and consulted Andy’s phone.

“Ummm, guys,” Andy started, “We’re no where close to it.”

“What?” JT asked seemingly annoyed.

Andy showed us the phone and we looked on the map as well.  We had just gone over to a false summit of Donaldson.  Oops.  I remember kicking myself for not drawing the trails on from adirondackjourney.com’s online maps.

“Shit,” JT said, “well, let’s go over there.”  He pointed to the bump which we all recognized as the summit of Emmons which extended over the ridge between the two mountains.

Heading off, the weather began changing rather rapidly.  First, it snowed.  Then it became mixed precipitation, more toward rain than snow.  Moving proved slow as we encountered thick cripplebrush (yes, that is an actual word, look in
the glossary of the High Peaks guidebook if you don’t believe me).  Spruce traps also impinged our movement as we tried not to step over their pockets of air produced by the branches under snow.  A few times we each sunk down to our waists and had to extract ourselves and the snowshoe from a thick tangle of branches.  You can just imagine the curse words that got thrown out through this process.

Annoyed, we all pause for a moment and then JT swears he sees a person about 50 yards over.  Neither Andy nor I see anyone.  We decide to go toward “the person” anyway.

“Ouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuch!” screams JT and we turn around.  “A branch hit me in the face and it left something in my eye.

I walked back to look in his eye.  Indeed, a tiny piece of bark or something had caught itself in his eye and I tried to get it out.  After a few minutes we succeeded in that at least.   If someone actually was over there, they would have definitely heard the profanities that dropped.

We continued until we think we see the summit not too far away.  As we all turned to look at it, JT fell in a spruce trap and started complaining about being cold instead of being caught.  Then we realized that he had mild hypothermia because his shell had soaked through from the 35 degree mixed precipitation.  Andy leant him his shell while he continued to use his soft shell and I helped him up out of the spruce trap.  Then we took a snack break because the amount of cursing can usually be directly correlated with hunger for hikers.

Then we bushwhacked onward.  In not too long, we did make it to the “person” which was actually a stump about four feet tall, and then on to the summit.  It had taken us almost three hours to go less than a mile.  Once there, we saw what we
thought was the trail on the way back and we decided to follow it, because if push came to shove, we had our tracks marked on Andy’s GPS and we could get back to it.  Jokes flew around about how we couldn’t find the trail well because we followed the GPS too much.

We did end up losing the herd path and ended back on our steps again.  Once we summited Donaldson and went to head back down, we had to do a double take because the wind had swept away our tracks.  It also beat us in the face as we thought back to our landmarks downward.  Luckily, once we passed the last hundred yards or so that we bushwhacked up, we found ourselves back on the herd path that actually looked like a herd path with only a few minor blowdowns to climb over or crawl under.

We clamored down, wanting only dinner and our sleeping bags.  We opted not to go up Seward, even though we only had about 600 ft to gain or so from the gap because the weather, bushwhacking, and difficulty had tired us out.

I made dinner, which we all ate from our sleeping bags and talked about what we could do on Sunday and manage to hike out and drive back to Syracuse.  The end conclusion was that we should just hike out and go to lunch because we all knew we would find ourselves incredibly annoyed if we came all the way back in there for just one mountain.

After the long day, we all just wanted to go to sleep, so as soon as we finished dinner, we went to do just that.  But then, we heard footsteps.  Dun dun dun.  A headlight shown in our direction.  Then it flashed all around like the person wanted to figure out exactly where he or she was.  I nudged JT and he hushed me and whispered to stay quiet in case it was a DEC officer so we wouldn’t get a ticket for camping there.  My thoughts had gone in a different direction because I doubted the DEC would come out to check on us because we were the only ones out there, that is, until now.  I thought it was just some dude and he flashed his light on our tent to see if we were still awake to answer some questions or tent by us.

He seemed to meander around for about five minutes, then continued down the trail toward Caulkins’ Brook.  Once we couldn’t hear his footsteps or skis anymore, JT said, “We should leave relatively early tomorrow because when he tries the Sewards following our footprints he’s going to be pissed.”

With that we went to sleep and woke up in the morning at about 8 am.  We ate breakfast and broke the tent down.  It was a more than usual lazy morning since we knew all we planned to do was hike the four miles out, drive to food, then drive to Syracuse.  Our motivation to leave at a decent hour was to not hear the pissed off guy who would inevitably follow our snowshoe prints.  As we left, we finally solved the argument of if the person walked or skied in; we determined by careful  investigation that he had walked in with a sled.

After we hiked out, we packed our stuff in the car, getting our cotton change of clothes.  Andy climbed in through the window and we managed to get JT’s car out of the slush filled road, once again with the aid of Rage Against the Machine.  Our restaurant of choice ended up as Little Italy in Tupper Lake whereby, as per ritual, texted Karen telling her we were in Tupper.  Since she’s from there, I always text her when we stop in.   Afterwards, we got back to Syracuse at a reasonable hour which we seldom manage to do.

Read Full Post »

The Santanoni Range: Dismal Wilderness

April 22-24, 2011

In true SUOC fashion, Allie, JT, and I planned to leave at 1pm or so on Friday and did not manage to leave Syracuse until about 2pm.  Allie had volunteered to drive which would give me a break from driving and came to pick us up after we ran to the eroom for a tent just in case a bunch of people showed up and took over the Bradley Pond Lean-to.

When we managed to get to the trailhead, we saw two cars: one from New Jersey and one from New York.  Worried we would have to carry the tent, we checked the register to see that four and a half people signed in, two from Jersey and two and a half from none other than “LPNY.”

