We started at the gardens about 630 and the not was about 2/3 full when though the sign at the entrance said it was full. Photos trail into JBL was super highway. Well packed and ready to follow. Crossing over at JBL to ore bed, and ore bed itself to the peak was reasonably packed, a few soft spots, but overall cannot complain at all. The steep sections were not horrible to get up, everything was rather well consolidated, although the trail did go in and out of the trees on the slide section.

February 12, 2026, the rangers were notified around 3 in the afternoon of a hiker and their dog in distress on Marcy. The initial reports are not clear what has happened, other than she slipped off trail near the peak and was hypothermic. The skies were cloudy and it was windy, but they did search by air, and found nothing, while others came in via roads and trails. Rangers were dropped off at the Marcy Dam outpost and reached the woman about 9:50 PM, finding her dead, but her dog alive.

At this point, I have 9 peaks left for my winter 46.  It's soooo close, I can almost taste it.  The problem I am going to run into is I have a lot of mountains left that are deep in the woods.  3 of the hikes I need to do are 17 miles or a bit more.  The other 2 are 12.5 and 14 miles.  We have had a lot of snow this year, and the more remote locations, like what I have left, are deep with snow and not many people have gone that way.  But, here are the 5 hikes I have left, roughly the order I'm planning on doing them, and my thoughts/concerns with them.

Today, I, and 3 other brave souls, went up and did the MacIntyre range.  This is one of the harder hikes in the park, even though it's only 10ish miles (per map).  What makes is hard is that you have huge climbs up Wright and Algonquin (both sides) and you have to go over Algonquin 2 times unless you want to do one of the steepest trails in the park and add a fair amount of mileage.... that was not an option as the trail back to Loj is currently closed due to landslides in July.

Yesterday I lead a hike for ADK up Allen.  I don't normally want large groups for winter hikes, they can cause issues with mismatched speeds and such, but knowing that there was feet of snow that likely needed breaking, 11 of us went out to do the hike.  

Today I lead a hike for ADK up Street and Nye.  These 2 are relatively smaller peaks, Nye being the second shortest of the 46.  That doesn't mean they are easy.  We hit the trail around 630, and the initial trail out to Indian Brook is relatively flat and was very thin snow wise.  The big fear of the brook not being frozen was unfounded.  The water crossing was very solid and we crossed it with no issues.  The second water crossing that I didn't remember was a little more sketchy, but it was frozen enough that we didn't need to go across the tree.

Tomorrow  go to Loj to attempt Street and Nye.  These are 2 relatively low peaks (#31 and #45) so they should be relatively straight forward.  There's only 1 way that people climb it, and that's from the HPIC, over a bit of trail, a bit of old X-country ski trails (32 Olympics I think?)  then it's all herd path.  The questions I have to worry about for this hike that I don't typically have to worry about for most of my winter hikes.  

It was a long day.  We started in spikes as the trail looked thin at the start and expected to run into more open spaces.  It was a bad choice as it was soft enough that we were making divots in the trail and not really gaining much speed wise.  About 1/2 way down the Calkins Brook Truck Trail we switched to snowshoes.  After that it wasn't bad.

Yesterday, I went up Seymour.  This is one of the more remote mountains to hike up here, being just over 14 miles for a single peak.  That said, it's not a horrible hike until the climb.  Thankfully, the road in was open all the way to the summer lot, and the lot was able to be parked in.  I did put chains on my car at the winter lot as I was having a bit of trouble, but the chains worked well and I got in and out of there with no issues.

2025 was a good year for hiking.  In the end I hiked 47 hikes over 40 days.  My shortest hike was the Normaskill East trail in Delmar at 0.5 miles.  My longest was Hough from Elk Lake via Lillian Brook at 16.5 miles.  Time wise, my shortest hike was the Normanskill East trail at 13 minutes and my longest being Panther and Couch at 15 hours.  I did one trail that had zero elevation change, and the most elevation in a hike was Dial and Nippletop at just over 5100 feet of elevation.