Here’s a belated trip report. It went like this:
After spending a few weeks in Glacier National Park in August, I was going through mountain withdrawal, so I emailed Jason to see if there was anything going on for the week. He told me that he was hoping to climb the Trap Dike with some friends and we arranged to meet at the Ark Trail Inn on Friday night. Things got off to an inauspicious start on Friday afternoon though. I got off of work in NYC at about 5PM and went to pick up a rental car near Union Square. On the way home after picking it up, I got pulled over by a cop and issued a traffic ticket for driving in the Bus Lane. It was 5:55 when I got pulled over. The bus lane stops being the bus lane at 6:00, so, 30 minutes later when the cop had stopped futzing around and finally written out the ticket, I just drove off in the now legal bus lane, cursing up a storm and running late already.
I stopped by the apartment, finished packing with Gillian and we hit the road. Unfortunately, as we were passing through Albany on 87, we were so into our conversation that we got off of 87 and onto 90. Having not made the drive to the Adirondacks since last August, neither of us noticed this. In any case, this little navigation error put us off schedule and we ended up cruising into the Ark Inn at about 3AM.
I found Jason’s room (easy to spot with the funky t-shirt draped over the chair outside) and knocked, but nobody answered. Exhausted, Gillian and I just pitched our tent and went to sleep. Three hours later, I heard Jason laughing and others starting to get ready for the day’s hike. I got out of the tent and shambled over to say hi. Apparently, he hadn’t expected me to crawl out of the bushes, so he was surprised to see me.
Undaunted by our lack of sleep, Gillian and I were ready to hike. But plans were a bit ambiguous as we headed to the Noonmark Diner on Saturday morning. Rain was in the forecast, so the Trap Dike might have to wait. Eventually, at the Loj, it was decided that we’d just day hike to Street and Nye and hope that the weather improved on Sunday.
Gillian and I needed Street and Nye for our 46 (and we were probably a bit too tired to do the Trap Dike), so this was fine with us. The day was overcast, but the hike was well suited to the weather. We knew we weren’t missing much in the way of views on what Dunbar called the ugliest hike in the ‘Dacks. Still, the hike was good fun and we made short work of the herd path. We went to Nye first, then over to Street where Jason, Jay and Dunbar headed off on their own to ‘whack over to Lost Pond Peak. I headed down with Gillian, Gillian, and Courtney. It started pouring on the way back to the Loj and the trail got slippery. At one point, I slid down a muddy section, aggravating a knee injury, and gimped back to the Loj slowly.
As we were making plans for lunch, Hui Yeng, who’d skipped the day’s hike due to being hung over and just general degeneracy, pulled up in Jason’s car. We all left together and got some food at Cedar Run before heading back to the Ark for the night’s festivities. I can’t tell you much about the festivities though, as I had some sleep to catch up on.
The next morning, we got up and headed over to Cedar Run for a big breakfast. (That place has great food by the way.) We decided to head to the Trap Dike to check and see if it hade dried off enough to be hiked safely, so ‘round about 11AM (alpine start!) we actually got on the trail. Fortunately, the weather cleared up and we had a beautiful day.
The hike to Avalanche Pass was pretty standard. We stopped to snack at Avalanche Lake and then we followed the herd path to the dike and started the climb. Some of the gang seemed to be a little leery of this section of the climb, but I found it too be pretty safe and lots of fun. However, I do think we came out of the dike too early. The slide was pretty steep at the start and I had some trouble getting going. In particular, my shoes (which don’t have Vibram soles) got relatively poor traction on the slide, so I never quite got comfortable with this section of the hike. I found it more troublesome and less enjoyable than the dike. Especially as I noted how much more ease other people were executing this section with (e.g. at one point Gillian, bent over slightly and using her hands for balance, sped past while informing me that “It’s like being a spider” while I puttered around looking for good purchase.)
At one point I made a few bad calls picking out my path and found myself confronted with a section that was too steep to walk on safely. As a result, I had to drop down a bit and sidle over into a divot where some scrub pines were growing. Jason got a good photo of this. It’s the shot of me up to my chest in pine branches, looking like the mountain swallowed me.
Anyway, after this, I stuck to the edge of the slide, finding better traction there. Eventually we all popped up near the balancing rock on the summit. It was windy and cool up there, but it felt really good to be on level ground. We had the summit to ourselves, so we soaked in some views, let the adrenaline dissipate, and headed down to Lake Arnold just as some shirtless surfer dude, no doubt a friend of Bear Grylls, got to the summit with two friends. Feeling slightly betrayed by both friction itself and my shoes, I had no patience for this kind of company.
We made short work of the hike back to the Loj and then headed to the Ausable Inn for an absolutely unappetizing dinner (next time I say we go to Lake Placid for pizza) that cost way too much. After dinner, we all said our goodbyes and headed home. In keeping with the theme of sleep deprivation, Gillian and I didn’t make it home to Brooklyn until 3AM. Must have had something to do with our leisurely take on an alpine start earlier that morning.
No complaints though. The Trap Dike is a great hike and, tired as I was at work on Monday morning, it had been well worth it. It was good to meet everyone, and Gillian and I look forward to hiking with you all again soon.
You can check out my photos
here.