“Maybe they have a kid with them?” Allie threw out there.

“Or a dog,” I suggested.

JT paused for a breath before he began his rant, “They’re from Lake Placid! Signing in as ‘LPNY’ — they’re just yuppies!  Really!  Who signs in as ‘LPNY’?”

We decided not to take the tent because technically they have to make room for up to eight people and with all of them and us, there would still be room for half of a person theoretically.

We had somewhere between 3.5 and 4.8 miles to go due to the fact that the DEC and Adirondack Journey.com cannot seem to get numbers right.  First we had to walk a ways on an old, closed road to get to the trailhead which shot obviously off to the left.

Upon hitting the actual trail, we put snow shoes on to prevent post holing white muttering about how the end of April should have meant the end of snowshoes.  But no.   All of us had stories of late March when no snow covered the High Peaks.

After about ten minutes we ran into the two from Jersey, a father-son pair.  With one old external frame pack between the two of them.  Without snowshoes.  Hmmm.  Something is fishy.

“Oh hey!” the older one said as we came closer.  “Are we almost out?”

“You’re almost to the road” Allie replied as she was leading.

“Good!  That was a very long day.”

“Did you do the Santanoni’s?” I asked.

“We did Panther.  It’s hard without any trails up there, you know”, the older one said while catching his breath a bit.  “We followed this local couple because we thought they would know where the best way up is, but they took us on an epic bushwhack!  It was harder for us, too, because we don’t have snowshoes; all the post holing makes me really tired.”

Moving on, we passed though annoying, small, muddy stretches where we tried desperately not to walk over the rocks with snowshoes on.  About twenty minutes after we passed Jersey we found the infamous “LPNY” party which seemed just to be a duo.

“Where is the half of a person?” I asked blatantly.

They smiled and the man turned so we could see a small stuffed animal attached to the outside of his pack.

“That’s Topo!  As in TMax and Topo’s Hostel in Lake Placid!” The man explained handing me a card.  Unfortunately, no nearby trash cans existed to dump it in as in a city.

“Did you guys get the Santanoni’s?” Allie asked.

“No, we just got Panther,” said the woman.

The man interrupted, “We found the start of the herd path and then we lost it, so we followed the GPS up taking the hypotenuse instead of the two legs.  So, when you get to the cliff, turn left.  We found the herd path going down, so there are two sets of tracks.”

“It was a four hour hike up, and a forty minute hike down.  Amazing,” the woman finished.

“Ok, thanks for the beta” JT replied as we continued up the trail.  In not too much time, we made it to Bradley Pond lean-to where we had first dibs on which side we wanted.  The sun had started to go down and the temperature began to drop below 60 degrees.  We set everything up, cooked dinner and talked for a bit about our plans for Saturday.  We knew that the weather report had dismal news for Saturday, but relatively good for Sunday.  As per usual, we fell asleep early because we were too lazy to pack in any beer for the extra weight.

We woke up to a few fresh inches of snow.  In April.  The snow began to change to sleet as we all peered out of our sleeping bags.  Shaking our heads, we went back to sleep.  Awhile later, we popped our heads out again.  Fairly heavy rain.  Needless to say, we went back to sleep.  The third time we checked the world outside of the lean-to, it had changed back to sleet.  At that point we crawled back in the sleeping bags to discuss what we wanted to do.  None of us particularly
wanted to go get all wet to not get any views.  Forty degree sleet is pretty miserable and undesirable.  After a small “debate,” we came to the unanimous decision to have a zero day and stay in the lean-to all day and hike all three mountains on Sunday, hike out, and drive back to Syracuse.  At the time, this seemed like a brilliant idea.  We were all still tired and wanted to sleep more, we didn’t want to get sleeted on all day, and we could see more if we waited until the next day.

After sleeping another few hours, we managed to sit up and watch it precipitate in multiple forms.  It shifted between rain, snow, and sleet as much as a mood ring.  We ate some lunch and talked about SUOC gossip, the Jersey people, and the self designated “LPNY” people.

With nothing else to do, JT began to devise a little fiction to add to the shelter log while Allie and I picked through it.  Unfortunately, the shelter upkeepers had just replaced the old log for a new one so we did not have any older information.  Then JT began writing, smirking and laughing out loud while he wrote, preventing Allie and I from reading any snippets until he finished.

Immediately after finishing the last word, he interrupted Allie and I by clearing his throat to read us the story.  It went from meeting people from New Jersey to finding the shelter to sacrificing them to Gaia for better weather in the fire pit (accurately described in front of the lean-to) to hiking the Santanoni’s.  A rather violent poem ended the fictional masterpiece.  Three pages added to the four pages existing in the log.  Not signed.

After more time killing conversations and activities, Allie fell back to sleep.  But then we heard voices.  JT and I woke Allie up and we sat up in anticipation.  Two people walked tiredly up to the lean-to; a man and a woman with quite a large amount of stuff shuffled over to the side that we did not occupy.

“Is it ok if we share with you guys?” The man asked with an accent.

Grrrrrrimper immediately went through all of our minds.  “Sure, we’ll consolidate a bit more for you,” I replied.

They moved their mammoth packs in and started changing out of sleet soaked clothes which made us all happy we had stayed in the lean-to and not gotten so wet.  They murmured things in French between themselves and then once they became a little more comfortable and not sleet soaked, they sat down and began talking with us…in English!  This is not the typical grimper way!  Something is happening…

“Did you do the Santanoni’s today?” the man asked.

