king tut
New member
It's a rainy morning, as I sit on the hammock and read a few pages in a book, take a nap for a few moments, wake up and read a few more pages, then fall asleep again. The mountain wind blows creating a cool, blissfull feeling in my body and brain as I relax. I look out on the horizon and see mountains in the distance, nothing could be more serene. My left knee is a bit puffy and aching from crashing into a tree root during the prior day's climb, but I do not feel it as I slip into a blissful sleep again. The morning after a perfect day of climbing makes one feel complete, with no goals for the day, it is easy to take in your surroundings and feel perfectly content. It all started 24 hours ago, ok maybe more like 27 or so, I like to sleep in.....
The Dak attack started early in the morning hours, well maybe not, but early for slackers I guess. We started on the trailhead at ADK Loj a little after 8:30 in the morning. With our tummies full of hash browns, eggs, cheese, and english muffins we hit the trail. Our bodies were functioning a little differently due to a home made meal of meatloaf the prior evening by my friend's mother. The meatloaf was quite good, but it has been year's for both of us since our last meatloaf consumption. Our bodies did not know how to process this mystery meat, but let's just skip this part of the story...
The trail is a very gentle .9 miles to the first junction and then forks right going to Wright Peak where it ascends at a gentle to moderate pace for a few miles. After the first 3 miles, the trail starts a steeper ascent and soon comes to the junction of the side trail to Wright Peak. We decided to tackle Wright Peak first, and headed up the trail. The trail is a very steep .4 of a mile or so that climbs straight up. The ascent is not that difficult, but descending requires one to watch where they place their hands and feet so as not to slip and fall down the small rock faces. We reached the top in about 20 minutes or so and decided to take in the fabulous views of Algonquin Peak and Mt Colden. My friend Hilary decided to pull out the gorp and I decided to down Roast Beef sandwich # 1 of the day. I snapped a few of the first of what was to be about 50 shots of the slides on Mt Colden. Shortly there after a few women whom had parked next to us in the parking lot arrived at the top of the mountain and we had them snap this pic of us.
We took a few photos of them and then headed back down the trail towards the main trail up to the top of Algonquin. Once back on the main route up to Algonquin, the trail heads up steeply. About .2 of a mile or so from the junction of the Wright trailhead, the trail comes to a several hundred vertical foot climb up a narrow rock slide. I started ascending first and Hils started up right after me. About 20 feet up the slide, one of her water bottles goes skyrocketing out of her back pack and lands down at the bottom of the slide. Luckily for her, there was a nice French Canadian fellow right behind us that threw her bottle back up to her. Unluckily for him, water bottle #2 came shooting out of her backpack towards him at a high velocity a moment later. The poor guy caught the bottle, and handed it to her this time. He wasn't wearing a helmet, and luckily did not take a nalgene to the noggin'. It may have been divine intervention. With the fear of God in him, he decided to pass us for the moment, and nearly had a heart attack trying to climb safely ahead of us up the slide.
We summitted Algonquin after about 30 or 40 minutes of climbing up the steep rock slides. I arrived first to the top where I met the nice young summit steward. He gave me his speech about not killing the alpine flowers and then asked if I had ever met a summit steward. I said yes, and he asked where? I said, "mostly on the summits". He laughed a little and then I told him that the girl coming up behind me trampled all sorts of flowers on Wright Peak. He didn't buy my story, oh well, would have been funny to see a summit steward do a takedown on my friend all in the name of saving the alpine flaura. Maybe next time. We then snapped some more pictures of Colden, ate some pepperoni and cheese, and relaxed. Make that turkey pepperoni, my friend accidently bought turkey pepperoni, which is not quite the same as real pepperoni. Perhaps they feed pepperoni to Turkeys and then cut up the turkey... How does this work? Reminds me of Cranberry taking over all of the juice mixes these days in the super market. Is turkey on a similar mission to be a part of all foods in the super market?
Anyways, sorry for the ADD, the trip was soon to continue from the summit. My friend and I saw the two prior girls from Wright Peak on the top of Algonquin and she was trying to convince me to go make a move on the redhead from the prior peak that we were on and had talked to a short time earlier. She promised me i think a dinner and $5 if I manned up and did some high peaks flirting. I was not up to this challenge, and declined rather than to bother some nice female at about 5,000 feet.
