After taking the heart of the summer off from hiking, I got back into it with one easy hike with a couple other people I met through a hiking group. I was not leading this, but I know the trail, so gave advice as needed. Original plan was to hike up and back. I talked the group into making it a little longer and go on some real trails (the shortest hike up is mostly forest road). So a loop was made. It was absolutely beautiful, and the temperatures were more than tolerable. Twas a good day.
In my quest for fire towers, I went far north and did Lyon and Loon Mountain fire towers. Two very different hikes. Both were very muggy and took a lot out of me making me actually eat on the trail! I also went through nearly 5 L of water over the 12.7 miles.
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.
Today was a prep for memorial day hiking/backpacking, and I failed miserably. The hike itself is quite beautiful up to the former caretaker's cabin, that is once you get off the long road walk in. You pass through forest and meadows, by ponds and over streams. I actually saw some fish in one stream and painted trillium, which I don't recall ever seeing before. The trail up from the cabin was a typical ADK trail, but the views from the tower are lovely, and I haven't seen the high peaks this well from the south before.
Today, I took a jaunt over to Baxter. This is not a big mountain, but it does have some wonderful views at the ledges near the top. Started off on 9N and followed the trail to the top. Overall the trail was in pretty good shape, and the snow was all gone. Once up top it was a question of do I go over and come back around, or just go back down and do another peak. I went on, and this was a mistake.
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.
The plan for the day was to start early and go up the Beaver Meadows trail to get Gothics and Armstrong. If we felt good about it, we would continue on to Upper Wolfjaw and Lower Wolfjaw if we were feeling it.
First hike of the year from AMR. We went for one of the further ones and did Sawteeth up and down the Weld trail. Early start and up and down the lake road with no big issues. I was getting a little tired with the fast pace, but I pulled through. We crossed the river, stopped and looked at Rainbow Falls a bit, and then it was up the mountain. Once you start climbing, it keeps going. The trail was already broken out, and we just packed it down better. The trail was smooth, and no rocks. It was everything I like about winter hiking.
This was another big year for hiking. I finished the Catskill 3500 challenge and started/finished the Lake George 12 challenge. I also started on the ADK portion of the Fire Tower challenge, which will be my focus next year along with the LP 9, Saranac 6, and Tupper 3. Plenty of non-high peak hiking to do.