Exchanging looks, Allie replied, “No, we stayed here because the weather is so terrible we didn’t feel like it this morning.”

“We’re going to do all three tomorrow,” JT added.

“We tried to do the Sewards yesterday, but the weather was too bad, so we came here,” the woman said.

“Oh wow, we did them in two weekends a few weeks ago and ran into between four and five feet of snow,” I replied.

“Yes, and the road was closed off as well,” the man added, seemingly annoyed.

JT and I laughed and he said, “We just walked three miles on the road to get to the trailhead, then hiked in.”

“Ah, well,” the man started, “we did make a new sign for Couchie because the old one is gone.”

“Nice, that will be helpful” we all said.

The grimpers took naps while we chatted for a bit until they woke up and we all began to make dinner.

“I wonder if our downstairs neighbor will make noise tonight,” Allie laughed.

Looking bewildered, JT and I asked what she meant.

“Whatever animal was making noise underneath us last night!  You guys didn’t hear it?” she couldn’t believe it.

“No, we took a bunch of Benedril to sleep and we just passed out” I replied laughing.

In the morning, we woke up able to see Panther in front of the lean-to like we saw on Friday when we hiked in and patches of blue sky!  Yay!  As we began getting ready, we realized that we were playing a highly competitive game of who-leaves-the-lean-to-first game because neither we nor the grimpers wanted to break trail out on the herd path.

“I woke up last night when the animal came through and I saw it,” the man told us when he realized we had woken up.  “It was a pine martin.”

After waiting extra long, we decided we couldn’t wait any longer and we began hiking.  We almost immediately had to have a layer-peeling break as we searched for not-bog water where the grimpers suggested getting it from.  This meant hiking about half an hour until we crossed Panther Brook on a rather sketchy snow embankment stretching over the rushing spring stream.

I found myself fairly dehydrated from not drinking enough water during our zero day so we wouldn’t have to go get it in the sleet.  With water and food I felt a bit better, but felt slowed down.  While we broke half an hour after the we put iodine in the water, we took a break and the grimpers passed us and broke trail almost the rest of the day.  HA.  We won on that one.

We followed them over to Couchie and met them about 10 minutes from the summit.  The “Times Square” large rock was fairly obscured due to the few feet of snow still present, but we followed the grimpers’ tracks although sometimes we wondered if they had simply followed the GPS because they went through some places that obviously screamed “NOT TRAIL…BUSHWHACK!”

One good thing about all the snow did mean that the giant bog in the col between Times Square and Couchie virtually did not exist and we could walk straight over its mostly frozen-ness.  The whole time that we hiked over there, we bitched about how Times Square, which is the col between Panther and Santanoni, is 400 feet higher than the high peak Couchie.  Surveyed wrong, most 46ers still climb Couchie despite the fact that it doesn’t really have a good view and it looks like an arm of another mountain and not really a mountain in its own right.

On top, we admired the sign the grimpers hiked in and ate lunch.

Our lunch conversation consisted of something around the following:

“You know,” JT started while chewing his onion bagel with peanut butter and cheese, “Even thought they don’t pay taxes and they bring their yuppie culture into the High Peaks, it’s kinda cool that they took the time to make the sign and hike it in here.  I wouldn’t have done it.”

Afterwards, we moved onward, back up to Times Square where we realized that the grimpers had gone up Santanoni.  We decided to be a little nice and break the trail over to Panther since they had done all the other work.  Lucky for us, only a quarter-mile separated us from the summit of Panther.  It did not take long at all to get there and we actually had to take our snowshoes off in order to get to the summit.  The rock appeared through all the snow and we enjoyed greatly taking two pounds off of each foot and walking normally.  Panther turned out to be the best summit of the three of them.

On our way back down, we ran into the grimpers right before Times Square and we told them about the rocky summit as they told us to follow the way they had come back because they followed the GPS then found the trail going back.

As we headed out there, the walking was pretty easy and for the most part we found the trail over.  Then we hit four false summits before hitting the actual one where we took a snack break and to enjoy the view.  We realized the evening would set in soon and we had a long drive after the hike out.

It did not take us long to hike out and pack our other things up.  Hiking out did not take too long either except for the fact that a considerable amount of snow had melted at the lower elevations and we took our snowshoes off too early in anticipation.  Frustrated and too stubborn to put them back on, we postholed a bit in the last quarter-mile or so until we reached the road where we could walk bare booted.

Once we reached the trailhead, we found something a bit odd.  An old man from Colorado had himself a small fire right smack next to the parking lot next to his truck.  He began asking us questions about the skiing conditions.

Allie, the resident skier of the three of us gave him a bit of information as we managed to get everything into the car and head toward Long Lake for a phone.  Since we had planned on getting to JT’s parent’s house to pick up his car hours before we got back to the car, we figured we needed to let his mom know we were all ok.  Unfortunately, we missed the closing of Stewarts by a few minutes, but we asked the guy closing up and he let us use the landline.

After the long day, we got back to Syracuse a little before two a.m.

Read Full Post »

Cliff/Redfield/Gray

A different Jake from other stories will appear here: to distinguish the two, the Jake here will be called Brosky.

This trip started out in a very typical SUOC fashion: some people showed up late, some super early, and one bailed at the last minute via text message, most likely due to a severe hangover from Thirsty Thursday night activities.

JT, Chris, Brosky, Abbe, and I all managed to get to our meeting place and piled into my car.  Five people.  Five winter backpacks.  One normal sized Toyota Matrix.  Oh yeah.