We headed down the trail from Algonquin over to Iroquois. After about .4 of a mile, we saw a sign thay pointed down and said "Iroquois". So I headed down a few hundred vertical feet and then realized that this was not the trail to Iroquois, but rather the trail down to the Avalanche Lake area. We re-traced our steps up the steep incline and then came to the sign again and noticed that it said "Iroquois" but had a small hand written arrow facing the other way towards a herd path. Sometimes I am not that bright, other times I am downright stupid and cannot read trail signs. I am sorry to say this one falls into the latter category. So we headed into the brush and I was enthused to walk through lots of mud and get my legs cut up with lots of brush, twigs, and branches. I am not sure who decided on this "romantic" notion that trail-less peaks preserves beauty and nature. I would like to punch this guy. If the state of New York is reading this, PLEASE BUILD PATHS TO THESE PEAKS, I AM NOT VERY TOUGH AND HATE GIVING BLOOD TO TREES, THAT COULD GO TO WELL DESERVED MOSQUITOS. We ran into a few people that promised that the view on Iroquois would be worth the effort. I was feeling a little tired, deydrated, and mad at herd paths at this point. I told him that if the view did not turn out well, I would come find him. He laughed, he thought I was kidding. He had no idea.
Yeah, so the view was nice, not amazing, but pretty damn good. The hike back down the herd path had a few tricky spots with steep declines on some small cliff like areas, but was not too bad. Well not bad if you are tall, my friend had a little tougher time with her shorter legs. We managed our way down and I decied not to track down the previously amicable fellow since the view was pretty good. We climbed the 400 or 500 vertical feet back up to Algonquin and I took down roast beef sandwich #2, and Hils ate a nice Snickers bar, natures best hiking fuel. The summit steward came over again and started doing his speech again but briefly into his speech, he recognized me as the previous smart a$$ who was on top a few hours prior, and he slowly walked away looking a little scared...
We took a few more pics, like this one with Colden and Marcy in the background.
The first half of the trip down was non eventful from the top of Algonquin. Then just after the 1/2 way point down, while I was walking down a normal section of trail and feeling pretty content, I slammed my left knee cap directly into a tree stump that was sticking out into the trail. I hit the sucker at full speed and let out a large scream. My friend came down a moment later and asked what happened, since she thought she heard a loud bear groan. Well, the loud bear was me, still silently cursing the tree stump and laying in agony in a heap. The pain went away after a few minutes, and then we non eventfully made our way out to the Loj a while later.
The hike was gorgeous, could not have asked for a better day. I think we did a little over 12 miles, somewhere around 4,000 vertical feet of climbing, and I took down a new personal best of two roast beef sanwiches in one hike. We decided to celebrate the hike with beers and nachos at the Lake Placid brew pub. They had some fantastic beer there! I loved the Ubu beer. Five 46'ers down now, only 41 to go. Could someone please let me know when they take out those herd paths, and replace them with real trails? I love the ADK's, especially the peaks with real trails!
If anyone is bored and wants to see pics, here they are.
Pics
The Dak attack started early in the morning hours, well maybe not, but early for slackers I guess. We started on the trailhead at ADK Loj a little after 8:30 in the morning. With our tummies full of hash browns, eggs, cheese, and english muffins we hit the trail. Our bodies were functioning a little differently due to a home made meal of meatloaf the prior evening by my friend's mother. The meatloaf was quite good, but it has been year's for both of us since our last meatloaf consumption. Our bodies did not know how to process this mystery meat, but let's just skip this part of the story...
The trail is a very gentle .9 miles to the first junction and then forks right going to Wright Peak where it ascends at a gentle to moderate pace for a few miles. After the first 3 miles, the trail starts a steeper ascent and soon comes to the junction of the side trail to Wright Peak. We decided to tackle Wright Peak first, and headed up the trail. The trail is a very steep .4 of a mile or so that climbs straight up. The ascent is not that difficult, but descending requires one to watch where they place their hands and feet so as not to slip and fall down the small rock faces. We reached the top in about 20 minutes or so and decided to take in the fabulous views of Algonquin Peak and Mt Colden. My friend Hilary decided to pull out the gorp and I decided to down Roast Beef sandwich # 1 of the day. I snapped a few of the first of what was to be about 50 shots of the slides on Mt Colden. Shortly there after a few women whom had parked next to us in the parking lot arrived at the top of the mountain and we had them snap this pic of us.
We took a few photos of them and then headed back down the trail towards the main trail up to the top of Algonquin. Once back on the main route up to Algonquin, the trail heads up steeply. About .2 of a mile or so from the junction of the Wright trailhead, the trail comes to a several hundred vertical foot climb up a narrow rock slide. I started ascending first and Hils started up right after me. About 20 feet up the slide, one of her water bottles goes skyrocketing out of her back pack and lands down at the bottom of the slide. Luckily for her, there was a nice French Canadian fellow right behind us that threw her bottle back up to her. Unluckily for him, water bottle #2 came shooting out of her backpack towards him at a high velocity a moment later. The poor guy caught the bottle, and handed it to her this time. He wasn't wearing a helmet, and luckily did not take a nalgene to the noggin'. It may have been divine intervention. With the fear of God in him, he decided to pass us for the moment, and nearly had a heart attack trying to climb safely ahead of us up the slide.
