Cheney Cobble via Boreas Ponds 04-30-2016

It was the perfect day with a bluebird sky, no wind, and, with rain in the forecast for next week, maybe the last bug-free day of the spring. Christine and I started at the gate on Gulf Brook Road at 8:10, reached the dam 6.5 miles in at 11:00, and a clearing below the mountain, 2.5 miles beyond the dam at 12:00. Then, after having already walked 9 miles, came what I felt to be one of the toughest 0.9 miles in the Adirondacks. It took close to three hours to put that last less-than-a-mile below us. The first third was easy through open hardwoods with old logging roads, but when we entered the boreal forest the slope got exceedingly steep, with frozen ground and ice as we got closer to the cliffs that surround the summit. There all upward progress ceased. We circled to our right and finally, just where the krumholz became totally impenetrable, found one place we thought might go. On a more ordinary climb, I'd have considered it a nonstarter and kept looking for a better way, but this was to finish my 100 and we were only 50 feet below the summit, so I exhausted the last of my get-up-and-go in a scrabbling heave-ho, grabbing with fingernails and eyelashes, and was rewarded by an astonishingly fine view of the high peaks, from the Dixes to the Sewards and Santanonis. We would not have made it at all without microspikes, and I would never have made it without Christine's cheerful determination and confidence. Of the "Other 54", 20 have trails and do not rate mention in this report, but the other 34 are truly trailless and route-finding is not so simple. Christine helped me climb 14 of them, including some that are both tough and remote, like Fishing Brook 1&2, Lost Pond Peak, Little Moose, the Raquette Lake Blue Ridge, North River, and CC. And I have Matt Clark to thank for helping me bag the five terrible 'tooths. On another forum it would surely elicit criticism by the usual internet trolls to mention that I soloed 14 of those trailless 34, 12 after the age of 70. I neither recommend solo hiking nor care to dissuade anyone of a mind to do so. Also, vanity amuses me to observe that there are probably not many other 77 year olds who have climbed Cheney Cobble. "A man ought to do what he thinks is best" is a good precept. So long as I am able, climbing mountains with good hiking partners when the opportunity is there, and alone when not, is doing what I think is best!