We set off later than we wanted while snow came softly down like it seemed to do every day in Syracuse.  Abbe found herself squished between Brosky and Chris in the backseat where they had their leg room restricted even more by five pairs of snowshoes under their feet while JT had shotgun and his pack between his legs.  This is the benefit of driving!  I only had the things I needed outside of my pack, conveniently in a small cloth grocery bag to the left and under my left leg.

Needless to say, we took four short stops at various gas stations, none of which included buying gas, to stretch, caffeine up, get our snack on, and buy dinner.  We had all decided to eat dinner on the way since we left late and none of us wanted to hike 4.7 miles without dinner late at night.  Dinner varied from my own beans, rice, and veggie combination that I had cooked the night before to gas station pizza, gas station junk food, to dinning hall meal plan food in a Styrofoam take-out container from lunch.  Yum yum!

And since wonderful winter had come at us full blast, we had to drive slower than normal the whole way to avoid skidding out on the freshly snow dusted roads over to the trailhead.   JT and I seemed to have deja vu the whole way over to  upper Works because that’s exactly where we ended up the weekend before but decided against the long trip due to cold weather.  This weekend, the temperature forecasts predicted highs in the high teens and low twenties!  Balmy!

By the time we reached the trailhead, everyone practically fell out of the car they seemed so rejoiced to get out and move.  I felt fine.  Hmm.  We packed our things up and headed down the familiar Calamity Brook trail to Lake Colden.  That trip solidified the fact that I much prefer that trail in the winter as opposed to the muddy, swampy, stream-spilling-over-into-the-path trail that I had previously experienced.

The five of us put on our head lamps and set out.  Abbe and Brosky set a rigorous pace ahead while JT, Chris, and I followed.  We had to stop at the bridges where the trail steadily rises about 600 feet to take a layer off.  At about 15 degrees, we found it too hot.  When that flattened out a bit more, we checked the map and noticed we should arrive at the Calamity of Calamity Brook very shortly; from there, we only had about a third of a mile to the first lean-to.

Descending slightly to the sharp right turn, we paused to let Chris, Abbe, and Brosky see the Calamity monument.  From what I remember, the guidebook tells the story of the early miners who worked in the area.  One of them went up toward Calamity Pond and accidentally shot himself dead, commemorated in a six-foot monument.

Pressing on, we soon came upon the first of the Flowed Lands lean-to’s at the end of Lake Colden.  We saw one tent near the back and an assortment of gear on a sled to one side of the shelter.  We assumed it was just one or two people, but they had obviously already gone to sleep behind the lean-to, so we moved in and set up quickly and as quietly as we possibly could.  The five of us left as much room as possible for one or two people to sneak in if needed.

We woke up in the morning with a long day ahead of us.  The agenda began with hiking about two and a half miles to the Uphill Brook Lean-to at the base of the herd paths for Cliff and Redfield, then dropping the sleeping gear and hiking up both trail-less peaks.  Lucky for us, a bit of sun shone through and gave us a bit of motivation although it did pass in and out the whole day with an annoyingly thick cloud cover slowly moving in over the mountains.

Our tent neighbor woke up a bit after we did and came to see who came in after he fell asleep.  A pleasant older man, he had come in with a large pack and a sled full of gear to mainly go along aways in the valleys and possibly Mt. Colden.  After eating breakfast, we headed out, over the dam, and up to the second lean-to destination.  The ladders proved interesting in snowshoes, but we managed.

When we got to the lean-to, we ran into a boisterous group of middle-aged men who wanted to day hike up Cliff and Redfield as well and had already hiked in from none other than Adirondack Loj…where else.  They seemed nice enough and we mentioned that we were putting sleeping bags and whatnot in the lean-to and heading out to do the same thing.

After we unloaded the extra stuff, we put the sleeping pads down so other people could gage how many people would sleep there and if there was enough room for them.  None of us had summited any of the mountains we planned to hike, which made all of us anxious and excited to get started after the long approach to the inner peaks.

We looked at the snowshoe tracks and saw that the other group of middle-aged men had gone up to Redfield.   Neither path had been broken out, so we opted to break out Cliff so then each group of us would have an easier time finding the summit of the second mountain.  As there is no trail between the summit, we knew we would meet them again at some point.  Excited that we only had to locate one herd path that day, we charged forward.

Abbe and Brosky led both finding the path and knocking all the snow off the trees.  I kept edging Brosky on, “You know you get stronger by breaking trail?!”

“Yeah?” he looked back, “Sweet!”

JT, Chris, and I chuckled in the back and they leaped and bounded upward.  Cliff had some very interesting trail direction choices with a lot of the put-your-foot-to-something-higher-than-your-waist-and-lift-yourself-up numbers.  I found the ice beneath the snow to make those much more difficult, yet I did not particularly want to take the snowshoes off, put on the crampons, and strap the snowshoes to my backpack for them to knock snow off the trees and onto the back of my neck.  That did not seem appealing to me.

By the time we reached the summit, we couldn’t really see anything, but no more snow fell and Abbe and Browsky had arrived about five minutes or so before us and already wanted to descend to stay warm.  We took a short break and did just that.  As much as we could we just butt-slid one at a time so no one got snowshoe spikes in them and when we had almost reached the bottom, we came across the large group of middle-aged men seeming a little tired.

“You might need crampons in a bit,” Chris said.

“Yeahhhup, got ‘em,” one said, taking the moment to grab an extra few deep breaths.

Then we, once again, caught up to Abbe and Brosky at the bottom where I could feel my snow pants dig straight into my hips rubbing off nice swaths of skin.  I paused at the junction and quickly changed the dressing to new ointment soaked gauze pads and duct taped them back over my hips to prevent chaffing.

