dangergirl
Active member
Don and I ended up in the Adirondaks for New Years. We drove up Friday and then had breakfast at Noonmark Diner before heading into the Canyon to climb. We ended up climbing Quinn the Eskimo which was a bit too low angle. We then did Midnight Cruiser and had a blast! We headed out and made our way to the Adirondak Loj where we camped.
We woke up at 5 am on Saturday and by 7am we were on our way up Mt Marcy. It was chilly and snowing but the winds were low and we were motivated. It was a really nice hike. When we got to the sign that said the summit was .6 miles ahead we pushed on above treeline. The winds were awful! A steady 40-50mph wind, blowing snow that felt like we were getting sandblasted, and very low visibility. Being unfamiliar with the area we should have turned back. We did have a GPS tracking cookies for us, but these conditions were worse than anything we have encountered in the Whites and our lack of knowledge of the area made things frightening. We managed to find cairns that were small and kept going until we reached the summit (which we didn't even know was the summit at the time). We looked at each other, freezing and decided to go down even if that weren't the summit. We took a brief break behind a rock to bundle up and regroup. We walked back out into the wind where I was slammed down onto the ground and my hands became completely numb from the cold! We had good equipment on and it felt useless in this weather! Luckily we were able to find the small cairns marking our way back down and we were soon below treeline.
We never should have kept going for the summit. I don't know why we did. Not being familiar with the area made continuing a stupid idea. We learned our lesson to not push on during whiteouts when not familiar with an area unless you have to! We did have a lot of fun though and had a great weekend! Looking forward to the next time! Check out our pics!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kfolcik/sets/72157623149260446/
We woke up at 5 am on Saturday and by 7am we were on our way up Mt Marcy. It was chilly and snowing but the winds were low and we were motivated. It was a really nice hike. When we got to the sign that said the summit was .6 miles ahead we pushed on above treeline. The winds were awful! A steady 40-50mph wind, blowing snow that felt like we were getting sandblasted, and very low visibility. Being unfamiliar with the area we should have turned back. We did have a GPS tracking cookies for us, but these conditions were worse than anything we have encountered in the Whites and our lack of knowledge of the area made things frightening. We managed to find cairns that were small and kept going until we reached the summit (which we didn't even know was the summit at the time). We looked at each other, freezing and decided to go down even if that weren't the summit. We took a brief break behind a rock to bundle up and regroup. We walked back out into the wind where I was slammed down onto the ground and my hands became completely numb from the cold! We had good equipment on and it felt useless in this weather! Luckily we were able to find the small cairns marking our way back down and we were soon below treeline.
We never should have kept going for the summit. I don't know why we did. Not being familiar with the area made continuing a stupid idea. We learned our lesson to not push on during whiteouts when not familiar with an area unless you have to! We did have a lot of fun though and had a great weekend! Looking forward to the next time! Check out our pics!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kfolcik/sets/72157623149260446/
