Today, with the bad weather predicted later in the day, but high winds all day, I ended up hiking Mt. Colden as a loop from ADK Loj in order to finish up what I didn't do the previous weekend, and to finally go up the trail between Lake Colden and the peak.
Today, I went up to ADK Loj to do the MacEntyre range, and possibly add on Colden on my way out. The goal was to pick up a couple trails I haven't hiked before and get GPS traces of trails I hiked decades ago as I work on redlining the High Peaks Wilderness. I was torn between adding in the extra miles and elevation to go up Colden vs going through my favorite place in the park Avalanche Lake. Turns out the choice was made for me when I ate lunch.
September 11, 2001 was a horrible day. Many of us, myself included, have ties directly to NYC and have stories about that day and the weeks that followed. I personally was fortunate to not have lost anyone, but I know people that did. With this year being the 25th anniversary of the towers falling, a hiking friend of mine, Pamela Chiani, saw what the New Hampshire people were doing in the White mountains, and she organized the Adirondack hiking community to come together and raise flags on the 46 high peaks at 11 AM.
I guided a group of 4 up MacNaughton from Upper Works. Going in we knew this was going to be a tough hike because there is no established herd path up the mountain. We decided to go in from the south because of my experience a month or so earlier coming in from the north. Even with the longer bushwhack (1.5 miles vs 1.0 miles), the approach was shorter, easier, and more importantly drier, less boggy, and less muddy than coming in from the north.
I guided a hike up Haystack this weekend (https://h2hpguide.com/trips/haystack-2026-08-23-1253). We met at the Roostercomb parking lot, put everything into my car, and drove up to the Gardens parking lot. We found one of the few remaining spots and were on the trail shortly after 3 to backpack in to the DEC outpost area. We got lucky, there was one open marked campsite around the DEC outpost, so we took it. Apparently we should wish Julia a Happy Birthday.
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.
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.
A while ago, a friend from my ADF days and I were talking about hiking as she had started hiking the Whites in New Hampshire, and I had already finished my 46er. I told her that I would love to show her "my" mountains some day, whenever she wanted to. Well, this memorial day was the time for me to show her. My original plans were to come in from the south, backpack into the Lake Colden/Flowed Lands area and grab some peaks out of there like Marshal, Marcy, Skylight, Grey, and Colden, but the one place she had to go was Avalanche Pass/Lake.
This day, I attempted to do Dial and Nippletop. The day started out as usual, with a quick walk up to the trail register and down lake road to the turn off for the Leach trail. Going up the Leach trail is not bad, but there were a few icy spots that made it adventerous. After the icey spots were over, switched over to snowshoes for the climb up Noonmark's shoulder. This climb just killed me. I couldn't get my heart rate down, and was really struggling.