Onwards!  At that point, I had started to drag a bit more as we headed up Redfield which really was just a long uphill slog for a mile and a half.  It did not have any more weird body finagling moves, just walk uphill at about 1000 feet of elevation per mile.  As per the theme of this trip, Abbe and Brosky surged ahead, seeming to feed off of the other’s competitiveness to reach the goal as quickly as possible.  Chris went some pace between theirs and mine and JT’s.  When we reached the top, which had a small would be view if the clouds hadn’t completely taken over, Abbe and Brosky headed back to the lean-to while Chris, JT, and I had a snack, then headed back down.

“Outrageous!” screamed Brosky as we approached the lean-to after meandering down at a pace just fast enough to keep us warm.

“No,” Abbe started, “They wouldn’t have?  Would they?”

“I am going to punch someone!” Brosky angrily raised his voice, “If I see them, we’re getting them back!”

JT, Chris, and I exchanged glances before we rounded the corner to the lean-to.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“My cookies are gone!” Abbe said, still searching for them in our pile of extra gear.

“Those guys took them!” Brosky accused.

“Where did you leave them, Abbe?” Chris asked as we all began to take off our snowshoes to help look for them.

She pointed, “Right there by the tent fly.  The whole bag is gone!”

JT looked pensive, “Well, they were the only ones out here.  We could ask them if they haven’t already left.  To get back to Adirondack Loj, they have to pass by the lean-to.”

“They better give them back!” JT said pacing back and forth and swaying, his arms by his sides, occasionally balling his hands.

“The problem is,” Abbe said, pausing her search, “that those were nutritional cookies.  They were basically energy bars in the shape of cookies…and they were a good portion of my food.”

“Ohhh no,” I said, inventorying my own food in my head, “I’m sure we all have a bit of extra we could toss you if we can’t find them.”

“Maybe an animal took them, somewhere right around or under the lean-to?” JT thought out loud.  We all looked around the immediate area.  Nothing.

Then we realized that we all felt extremely cold and that the temperature had probably begun to drop since the sun should set in about an hour and the forecast predicted a high of 21 degrees fahrenheit that day.  Crawling into our sleeping bags, we listened, hoping the group of middle-aged men would come out boasting they stole cookies and we could confront them.  They never came.  If they did take them, they made the smart move of getting out faster than we did because Brosky still fumed for hours afterward.

“I feel like that’s hiker etiquette not to take other hiker’s food,” I said which made me think some animal smelled it and took them.

“I swear there were a few more tracks here than when we left,” Abbe replied, still in disbelief.

We cooked dinner from our sleeping bags and ate sitting in them, leaning our backs against the back of the lean-to.  Right as we finished, we heard snowshoes.  All of us went deathly quiet, waiting to hear boisterous voices, yet all we heard were snowshoes and a murmur which we could not understand.

Two people approached the lean-to and peered in at us.  Not middle-aged men.  A very fit, lean couple in matching gear stops.

“Hi,” I said, trying to be friendly.

“Hello,” the woman starts.  “We just wanted to see what shape the lean-to was in on our way out.”

The guy murmured something to the woman.  French.  Figures.  They’re both decked out in Arc’Teryx.

“Did you guys break out Cliff and Redfield?” the woman asked.

“Yes,” Abbe replied first, “We broke out Cliff and some other guys broke out Redfield.  Then we switched.”

“Nice,” she said thinking.

“Where did you guys come from today?” I followed up.

“Gray, Skylight, and Marcy,” she began, “we’re heading to the car now.”

Now that would be a very long day in the winter, with not that much daylight, and strenuous.  But, on the plus side, they broke out Gray for us, which means less work tomorrow!

As we began to get ready for bed, Brosky smirks and laughs boyishly.  We turn to look at what he has up his sleeve.  A water bottle full of shitty vodka.

“How many shots do you guys think is in here?” he said staring at it.

The consensus ended up coming to five by eyeballing it.  Eyes gleaming, he knocked back all of it.  The smell of shitty vodka permeated the air just from exposure.

Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurp!

Shitty vodka now got its way into every air molecule for a mile.  Fantastic thing to fall asleep to.  Then, “Hey Mandy?” JT asked, “Can you check that bite I think I have but can’t see?”

I looked.  Yup.  That’s pretty infected.  We’re about 8 miles in, with full packs, and a solid drive from a hospital.  It definitely needs antibiotics.  After having one poisonous spider bite, an infected spider bite, and a tick bite, I could tell infection when I saw it.  We drug out the med kit and I drained a considerable amount of puss and nastiness out then bandaged it up.  He said it didn’t hurt too bad unless he put pressure on it or had the backpack come down on it.  We decided to see how he felt in the morning and how much the swelling had increased.  If he could stick it out to do Gray, we would.  If not, we’d hike out.

Waking up, we saw a glimmer of what could possibly turn into sun and Abbe got us motivated as she deals much better with mornings than the rest of us do, even in the cold weather.  The forecast had only predicted a high of 17 that day which made the rest of us want to sleep longer and not leave the warm and cozy sleeping bags.  Checking JT’s spider bite, we decided that since it had not swelled more than last night, we would try to hike Gray since the summit was so close and none of us wanted to hike all the way back in there for just one mountain that supposedly seemed more like an arm off Marcy.