We summitted Algonquin after about 30 or 40 minutes of climbing up the steep rock slides. I arrived first to the top where I met the nice young summit steward. He gave me his speech about not killing the alpine flowers and then asked if I had ever met a summit steward. I said yes, and he asked where? I said, "mostly on the summits". He laughed a little and then I told him that the girl coming up behind me trampled all sorts of flowers on Wright Peak. He didn't buy my story, oh well, would have been funny to see a summit steward do a takedown on my friend all in the name of saving the alpine flaura. Maybe next time. We then snapped some more pictures of Colden, ate some pepperoni and cheese, and relaxed. Make that turkey pepperoni, my friend accidently bought turkey pepperoni, which is not quite the same as real pepperoni. Perhaps they feed pepperoni to Turkeys and then cut up the turkey... How does this work? Reminds me of Cranberry taking over all of the juice mixes these days in the super market. Is turkey on a similar mission to be a part of all foods in the super market?
Anyways, sorry for the ADD, the trip was soon to continue from the summit. My friend and I saw the two prior girls from Wright Peak on the top of Algonquin and she was trying to convince me to go make a move on the redhead from the prior peak that we were on and had talked to a short time earlier. She promised me i think a dinner and $5 if I manned up and did some high peaks flirting. I was not up to this challenge, and declined rather than to bother some nice female at about 5,000 feet.
We headed down the trail from Algonquin over to Iroquois. After about .4 of a mile, we saw a sign thay pointed down and said "Iroquois". So I headed down a few hundred vertical feet and then realized that this was not the trail to Iroquois, but rather the trail down to the Avalanche Lake area. We re-traced our steps up the steep incline and then came to the sign again and noticed that it said "Iroquois" but had a small hand written arrow facing the other way towards a herd path. Sometimes I am not that bright, other times I am downright stupid and cannot read trail signs. I am sorry to say this one falls into the latter category. So we headed into the brush and I was enthused to walk through lots of mud and get my legs cut up with lots of brush, twigs, and branches. I am not sure who decided on this "romantic" notion that trail-less peaks preserves beauty and nature. I would like to punch this guy. If the state of New York is reading this, PLEASE BUILD PATHS TO THESE PEAKS, I AM NOT VERY TOUGH AND HATE GIVING BLOOD TO TREES, THAT COULD GO TO WELL DESERVED MOSQUITOS. We ran into a few people that promised that the view on Iroquois would be worth the effort. I was feeling a little tired, deydrated, and mad at herd paths at this point. I told him that if the view did not turn out well, I would come find him. He laughed, he thought I was kidding. He had no idea.
Yeah, so the view was nice, not amazing, but pretty damn good. The hike back down the herd path had a few tricky spots with steep declines on some small cliff like areas, but was not too bad. Well not bad if you are tall, my friend had a little tougher time with her shorter legs. We managed our way down and I decied not to track down the previously amicable fellow since the view was pretty good. We climbed the 400 or 500 vertical feet back up to Algonquin and I took down roast beef sandwich #2, and Hils ate a nice Snickers bar, natures best hiking fuel. The summit steward came over again and started doing his speech again but briefly into his speech, he recognized me as the previous smart a$$ who was on top a few hours prior, and he slowly walked away looking a little scared...
We took a few more pics, like this one with Colden and Marcy in the background.
The first half of the trip down was non eventful from the top of Algonquin. Then just after the 1/2 way point down, while I was walking down a normal section of trail and feeling pretty content, I slammed my left knee cap directly into a tree stump that was sticking out into the trail. I hit the sucker at full speed and let out a large scream. My friend came down a moment later and asked what happened, since she thought she heard a loud bear groan. Well, the loud bear was me, still silently cursing the tree stump and laying in agony in a heap. The pain went away after a few minutes, and then we non eventfully made our way out to the Loj a while later.
The hike was gorgeous, could not have asked for a better day. I think we did a little over 12 miles, somewhere around 4,000 vertical feet of climbing, and I took down a new personal best of two roast beef sanwiches in one hike. We decided to celebrate the hike with beers and nachos at the Lake Placid brew pub. They had some fantastic beer there! I loved the Ubu beer. Five 46'ers down now, only 41 to go. Could someone please let me know when they take out those herd paths, and replace them with real trails? I love the ADK's, especially the peaks with real trails!
If anyone is bored and wants to see pics, here they are.
Pics
