I continue my work on the Lake George 12.  This time it was Buck, Erebus, and Sleeping Beauty out of the Fort Anne area.  First up was Buck from Shelving Rock Road.  The hike was just a dream.  There was a bit of steep right at the top, but I was up in no time and didn't realize how fast I was going.  The views were amazing too!  No wonder this is one of the hikes that "everyone" does, and I'm surprised it took me so long to get to it as it's only about an hour away.  

Looking to do a short hike after working as trailhead steward, I went to do Big Crow from O'Toole road, part of the Lake Placid 9 challenge.  I get to the lot, sign in at the register, and start hiking the trail next to the register.  After 15 min or so I start asking myself, am I on the right trail?  I thought this trail was only 0.7 miles and steep, but I've gone at least 1/2 a mile and it's been flat!  I check the GPS, and yup, I'm on the wrong trail, I'm heading towards Hurricane!  Oops!

Today I started on the Lake George 12 by going for a hike with Michael up Cat and Thomas.  We started off at the parking area on Edgecomb Rd.  The trail starts off as a dirt road and eventually you make a left turn and are on trail.  The trail overall up Cat was pretty nice to hike.  It was surprisingly well marked and easy to follow.  It was only at the top that it got a little steep to climb.  The views though were well worth it.

For my last winter hike of the year, I went back up north and decided to do a "simple" 12 mile hike, TableTop and Phelps.  The weather forecast was good, but suggested weather would be moving in later in the day.

I have heard many good things about doing Allen mountain in the winter.  Biggest being that the hike up Allen Brook is not a slippery mess of moss and slime.  I was looking forward to doing this hike in the winter to see how much better it can be.  I also have never come in from the south on the East River trail, so those couple miles would be new to me.

Original plan was to do just these three peaks.  We had options of adding in Hough and Dix if we felt it.  We didn't feel it.

So, this weekend, Michael and I spent the weekend at ADK Loj and did some hikes.... Well, the weekend weather turned back to winter, or so it seemed.  Saturday it rained all day as a drizzle and was in the 40's with wind chills on the highest of the peaks being well below freezing.  So, with that in mind we did a couple of the Lake Placid 9.

Wow, what a trip...

I got up to the mountain about a quarter of 7 and was on the trail by 7.  It was on and off drizzle/rain for the first hour or so.  Being that it was forested, I didn't get horribly wet.  The wind was also rather consistent and strong the whole hike up.  As you can see in the stats below, this was a relatively short hike, GPS tracked it as 5.44 miles, officially it's supposed to be 6.2 miles.  This is probably because I turned down the sensitivity of the mapper.  I decided to do Porter first as it is the smaller of the two.  The trail was a stream the whol

Saturday, May 23, I did go up to do Whiteface and Esther.  I started at Marble Mountain, which is an old ski mountain, and the trail literally goes up the old tow path for a lift.  It was steep and rocky.  Once at the top, great views though.  At that point I joined the Wilmington trail and it was a slightly less steep climb to the point the trail for Esther comes off.  At about 3500 feet though, about 0.6 miles from that point, it became mostly snow/ice instead of mostly mud/water.  Thankfully I had my spikes, and I wore the most of the rest of the hike up.&nb