We packed up as much as possible to make grabbing the extra stuff easier on the way out and we set off.  Before we knew it, we hit the half mile mark where we changed trail markers and made a sharp right turn to continue climbing toward Lake Tear of the Clouds, or the source of the Hudson River.  No surprise here, Abbe and Brosky ran ahead and promised to stop at the herd path off to Gray before the tiny lake, JT and I took up the rear because my hips chaffed and JT’s pain killers had not kicked in for the spider bite yet while Chris hiked up between us somewhere.

When we got to the herd path, Abbe and Brosky had their packs off and had started to jog in place, as much as one can in snowshoes.  Chris had sat own on his pants and had his boots off while he rubbed his feet.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I can’t get my feet warm.  They’re almost numb,” Chris replied.

“I gave him some hand warmers,” Brosky said jogging more, “but we’re getting cold and we hiked back to find him for a few minutes and then hiked back up.”

“Ah, gotcha,” I said.  “Sorry we’re slow.”

I knelt down and let Chris put his bare feet on my stomach to get them warmer faster since the hand warmers probably did not get as much oxygen exposure before ending up crammed into his socks.  JT began eating a bar of some sort.

“Why don’t Abbe and I go hike up Skylight, just right over there,” Brosky began, “while you guys take care of his feet and hike Gray, then we’ll meet you somewhere on Gray?”  Since he had twenty something peaks down, he wanted to catch the last one in the area that he didn’t have as well, Skylight, the summit of which lay only half a mile down the trail.  I had been up Skylight in September and felt fine with that and since the cone on top is so exposed, I felt like Gray would be  enough for today and they seemed so incredibly chipper about the idea.

They set off while Chris’ feet stayed on my stomach for a few more minutes until all of us began to get a bit chilly and decided that hiking up the rest of Gray would probably get our blood flowing enough to get warm.  It mostly worked.  JT and I hiked up just a bit, and Chris followed suit right after he put on his boots.  Mostly broken out from other people, the herd path did not prove hard to find, and we reached the summit in not too long.  We decided to take our time because Abbe and Brosky had to summit Skylight and run all the way back up there.  On the summit, we took a short snack break and headed back down.

Abbe and Brosky caught up with us part way up Gray and we decided to meet at the lean-to if they didn’t catch up with us before then since we went toodleling along trying not to irritate JT’s bite more.

They did manage to catch up right before we hit the lean-to and we all packed up and out.  This time, the 8 miles out seemed much less strenuous and Chris’ feet had warmed up in the downhill pounding.  We took lunch at the Marshall lean-to since no one occupied it, and then kept going out since the trail mostly went steadily downward.  We passed the same guy with the sled at the same lean-to we found him in.  As we passed we waved to him and trotted out the last four and a half miles to the car.  Part way through Chris asked me how much further we had to go downhill because he remembered when I mentioned that the last mile is a bit flatter and just slightly uphill.

I knew we didn’t have too much more, but as it was the first time I’d hiked up this way in the winter, I didn’t have all the landmarks as clear in my head.  When we hit the 1.6 mile bridge from the car a few moments later, I laughed and pointed.

“I think I’m getting blisters on my baby toes,” he said.  We paused.

“Do you want to fix them?  I have plenty of stuff in the med kit,” I offered.

He thought, “No, we’re not too far.”

“The snowshoes do that to me when I hike too long in them, we can wait if you want to take care of them,” I offered again.

“Nope, I’m good,” he said again.

We pressed on.  By the time we hit the 1.2 mile bridge, I gave Abbe and Brosky the keys and said they could go out to the car, just watch the last two left turns and follow the signs for “parking lot” since they seemed to want to walk faster.  Excited, they ran off, still with plenty of energy.

The three of us just went onward, and then, before we knew it, we reached the car and we examined Chris’ feet.  He did have blisters as they bled out into his socks.  Apparently, he lost three toenails from that trip.  Good carnage.  Way to go Chris!  Then all five of us managed to cram back into my Matrix and we set off for Syracuse.

Read Full Post »

Allen Mountain

On a snowy late January Friday afternoon, JT, Russell and I set out with plans to hike Grey, Redfield and Cliff.  We battled a snow storm on the way to the Upper Works parking lot and discussed our plans for the weekend.  Prepared for the cold, we had plenty of layers, but none of us looked forward to Saturday night or Sunday.  The online weather forecasts predicted Saturday night as negative 27 degrees and the high on Sunday as negative 3 degrees.  In Fahrenheit.  Fantastic.

As we drove into the trailhead, we suddenly thought that the trip definitely needed three days.  We wanted to get out before the cold set in on Saturday night because we had only gotten negative twenty degree sleeping bags out of the e-room.  When we stopped at the end of the road, we talked through our plans.  Then it dawned on us that we passed the Allen Mountain trailhead about a mile back.  Notorious as an 18 mile round trip hike for an outer peak with few views, we knew we could hike it and get back to the car with heat Saturday night.

This seemed to clearly be our best option.  We could hike in the first few miles on the old logging roads and stealth camp somewhere along the trail and day hike up Allen Saturday.  On the way back, we could pick up our stuff and hike out.
Brilliant!

We turned around and drove back to the Allen trailhead.  Populated by only one other car, we parked next to it and began putting on the boots, gaiters and gloves while we checked the temperature at a whopping 13 degrees Fahrenheit.

By the time we set out, darkness had set in.  The early sunsets in the winter drove me nuts.  When the sun disappears at 4:30pm, I use far more headlamp batteries because somehow with SUOC we always end up hiking in after dark.

Barely into the hike, we came across the owner of the other car: a bearded man on skis with a day pack.

“It’ll be a long hike guys” he said as he reached us.

