As a youth, I became involved in the Boy Scouts of America (now Scouting America). My years going through that program trained me in all kinds of useful skills, including outdoor skills related to hiking, backpacking, and camping. One of the earliest memories I have of learning these skills was when I was 12 and did my first backpacking trip, early to mid December, in Harriman St. Park, NY. I was small (not even 100 pounds yet), carrying way too much weight because I didn't have any specialized or light weight gear, and I was freezing. It was such a bad trip that my scoutmaster actually called my mother afterwards to make sure I was ok, and to see if I was going to stay with the troop. A year later, I was out in New Mexico at Philmont, backpacking for 10 days through the high desert mountains. Well, I was, and I now look back on it fondly and as a starting point to what I love to do now.
As part of my scouting days, I was introduced to the Adirondacks of NY. The council had a camp in the Lake Clear area (Floodwood Mountain Reservation), and we took advantage of being in the area by doing hiking of some of the mountains. I remember having fun on Ampersand, sleeping on the summit of Floodwood, and doing my first high peak, Phelps. When I got old enough to work at the camp, I was the only one that would do backpacking, so I always got those troops, and we went through the high peaks. I know my teenage self made mistakes with the routes we planned, but I learned, and have been better since.
After college, I unfortunately didn't hike much. It took about 20 years before I really got back into it. COVID hit, and I remembered my promise to myself to complete the 46 before I turned 46 (2023). With everything shut down, I got back into hiking, and I went big. I couldn't find my book of what peaks I did when (I had about 6 prior to 2020), so I started all over again, starting with Giant and ending on Dix over about 4 months. Since then I have joined various virtual communities and continued hiking, more often with people I didn't know or barely knew. I completed the Catskill 3500, started my winter rounds, and recently branched out to New Hampshire and Vermont to start going for the NE111.
In the winter of 2024-25, I had a couple near misses that spurred me to give back more. One was a new winter hiker wanting to go on a hike with me up Hough, a week after 2 feet of snow fell. That hike was one of the hardest I have ever done, and we thankfully were able to convince them to do an easier hike. The other was someone bonking on the trail, most likely because they didn't eat what their body needed. They only ate sugar and didn't want to stop to eat the real food they had in their bag because they were slow and didn't want to slow the group down any more. These hikes spurred me to go through the ADK trip leader training and to start leading trips through them, and to seriously consider to get my NYS Guide license to do more of it professionally.
So, what you'll find here is mostly my blog entries for my hikes. I try to describe what the trail is like and how the hike went overall. Pictures where I took them, and GPS traces of what I have done. I also have a couple pages to keep track of my progress on the various challenges I'm doing or have done, and various thoughts on hiking related topics as they come up.
I am working on taking some of the basic hiking topics and expanding them into articles that will be posted here in an easy to find/navigate fashion. This will take time, and very likely will include some video content as I create it. My hope is that this information helps someone through their personal hiking challenges, and educate people how to do it safely. My way of hiking and my advice is not the only way, I tend to be cautious and be over prepared while others go the ultralight way. No one way is the right way to hike, but there are common things throughout that lead to a successful hike, and that's what I hope to highlight.