Marcy in the Clouds (January)
Just before hitting the fully-exposed part of the summit, the wind picked up and the dim sunshine and blowing snow made the landscape ethereal.
Cascade & Porter (January)
It’s too pretty not to hike, and this duo is always a good choice when time is limited.
2016 By The Numbers
In short, I obliterated my 2015, which was at that time my most prodigious year. In 2016, I roughly doubled all the hiking I had done since I started in 2009!
Sawteeth, Gothics, Armstrong (Winter)
It’s been a long 9 months waiting for winter to arrive.
Colden
Sunrise comes late this far north, so starting hikes before dawn usually means cold. It was 5°F as I pulled in the lot at the Adirondack Loj. I got the front spot.
Cascade
After an even one hundred summits in 2016, number 101 was short and sweet. With the rest of the US was gripped in the big freeze swooping down from the Arctic, we knew that the calm winds and sunny skies would make a great day hiking.
Haystack, Basin & Saddleback (November)
Not having hiked these three together (colloquially referred to as ‘HaBaSa’) since July of 2014, I wanted to reacquaint myself with them before winter.
Big Slide
All that melted snow had to go somewhere, and the trail was obviously the path of least resistance. There was so much water pouring down the trail that it was at points truly a stream, with little waterfall cascades and everything.
Sawteeth, Gothics & Armstrong
Lake Road still had a dusting of snow, and turning up the Weld Trail I realized that I probably could have brought snowshoes. There was easily 4″-8″ of snow all the way up to the junction with Sawteeth, and there was 8″-12″ up to the summit.
Dix Range, An Idyllic Traverse
The route through the South Boquet River takes a meandering path, making four river crossings before leading to the base of a slide and up the north slope of Grace Peak.
Frosty Wright, Algonquin, Iroquois
We got our first hint that we were in for a treat at the initial boardwalk along the Van Hoevenberg trail. Looking off to our right, the MacIntyres sparkled.
Basin & Saddleback
I’ve bailed out of Basin (and Saddleback) twice after excruciatingly long days. As I soaked in the morning views I remembered what I was missing. The 4,827-foot summit (9th highest in the Adirondacks) has an open, rocky summit with nearly 360° views dominated by the close-up of Mount Haystack.
Lower WolfJaw, Upper WolfJaw, Armstrong, Colvin and Blake from the JBL
Lacking my usual distance-and-elevation calculator, I mapped out what looked to be a not impossible 24-mile loop, starting and ending at the JBL and covering Lower & Upper WolfJaw, Armstrong, Colvin & Blake. There just happened to be the Ausable Valley in between them.
Cascade, Porter, Little Porter, and Big Slide
I made a speedy ascent of the short-but-steep Cascade, enjoyed the amazing variety of mushrooms on Porter, and descended via the expansive Little Porter Mountain on one of my favorite traverses. I followed it up with a hike into the JBL and a quick up-and-down Big Slide.