“On the plus side, you’re almost out!” I said.

“Yeah, tell me about it” he replied.  “You’ll be able to find your way though.  I took the skis off when you get off of the first old logging road.”

With that, we headed off into the night with a sky full of stars above us.  The night was calm and peaceful, albeit cold, but that didn’t matter as long as we moved.

“I would trust a guy with that kind of beard,” JT said after he was out of earshot as we walked into an open area without trees.  Russell led, then me, the JT.

“Yeah, he seemed to know what he was…” Russell started, then CRUNCH!  Right in front of me, Russell was down and instantly and without hesitation trying to get his foot up and out.  Quickly, he got himself out.

We looked down.  Ice had broken into some insanely cold water.  “Are we on a low bridge right now?” JT asked.

I hit my hiking poles down in a few places, “Yep.”

“We should watch that a little more closely,” Russell said shaking his foot out.  “I don’t think I got too wet there.”

We trudged on, more carefully over the to the trees and kept going on the open, old logging road.  Soon, the old ranger cabin and the trail to Mt. Adams went off to the left.  The fire tower on top of Mt. Adams had closed a long time ago and the mountain did not reach too high so none of us felt the need to take the diversion, not that we could see at night anyway.

Onward we went, talking about mundane things to fill the time.  One of those included Russell fussing about his GPS and wondering if he had loaded the New York maps back onto it or if he had left the Florida ones on it from his canoeing trip over winter break.

Then, we came to a sharp right turn where the trail shot into the woods and a sign just further on the logging road said “NO TRESPASSING.”  At that point, all three of us wanted to go to sleep and we knew we had a flat piece of ground if we slept right around the sign on the logging road, but we had no idea if we would find a space big enough for the three-man tent we borrowed from SUOC.

After a little debate, we decided to camp there, just off to the side.  The problem with “stealth” camping in the winter is that it’s really not that stealthy because you can see the snowshoe tracks in the snow!  We figured it would be too cold for the hood sitters (rangers) to venture past their vehicles to check it, so we set up camp.

As we snuggled into our sleeping bags, Russell immediately began toying with his small GPS unit for about twenty minutes.

“AHA!” he said finally making JT and I jump slightly.  Well, as much as one can jump in a sleeping bag.  “I do have the New York maps on here!”

“That’s good Russell,” I said as I tried to relax.

“As the crow flies we are about three miles from the car.  That probably means we’ve gone about four miles,” Russell talked to his GPS.  “I will set here as a way point for camp so we are off tomorrow morning!”

“Russell,” I said as I began to fall asleep, “We’re not good about getting up in the morning, you might have to help with motivating us.”

“Yeah,” JT said, “We tend to leave around 9am when we try to wake up at 6am.”

“Better than the SUOC average of 10am!” Russell said and that was the last thing I heard as I fell asleep.

Before I knew it, the small alarm on my watch began beeping at 6am.  I alerted the boys, but didn’t want to move.  I knew it was cold outside of the sleeping bag and continued to doze for a while.  Still dark out, I figured we could doze until
7am or so and then start making breakfast from our sleeping bags.  That might have worked except we ended up falling back to sleep completely until a little after seven.  Russell had actually listened to me at 6 am and began moving about, still in the sleeping bag, but he lay there completely awake.

“Damn, Russell,” I said groggily, slowly poking my head outside the sleeping bag.  I could see my breath and tried to mentally prepare myself for the cold.  I rolled over to one of the doors and began heating up water for oatmeal.  I knew I
wouldn’t get up without a hot breakfast that morning.  JT refused to move yet, claiming it takes him less time because he has a cold breakfast that he can eat while packing up or beginning walking.  While he continued to doze, Russell and I ate our hot oatmeal and savored the heat from the inside out while it lasted.

After a slow morning, we did manage to get up and packed by about 9am after we heard some talking pass by us, but without coming over to where we had our camp set up.  Russell, slightly impatiently, waited while JT and I got our shit in one sock and I hacked up a few lugies (right after that, the doctor would tell me I had bronchitis for the past month…oops).

Right off the bat, we took the sharp turn into the woods and after about a mile of easy rolling small bumps, we came to the junction of the herd path off to Allen.  Surprisingly, a huge hand painted sign saying, “Allen” in bright yellow paint pointed the path off to the right.  Russell plotted away in his GPS as we turned to be surprised a second time.  Trail markers!  Confused, all three of us followed them and the snowshoe tracks along until we saw an odd-shaped marker.

JT stopped to examine it, “It’s made from a yellow laundry detergent container!”  All of us burst out laughing.

“I guess a few people thought they would help mark it since it’s a widely used 46er herd path” Russell mused.

I hacked up a nice, gooey yellow blob.

We continued following them until they finally disappeared and we took a small break for water at the next large stream right a the base of Allen, finally.

Exited for fresh water, I looked over at Russell and said, “So, what does that GPS of yours say?”

“Well!” Russell started, “As the crow flies we are 1.4 miles and will inevitably need to do a few switchbacks and whatnot so I assume we are a little under two miles away from the summit.”

“That would make sense because this is the creek we hit two miles from the summit according to the guidebook,” JT said, seeming doubtful of the GPS.

Heading out, we almost immediately started climbing, slowly and steadily, along a fairly clear herd path following someone else’s steps.  Of course, we had the typical blowdowns to climb over or crawl under.  I found the more I went under downed trees, the more I would hack up.  Russell would get ahead of us because I kept stopping to cough my brains out, and wait for us rather patiently playing with his GPS.

“Are you sure you’re ok?” Russell asked me.

