Oldsmores
New member
We got up early enough (5:30), but getting 5 people moving and into LP for breakfast did not go as quickly as I had hoped. Charlie’s in Lake Placid nominally opens at 6:30 a.m., but the non-English speaking cleaning crew were the only ones in sight when we arrived, and it took a while to get served. Once it came, the blueberry pancakes with maple syrup were excellent. But I digress…
We (finally) got on the trail about 8:15. It wasn’t too cold (5 – 10°) or windy, but the ceiling was pretty low as we started out. We started to get some false hope about the time we got to the trail junction for Algonquin – patches of blue sky started appearing intermittently.
I had started out with some misgivings about the fact that my friend had decided to bring his daughter along. She’s a delightful young lady, but this was her first winter hiking experience and the first time she’d been on snowshoes! As you shall see, she did fine and was not the limiting factor.
Our party was a mixed bag: Myself (53), my buddy (50-ish), his aforementioned daughter (24), my son (23), and his buddy (23). The latter two are both pilots in the USAF, extremely fit, and YOUNG. Nate, the buddy, was raised in North Carolina, and this was as far north as he’d ever been, but he’d spent 4 years in Colorado so I knew he’d be OK. I still motivate fairly well for an old guy. Shannon was an unknown, as I said. My friend Kevin is a bit younger than I am, and we’ve done some pretty good hikes in the past. Unfortunately, he had knee surgery a few months back, and his fitness was questionable. All in all, I was most concerned about Shannon.
As it turned out, Kevin was the slow member of this particular party. A combination of loss of cardio conditioning and (further into the hike) knee pain slowed his progress considerably. We had started out with a flexible itinerary. Algonquin for sure, maybe Wright, maybe Boundary and Iroquois, maybe down to Lake Colden and out through Avalanche Pass. As the morning progressed it became obvious that just doing Algonquin and getting back down was going to take most of the day. The four of us would hike a few hundred yards, then wait until Kevin caught up.
Hiking conditions were fantastic until we hit treeline – plenty of snow to smooth the trail out and the trail was well-groomed by the large number of hikers ahead of us. We leapfrogged with a couple of different groups and stopped just below treeline to adjust clothing. We hadn’t really seen or heard any wind to that point, but assumed it would be windy as we got into the open. And we weren’t disappointed.
I always have trouble estimating wind speed, but I’m guessing that it was 35 – 40 mph sustained, with gusts to 50. Not sure what that made the wind chill, but you didn’t want exposed skin. We had opted against bringing crampons, and immediately regretted that decision. The wind had pretty much scoured the snow off the rocks, leaving a nice hard ice surface that was doable with snowshoe crampons, but just barely. It had started snowing, and visibility was down to about 50 feet, so we struggled from cairn to cairn. We were probably about 200 or 300 yards from the summit when I decided we should turn back. Didn’t see any prospects of a view from the top, and didn’t see any sense in risking frostbite just to tag the summit. Nate’s fingers were freezing and Shannon had ice on her cheek where water had run down from her eyes. She was game to go on – “Don’t turn back on my account” – but sometimes it just isn’t worth it. Descending over the ice was even trickier than the ascent, but we all made it back to treeline in one piece.
The rest of the hike down was uneventful, with some superb buttsliding (sorry, glissading for you purists). We got back to the car sometime around 4, had hot showers at the Jack Rabbit, and were knocking down Ubu’s and lying about the hike by 6:30 p.m. a lot of fun was had by all, and if we didn’t summit at least all our fingers and toes made it back alive.
http://picasaweb.google.com/msmorol/Algonquin21007
We (finally) got on the trail about 8:15. It wasn’t too cold (5 – 10°) or windy, but the ceiling was pretty low as we started out. We started to get some false hope about the time we got to the trail junction for Algonquin – patches of blue sky started appearing intermittently.
I had started out with some misgivings about the fact that my friend had decided to bring his daughter along. She’s a delightful young lady, but this was her first winter hiking experience and the first time she’d been on snowshoes! As you shall see, she did fine and was not the limiting factor.
Our party was a mixed bag: Myself (53), my buddy (50-ish), his aforementioned daughter (24), my son (23), and his buddy (23). The latter two are both pilots in the USAF, extremely fit, and YOUNG. Nate, the buddy, was raised in North Carolina, and this was as far north as he’d ever been, but he’d spent 4 years in Colorado so I knew he’d be OK. I still motivate fairly well for an old guy. Shannon was an unknown, as I said. My friend Kevin is a bit younger than I am, and we’ve done some pretty good hikes in the past. Unfortunately, he had knee surgery a few months back, and his fitness was questionable. All in all, I was most concerned about Shannon.
As it turned out, Kevin was the slow member of this particular party. A combination of loss of cardio conditioning and (further into the hike) knee pain slowed his progress considerably. We had started out with a flexible itinerary. Algonquin for sure, maybe Wright, maybe Boundary and Iroquois, maybe down to Lake Colden and out through Avalanche Pass. As the morning progressed it became obvious that just doing Algonquin and getting back down was going to take most of the day. The four of us would hike a few hundred yards, then wait until Kevin caught up.
Hiking conditions were fantastic until we hit treeline – plenty of snow to smooth the trail out and the trail was well-groomed by the large number of hikers ahead of us. We leapfrogged with a couple of different groups and stopped just below treeline to adjust clothing. We hadn’t really seen or heard any wind to that point, but assumed it would be windy as we got into the open. And we weren’t disappointed.
I always have trouble estimating wind speed, but I’m guessing that it was 35 – 40 mph sustained, with gusts to 50. Not sure what that made the wind chill, but you didn’t want exposed skin. We had opted against bringing crampons, and immediately regretted that decision. The wind had pretty much scoured the snow off the rocks, leaving a nice hard ice surface that was doable with snowshoe crampons, but just barely. It had started snowing, and visibility was down to about 50 feet, so we struggled from cairn to cairn. We were probably about 200 or 300 yards from the summit when I decided we should turn back. Didn’t see any prospects of a view from the top, and didn’t see any sense in risking frostbite just to tag the summit. Nate’s fingers were freezing and Shannon had ice on her cheek where water had run down from her eyes. She was game to go on – “Don’t turn back on my account” – but sometimes it just isn’t worth it. Descending over the ice was even trickier than the ascent, but we all made it back to treeline in one piece.
The rest of the hike down was uneventful, with some superb buttsliding (sorry, glissading for you purists). We got back to the car sometime around 4, had hot showers at the Jack Rabbit, and were knocking down Ubu’s and lying about the hike by 6:30 p.m. a lot of fun was had by all, and if we didn’t summit at least all our fingers and toes made it back alive.
http://picasaweb.google.com/msmorol/Algonquin21007
(see my sig!)
