The stories of this mountain being one of the toughest hikes in the Adirondacks proved to be accurate.
The two of us left the trailhead on ski’s at 7:00 under cool temps and intermittent flurries. A quick check in at the trail register revealed that we were the first ones on this trail in a week. Luckily there was only 2 to 4 inches of new snow on top of a well packed trail. The ski in was pretty uneventful. We were impressed with the vastness of the blowdown caused by the microburst in 1999. This trip is definitely not your typical Adirondack hike. The majority of the trip is along logging roads and at least two or three miles of these were freshly tracked by snowmobiles. We actually skied on snowmobile track to a point about one-half mile above the gravel pit. From the gravel pit to the end of the snowmobile track was up a decent grade, which made for a quick descent later in the day.
From this point we switched to snowshoes and were happy with the three hours it took to get this far. The next leg of the journey also went well. There was one section just before the last hump before skylight brook where others before us lost the trail. There were four different paths at this point. We took the path to the right side that went over the hump at the advice of Mark who contributed to the extra paths in this area a couple of weeks earlier. By the way, this was the only spot on the entire trail that wasn’t profusely marked by discs, flagging, and/or blazes. Once we hit what I will call the last leg of the trip (Allen Brook) then the work began.
Our progress extremely slowed down at this point. We floundered up Allen brook for close to an hour before reaching the open slide. Just prior to reaching the slide a time check showed that we were at our established 12:00 turn around time. Knowing that we were within 400 feet of the ridge we decided to extend the turnaround time by one-half hour. The extra half hour put us at about the top of the slide and we figured at this rate we would be at least another hour to the summit. It was a tough decision to turn around at this point which was made even tougher by being the first time I failed to reach a summit. The experiences of others in the VFTT forums told me that this was the correct decision and that the mountain would be there another day.
We made a little better time getting back to where we dropped our skis and thoroughly enjoyed flying down the hill back to the gravel bed. The ski out was long and quiet. It was nice to switch from skis to snowshoes and back again, it really saved the legs. Anyone with intermediate ski skills would have an easy time doing the ski in to the gravel bed. We got back to the trailhead at 4:30 and there had only been two other people signed in to Mt. Adams fire tower this day. I’m not looking forward to it, but we will be back with a score to settle.
The two of us left the trailhead on ski’s at 7:00 under cool temps and intermittent flurries. A quick check in at the trail register revealed that we were the first ones on this trail in a week. Luckily there was only 2 to 4 inches of new snow on top of a well packed trail. The ski in was pretty uneventful. We were impressed with the vastness of the blowdown caused by the microburst in 1999. This trip is definitely not your typical Adirondack hike. The majority of the trip is along logging roads and at least two or three miles of these were freshly tracked by snowmobiles. We actually skied on snowmobile track to a point about one-half mile above the gravel pit. From the gravel pit to the end of the snowmobile track was up a decent grade, which made for a quick descent later in the day.
From this point we switched to snowshoes and were happy with the three hours it took to get this far. The next leg of the journey also went well. There was one section just before the last hump before skylight brook where others before us lost the trail. There were four different paths at this point. We took the path to the right side that went over the hump at the advice of Mark who contributed to the extra paths in this area a couple of weeks earlier. By the way, this was the only spot on the entire trail that wasn’t profusely marked by discs, flagging, and/or blazes. Once we hit what I will call the last leg of the trip (Allen Brook) then the work began.
Our progress extremely slowed down at this point. We floundered up Allen brook for close to an hour before reaching the open slide. Just prior to reaching the slide a time check showed that we were at our established 12:00 turn around time. Knowing that we were within 400 feet of the ridge we decided to extend the turnaround time by one-half hour. The extra half hour put us at about the top of the slide and we figured at this rate we would be at least another hour to the summit. It was a tough decision to turn around at this point which was made even tougher by being the first time I failed to reach a summit. The experiences of others in the VFTT forums told me that this was the correct decision and that the mountain would be there another day.
We made a little better time getting back to where we dropped our skis and thoroughly enjoyed flying down the hill back to the gravel bed. The ski out was long and quiet. It was nice to switch from skis to snowshoes and back again, it really saved the legs. Anyone with intermediate ski skills would have an easy time doing the ski in to the gravel bed. We got back to the trailhead at 4:30 and there had only been two other people signed in to Mt. Adams fire tower this day. I’m not looking forward to it, but we will be back with a score to settle.