Hack. Spit. “Yeah,” I said, “I’m good.  Just putting one foot in front of the other.”  Then after a few steps I hear Russell chatting with someone besides JT, who had gotten ahead of me.  I ducked under a tree and then two women
stood there chatting away with Russell.

“Hi,” I started, trying not to hack anything up.  “How’s the trail look from here up?”

One began, “Not bad, you can follow our tracks up.”

The conversation did not last too long and we continued upward.  About fifteen minutes later, we came to a small, open slide where we turned around to have an amazing view of the inner peaks.

“Daaaaaaamn!” I started, until hack hack hack.

Russell seemed frustrated.   I turned to look at him as he tried to kick in steps up the slide with snow shoes on.  Very slowly he made upward progress.  Estimating the slide length at about 50 feet, Russell made it to the top eventually and gave the ok for me to go up.

Fiddling with the GPS he said, “We are only 0.3 miles from the summit as the crow flies!”

Rolling my eyes, I went next, trying hard not to stop and hack up anything but it seemed like every two steps forward, I went one step back.  A few times I slid down a few feet and had to find another route up because the snow wouldn’t stick  completely to the ice underneath on the rock.  I debated stopping and putting on crampons a few times throughout the short, very steep climb, but ended up getting up with just the snowshoes and hiking poles and waiting with Russell while JT climbed, just as frustrated as the two of us had seemed.  A few profanities flew relatively quickly and he stopped to put on crampons.

All three of us wanted food to satisfy our growing hunger that had multiplied with the frustration on the small slide.  Although we enjoyed the view from it, we wanted to reach the summit.  After a few more slightly annoying foot-to-the-waist jumps up, we did reach the summit of Allen Mountain.  There we all immediately opened our packs for lunch and began munching down.  That last 0.3 miles took us 45 minutes, probably exacerbated by hunger.

Of course, by that time, the clouds had moved in making any possible side views from the top nothing but whiteness.  I had to keep moving in order to stay warm.  Luckily, the puff coat helped tremendously, but my fingers hurt if I kept them out of the shells for too long.  I had wool gloves underneath the shells, but even with just those while I ate made my fingers hurt enough to put them in my armpits to warm them up.  At that point, I broke out a new pair of hand warmers to insert between the gloves and the shell mittens I wore.

We managed one summit picture, then headed down.  When we hit the slide, we encountered three grimpers, two men and a woman.  The woman did not have a pack with her and seemed fairly tired while the two men had day packs.  As they struggled up the slide, we slid down a little farther over on our butts having a fantastic ride one at a time.

“Are we alllllllmost there?” asked the woman.

“Yup!” I said as I sat down for the ride.  “This is the last hard part.”

“Goooooood,” she huffed in a French-Canadian accent, “I had to leave my pack right down there to get the rest of the way up!”

I slid down and JT followed.   Russell managed to stay more composed and not slide down the other parts of the trail while JT and I joyfully slid down as many parts as possible one at a time, making sure we had cleared the bottom before the other went.

In no time at all, we found ourselves back at the stream and meandering back to our campsite.  Occasionally, I would cough and cough and have to catch up a bit, but the sun had begun to set as we hit the marked trail of logging roads.  The logging roads had much lower undulations that made my tired-bronchitis body feel a little better.  Seven degree weather might not have helped bronchitis then or in the few other weekends that I’d had it before this trip.  Oops.

When we finally hit our campsite, I decided that we needed to cook dinner before we hiked the last four miles or so out so we had enough energy to get there.  The boys were not so fond of this energy until they realized that I would do all the work and all they had to do was begin to pack up their things.  As my typical backpacking meal, the couscous/TVP/dehydrated veggies combo only needed boiling water and then to sit for five minutes, it gave me time to pack up my things while it sat and cooked itself.  After eating, we all had a bit more energy and we listened as the grimpers passed us rather loudly on their way out.

In the dark, we headed out, following the well trodden path that we took, the two women took, and the grimpers took.  I still felt like I couldn’t breathe properly due to all the phlegm, but I made it.  We made sneering remarks at the private property signs as we passed them and then tried to decipher the writings by the grimpers in the snow next to the trail.  After reading a few of the words written with a hiking pole, we realized they had a fourth hiker that had turned back and had told them the times he or she was at certain places and that he or she was heading to McDonald’s.

Funny thing: if you undo the contractions and rearrange the letters in McDonald’s slogan “I’m Lovin’ It” to “I am loving it” it spells “Ailing vomit.”  A good testament to the food served there!  Maybe that’s why said person could not make it more than about two miles in on the trail.

When we got to the open area, all three of us made sure we stuck to whatever bridge structure that we seemed to walk on, feeling out our next move with the hiking poles.  We saw that other people had fallen partially in as well in several places and we tried to avoid that.  This time we made it across without wetness, although it wouldn’t have mattered too much because we had less than a mile to go to the car.

We made it to the car a late enough that all the nearest gas stations would be closed.  Packing everything into my car, we headed out and couldn’t manage to find desperately needed caffeine until Inlet where we found a small bar/video rental open.  Russell had snored almost the whole way there and JT mostly managed to stay awake, but I really needed caffeine badly to make it the next two and a half hours back to Syracuse.  The bartender directed me to the Coca-Cola on the other side of the bar and promptly charged two dollars for each small plastic bottle of it.  It wasn’t even a 20 oz!  Pissed, but not seeing other options, I grabbed one and kept driving.   Nothing was open.

We made it back to Syracuse ok, but very tired in the early hours of the a.m.

Read Full Post »