Tabletop Mountain
Heading straight for the summit of Tabletop at about 4 miles from the Adirondack Loj, the last mile was dark and muddy (but not shoe-stealing muddy) with relatively middling views.
Sean Carpenter – Photographs and Work
Personal Photography and Work
Heading straight for the summit of Tabletop at about 4 miles from the Adirondack Loj, the last mile was dark and muddy (but not shoe-stealing muddy) with relatively middling views.
The Slide Brook and Lillian Brook herd paths were two of the best trails in the Adirondacks. They vary the terrain and direction enough that you don’t feel like you’re on an endless trail, and almost the entirety of both routes is soft underfoot and well-maintained.
One of the impressive features of the waterfalls at Ricketts Glen is both how closely spaced and how varied they are. Not only are the falls themselves dramatically different, but they vary themselves as the seasons change and as the water level changes.
Old Rag Mountain in Shenandoah has some serious scrambling up and down crevices, around and over (and under!) massive boulders. In other words, it was really cool.
We teamed up with another couple to do a fairly interesting 8-mile loop hike near Hamburg, PA – the Pinnacle and Pulpit Rock.
More goodness from the Falls Trail in Ricketts Glen State Park in northeastern PA.
The Falls Trail hike made for a much different feel over the summer compared to this week, with more colors in the leaves and more water over the falls. The Kodak E100VS slide film matched the day perfectly.
You will not find a better rental than Mercy Cabin, inside the hamlet of Keene — centrally located to Lake Placid, Wilmington (Whiteface Mountain & skiing), and all the major trailheads for hiking the high peaks.
Wanting to finish my summer off in style, I made one last 800-mile drive to climb more mountains. Wanting to satiate my inner masochist, I chose a day hike of the 5-peak Dix Range.
Iterations of this hike have been planned and scrapped since July, with the latest one a proposed Colvin-Blake-Nippletop-Dial hike. The previous day’s over-hiking scrapped the 4-peak plan in favor of a more modest straight up-and-back over these two, allowing if nothing else an extra hour of sleep.
Wright, Algonquin, and Iroquois were the three best back-to-back-to-back peaks we’ve enjoyed in the Adirondacks.
We had been dunked in mud, trod underwater, stopped-and-re-started, rushed off a peak, re-routed, drenched in a passing thunderstorm, and hiked over 18 miles & 5,000+ vertical feet. We wouldn’t have changed a thing.
The only car in the lot, we signed into the trail at 7:44 AM. Before noon we were enjoying lunch on our 15th high peak, on Rocky Peak Ridge.
My friend and fellow photographer Stephen Gushue joined me for a hike along Ricketts Glen’s Falls Trail, which encompasses 21 waterfalls in its inspiring 8-mile loop.