Today I guided 2 people up the three mountains of the Tupper Lake Triad.  The weather was looking questionable with a forecast of on and off showers all morning and possible thunder storms in the late afternoon.  I was hopeful that we'd be able to get off the peaks before the thunder happened, and we did.  We didn't stay dry though, about 1/2 of our hiking was in drizzle to light rain, but it was a fun experience for all.

Today I headed out and tried to get some trails I haven't hiked before in order to be familiar with them if someone wanted me to guide them there.  I started out going up the Deer Brook from 73.  This trail is on private property and you are reminded of that many times on the way up.  It also has a warning that its a rough trail.  It wasn't lying.  It was a bit rough, but also full of beauty.  Once up to the top of the brook, a side spur brings you to a beautiful cascade. The rest of the trail was quite pleasant to hike.

One of my personal goals is to hike every mile of trail in the High Peaks Wilderness.  This is known as Red Lining, and I've hiked most of the miles to get to the peaks, but there is still a lot of low trails that I haven't hiked yet.  This hike was to hit some of the low trails.  The long term benefit of this is that I gain experience of those trails, so if requested to guide in that area, or someone wants to do something other than peaks, I can speak from experience and not just what I read in the guide book.

Guided a hike up Goodnow Mountain.  It was a lovely day for a hike.  Temps were around 70 at the base when we started and around 80 when we got back down a bit after noon.  Humidity was reasonable, and the skies were nearly cloudless.  With a small exception for the end of our stop on the peak, the bugs were not an issue.  Really a perfect day to be in the woods.

I got a text from a hiking friend on Thursday asking if I wanted to go hiking this weekend, and what I thought about the forecast for Saturday.  Well, yes, I'm always up for a hike if I am free, and she pointed out a hike I've been wanting to do to knock nearly 7 miles of new trail for the Red Line challenge.  The weather, well, it looked to be on and off showers throughout the day with potential thunder showers in the afternoon.

I spent the day sitting at the Meadows Lane parking area doing trailhead stewarding for the 46ers.  As a treat to myself, after duty was over, I took a trip up Mt. Jo.  I've been up it before, but it's been a couple years, and there is a new long trail that I've been needing to hike.  Drove into ADK Loj and surprisingly found parking.  I hiked in and went up the short trail, which is short and steep.  You're literally climbing about 550 feet over 0.4 miles.  That's more than your standard ADK mile of 1000 feet per mile.

After a full day of training, I headed up to do Hurricane from the north side.  The road to Crow Clearing was in pretty good condition, a couple small divots/washouts that were not hard to get over even in my tiny car.  The first mile in on the gulf brook trail was in great condition.  Only one blow down that people were going around, but was easy enough to get over.

I did this hike 2 weeks earlier as a scouting hike for this one.  Amazing how much changes in 2 weeks.  The trail is still in good conditions, but it was a lot wetter this time.  All the snow we had on the way up Porter last time was gone.  The flowers also started coming out and I saw a lot of red Trillium along the trail, and on the way out a lot of trout lilies too.  Not much I can really say that is different from the previous hike.

In the theme of starting to hit the less used trails, and working to red-lining the map, I did a traverse from Marcy Field over Blueberry and Porter, and out via 73.  This was also to scout for a possible hike a friend wants me to help him with in 2 weeks, since I've never done the Blueberry side of things.

Adirondack Mountain News posted a very good summary of what happens in New York whenever a hiker needs help from the rangers.  This is specifically the process that is done in NY where we're relatively unique in that the Rangers are in charge of all SAR activities on state lands.  Other locations in the country it could be any number of agencies and isn't always consistent with who is in charge.  That said though, the overall process and the insights into how the searches are run should be consistent across the country, if not world.  The full post by them is here: