Sleeping Beauty and the Three Ponds - 25 May 2014

On Thursday I got an invitation to join my friends Justin and Ken on a hike up Sleeping Beauty, which quickly morphed into hiking up Sleeping Beauty and then checking out the ponds between Sleeping Beauty and Black Mountain.    To that end, we met up at my house on Sunday morning and we drove up to Dacy Clearing.  On the way up Buttermilk Falls Road / Sly Pond Road we passed by Camp Wakpominee, one of the Boy Scout camps my troop used after Camp Saratoga stopped hosting summer camps.

We passed by the parking area for Buck Mountain, continued on down past the Hogtown parking area, down the one-lane woods road to Dacy Clearing.  There were several marked campsites with small parking areas along the way, and all of them were in use.  When we pulled in to Dacy Clearing, we saw a gigantic campsite set up in one corner, with a horse trailer and trucks being used to delineate the campsite.  Looking at the map for the Shelving Rock Area, it looks like they were in sites #5 and #6, though it wasn't clear to us at the time.  It looked like they had just taken up a huge chunk of the parking area for their own use.

Camping in Style

We stopped gawking, geared up, noted the swarms of mosquitoes, put on some bug spray, and headed out.  A short ways up the signed trail, there was a junction and a trail register box with no trail register.  I knew that we needed to go right at the first junction, so we went right, and immediately found ourselves back at the parking area.  Oops.  We turned around, headed back up the trail, found the correct junction, and headed up toward Sleeping Beauty.  We were at the summit cliffs an hour after heading out.  The view was excellent, but the black flies were swarming, so after a short snack, we headed out again.

Lake George from Sleeping Beauty

There was some debate over where the path to Bumps Pond was, but I remembered from the map that the summit was on a spur trail, and that there was a sign pointing the way to the summit a short way down the trail.  It wasn't obvious on the way up, but this was the junction we were searching for.  We took the semi-hidden left turn, and made our way over to Bumps Pond.

The trails everywhere were wet, and I had already proven that the trail running shoes I had worn that day were draining well and drying out quickly enough.  So, when we came to the bridge that crosses over the outlet of Bumps Pond, and we saw a huge plastic blue and yellow thing floating in the water just past the bridge, it didn't take me long to decide to fish it out.  The guys were talking about using a stick to get it, but I could see that the water was only about a foot deep, so I just went for it.  Fishing it out was no problem, and I managed to jerry-rig the 3' long blue plastic thing to the bottom of my pack, where it stayed for the remainder of the hike.

On the other side of the bridge was a junction with another trail, and we headed north, aiming for Fishbrook Pond.  A minute or so later we started seeing a lot of amphibians: frogs, toads, and several beautiful orange salamanders, called red efts.  We sloshed in to Fishbrook Pond, walked down to a somewhat clear point near the water, and ate our lunches.  Justin had brought some fantastic dried swordfish, and shared some with us.  It was easily the best fish I had eaten in a year, if not longer: sushi-grade, brined and dehydrated.  Ken shared some paninis he made at home, and I couldn't believe how delicious they were, even cold.  They tasted a lot like a Monte Cristo sandwich, and they held up very well on the trail.  I offered up some coffee.

She turned me into a newt!

We headed out again, and quickly came to a lean-to, complete with a smoking fire.  I checked to confirm that someone was in fact in the lean-to, and then we headed off along the trail.  It quickly became overgrown, and I thought maybe I had picked a herd path, but eventually we found a sign indicating that this was a snowmobile trail.  A short distance later it met up with the foot trail and crossed the outlet of Fishbrook Pond.  On the other side, the foot trail went left and another trail, blazed with snowmobile markers, went straight.  I assumed that the snowmobile trail was the route over to Greenland Pond, but it took us on an overgrown path through the woods before dropping us back at the foot trail.

We picked our way up a brook to the junction with the Greenland Pond Trail, and then waded up and over a small ridge before starting our descent.  The first portion of the Greenland Pond Trail was incredibly wet, with several instances of standing water a foot deep.  One such occurrence manifested as a small pond, at least 50' in diameter and a foot deep on average.  That was fun to wade through.  Once we got past the flooded portion, we slogged downhill to the pond.  The trail was sporadically blazed, and it appeared to be little used.  When we finally caught sight of Greenland Pond, the first feature we saw was blue, then a beaver lodge in the blue.  The trail stays away from the lake as it crosses to the south, but it was still easy to lose, so we got to visit the lake a few times.

Ken stopped to let his boots air out, and Justin and I went to go check out the lean-to.  We found the outlet of Greenland Pond, and then came to what appeared to be a junction.  There was a red blaze over to the right, so we went that way, but it quickly became obvious that we were heading the wrong way.  Our mistake was fortunate, though, because we found what was easily the best waterfall of the day, a little ways off of the trail.  Actually, it was the second best waterfall of the day: on the drive in there was a ridiculously beautiful and tall waterfall in someone's backyard, complete with a large "Keep Out" sign.

Waterfall just downstream from Greenland Pond

We slogged down through deep leaves to check out the waterfall, and then headed back to the trail and back to get Ken.  From there, we made our way back up to Fishbrook Pond, then back up to Bumps Pond.  We hadn't seen much of Bumps Pond earlier, but now the trail took us right along it for a while.  After that we descended on a very rocky woods road back down to Dacy Clearing.  When we arrived, the parking lot was fairly full, and the sun was out.  So, too, were the black flies.  At higher elevations they didn't appear to have started biting, but in Dacy Clearing they were, and in the few minutes that it took us to get our wet gear off and choke down some food, I managed to get two bites.  Always a fun experience.

Well, I guess that's about it for this tale.  I highly recommend checking out Sleeping Beauty and Fishbrook Pond.  Until next time...

Spring Has Sprung 10 Mile Run - Follow-up - 5 May 2014

I've found myself analyzing everything that went in to the race yesterday, and thinking about what I want to do next, in terms of running, fitness, and mountains.  I want to keep the momentum going, and I want to push myself.  Here are my thoughts:

1. Conditions permitting, my next few long runs are going to be trail runs up mountains.  There are a few options within half an hour's drive, and many more within an hour's drive.  I need a break from pavement.
2. As much as possible, I'd like to get my kids and the rest of my family out for a run or hike each weekend.  It doesn't have to be long, and of course they have input into it.  We've had a lot of fun on the outings we've done so far this year, and I'd like to keep it up.
3. I'd like to attend as many of the Adirondack Runner's and Saratoga Stryder's 5K fun runs this spring and summer as I possibly can.  The Adirondack Runner's series is up in Cole's Woods, starting tomorrow, and the Stryder's series is at Camp Saratoga, starting in June.
4. I need to choose one race to focus on.  In my head, I am flipping between several possible races, but I know myself, and I know that if I don't pick one, I'll just keep flipping until it's too late.  Possibilities include the Savoy Mountain Trail Race (15.2 miles), the Saratoga Palio Half Marathon, the Moreau Lake 15k, the Hairy Gorilla Half Marathon, and the Greylock Road Race (8 miles).  That last one is coordinated by Bob Dion, which might very well be the Bob Dion, of Dion Snowshoes.
5. I need to commit to dropping weight, which at this point just means a few dietary Blerch-itarian tweaks, and maintaining a similar amount of weekly mileage.
6. I need to find a better shirt for running in at a race.  I can't wear polyester, which eliminates a lot of options.  The wool t-shirt that I chose performed beautifully, but I didn't like the way I looked in pictures.  On long runs, this isn't a problem; no one is taking pictures, and I'm moving past the general public quickly enough.  With a race, there's a lot of standing around before and after.  If I could find something similar to the Schoeller fabric used on the Ibex Breakaway series, only lighter weight, I'd be all set.
7. I'm going to continue my exploration of homemade portable foods.  Scott Jurek's Eat and Run offers a lot of good ideas, as does Matt Frazier's (et al.) No Meat Athlete site.  I'm also going to bring back (and post) my homemade sports drink formula, which I've used successfully on several High Peak adventures, and doesn't mess up my stomach the way commercial ones do.
8. Speaking of High Peaks, I can't wait to get back up there.  There's still enough snow up high to warrant snowshoes, and enough mud down below to close several of the trailheads, so it's going to be a month or two.  Once mud season is over, I'd like to complete my trip up Wright, and perhaps the rest of the MacIntyres.  It doesn't matter if it's a trail run or a hike, I just hate leaving things unfinished.  (The same goes for Pharaoh Mountain, and little Mud Pond in the Gunks.)
9. I need to commit to stretching and strength training on a regular basis, primarily in the form of calisthenics and yoga.  So far this year it's been ad hoc.
10. I'd like to volunteer at one race this year, and I'd also like to work on one trail crew this year, as well, to help give back.

That's about it, I think.  Until next time, be excellent to each other.

(You know, with my sign off, you would think that the Moreau Lake 15k would be a no-brainer.  The race has an 80's theme, and it looks like a lot of fun.  I was contemplating running it in cut-offs and a Ride the Lightning t-shirt, if I did decide to do it.)

Big Slide and Yard - 8 Jun 2013

(Final stop: The Garden in June.  Not quite as epic as the Judoon on the moon in June, but c'est la vie.  Allons-y!)

I’m writing this report seven months after the fact, so the details are a little fuzzy.  Here’s what I remember.

Jason and Mike picked me up and we headed up north on a foggy June morning.  When we arrived at the Garden, there were still places to park, and the attendant directed us toward a spot.  A minute or two after Jason parked, she came back over and suggested that he move his car a foot or so, to ensure that no one tried to park next to him, because there wasn’t enough room for a car to fit there, but apparently people get a little bit ambitious in their attempts to park.  No surprise there.

Best View of the Day

We got geared up, and as we were doing so, another lady walked over and asked us a few questions, which were the usual questions we got when heading out into the High Peaks with dogs (do you have leashes?, how long are you staying?, where are you going?).  Basic questions to ensure that we were aware of the regulations.  We answered her questions, and we reassured her that we were aware of the rules and regulations of New York’s finest, and heavily used, wilderness.

My favorite part of that conversation was when she first walked over and glanced down to see that I was wearing FiveFingers and gaiters that didn’t really attach fully.  Her eyes widened a bit and she said, “wow, those are some awesome... gaiters.”  I thanked her, chuckled internally, and continued getting ready.

I know that it’s considered standard form to wear boots in the High Peaks, and elsewhere, but I’ve come to really appreciate wearing less footwear on mountain trails.  After wearing boots for 10 miles of rough trail, my feet ache and my toes are blistered and beat.  My pinky toes are screaming for relief, and it takes them days to fully recover.  I still haven’t made up my mind between wearing running shoes or minimalist shoes like FiveFingers, but in either case, my feet are generally better off afterwards.  That said, I fully appreciate that there are times when boots have to be worn.  Around here, that means any outing over an hour or two where your feet will get wet and cold, and any time where there’s a high chance of a venomous snake encounter.  Beyond that, boots are overkill in my mind.

We made our way over to the trail register, and stopped to chat again with the lady who had asked us about the dogs, and a guy who was heading in.  Both were either DEC or ADK employees, but I didn’t look closely enough to figure it out.  The guy and Jason talked about dogs for a bit, and then he also commented on my footwear.  He said that he had been working with a bear expert a few weeks earlier, and that the expert had come across the strangest looking bear tracks he had ever seen.  Fortunately, the gentleman who was leading him was familiar with the other wildlife in the park, and recognized that the bear expert was actually tracking a ferocious Homo sapiens vibram.

We made our way up the Brothers, stopping to assist the dogs when needed.  If I remember correctly, Autumn seemed to fly up the short cliffs, but Indiana hesitated often.  We all worked together to get the dogs up, and I remember enjoying the challenge.  There were several very large erratics along the Brothers ridge, and the northeast ridge of Big Slide, and I remember suppressing the urge to scale a few of the smaller ones.  (I really need to stop holding myself back on these hikes.  Most of the time I’m so focused on pushing on that I forget that it’s OK to wander a bit.)  There was one in particular that caught my fancy that I’ll need to check out the next time I head up; it might have been where the USC&GS marker is that’s labelled on the USGS map (near the NE summit of Big Slide).

The Brothers and the northeast ridge of Big Slide are fantastic.  Aside from the erratics, there are massive expanses of exposed rock.  Combined with the mist that we were walking through, it was an altogether beautiful hike.

After a while we headed back in to forest, and we came to an area with some intense blowdown.  The guy, ranger, whoever he was, had warned us about this.  It was bad enough that we found ourselves wandering through the woods unexpectedly.  We stopped and took a guess at where the trail would be, and I told the guys to wait a second while I went to have a look.  I found the trail about 30’ away, and hollered for them to follow.

Not long after that, we came to the junction that led back down to the JBL.  I knew from my reading that the base of the slide was a short way through the woods, and had wanted to go take a look.  There was supposed to be a herd path, and there was indeed a faint one, but it petered out without getting close to the cliffs.  We walked for a couple of hundred feet, then turned back and returned to the trail.

We continued on up, and soon enough came to a short side trail that led over to a view of the slide.  Jason pointed out that it was unlikely that many people would hike all the way up here to climb the slide.  It wasn’t worth the effort.  The slide was nearly vertical, and looked like it would be a class 5 climb.

We continued on toward the summit.  When we were nearly at the top, Indiana slipped on a 12-15’ rock face.  We had been supporting her and Autumn through a series of them, and they had both been fine, but Jason noticed some blood on her paw.  We got to the summit, and he immediately set about checking out her paw.  There wasn’t much that we could do for her, but the bleeding wasn’t heavy, and it stopped while we were on the summit.  We had initially planned on going for Yard, if we had time and conditions were good, but since Indiana was injured, we decided to head back instead.

I have made several silly mistakes this year; all were due to me skimming too fast over a map or a guidebook, or not bothering to read them at all.  On Greylock, I stupidly assumed that it would be easier to use the road instead of the trails, and added several miles over hard (literally hard) terrain that we didn’t have to do.  I was so concerned about the snow condition that we skipped the Farmer’s route up to Mt. Williams, and instead walked the road up to the AT and then hiked up from there.  On the descent, we took the road back instead of the Bellows Pipe Trail, because I thought that there would be a high risk of an avalanche on such a steep looking slope.  The slope looked steep on the map, but didn’t look steep in person, and there wasn’t enough snow or open terrain for an avalanche, anyway.  I let fear get the best of me, and made a long day unnecessarily longer.

On Sawteeth, I didn’t even both reading the guidebook, and just took a few internet reports as enough information.  As a result, I didn’t know what to expect, and couldn’t convey that to my hiking partners.  We ended up stretching ourselves a bit thin on that one; yes, we did make the summit, but we were right on the edge of what we could accomplish.  It could have been bad.

Here, on Big Slide, I read the map way too quickly, and thought that there was a trail that lead down to the JBL out of the Big Slide - Yard col.  I thought that would be the quickest way to get down, so I suggested that we go that way.  Jason agreed, because he didn’t want to take Indiana back over the rocks that had cut her up in the first place.  We got to the summit of Yard quickly (it isn’t much of a col) and I realized that I had made a mistake: the trail I was thinking of was actually back at the junction we had passed before summiting.  I felt horrible, since I was trying to get Indiana down as safely as possible.  The descent off of Yard was rough in spots.  At one point the trail dropped straight down off of a 6’ cliff.  We could get ourselves down fine, but Indiana wouldn’t get close enough to the edge for us to hand her off.  We saw another possible route over to the left, and tried to show it to her, but she wasn’t having it.  While I was checking that out, she walked back over to the trail and let Jason help her down.

Eventually we found the Klondike Notch Trail.  From this point on, we were on mostly level terrain, but decidedly muddier.  Ridiculously muddier.  We made our way over to the JBL, passing a few people doing trail maintenance, and stopped for a rest and some water.  I decided to go inside and have a look around, and ended up buying a coffee each for Jason and I.  Mike chose not to have one.  The coffee was a locally roasted blend called Hammer.  The JBL staff prepared it in a percolator, served it in small ceramic cups.  Payment was collected on the honor system.  The whole experience was wonderful.  I had intended on purchasing more of the coffee, but I never got a chance.  The company that roasted it, Adirondack Bean-To, went out of business a few months later.

A Cuppa in the Woods

As we were enjoying our coffee, a group of younger, fit-looking men came up to the JBL and plopped down not far from where we sat.  They were visibly exhausted, like they had pushed way too hard for far too long.  It was a bit strange then, and even stranger in hindsight, because they had come from the direction of Marcy or the Orebed trail.  They had to have descended to get to where they now were, and most people don’t get bushed like that on a descent.  The only thing I can think was that they must have been running.

We made our way now along the Phelps trail, aka the Northside trail, which led back to the Garden.  It was fairly uneventful, until we reached a junction.  I had a look at a sign board, and noticed that there was a note, written by a ranger, instructing the members of some party where to find another member of their party.  When we got back to the Garden, we found the ranger and the boy.  I stopped to chat briefly, letting him know that we hadn’t seen the rest of the party on our way out.  The ranger said that the boy had been left behind by the rest of his party up near the col between Wolfjaws, and that he had mistakenly descended in to the wrong valley.  Luckily the boy had his wits about him, and he got help.  As we got our gear off and got ready to head out, the rest of the boy’s party finally showed up.  We heard a bit of the conversation as we headed out, mostly of the boy’s older companions making excuses about why they had left him behind.  I was very glad that it had ended like this, though, with embarrassed excuses, instead of the other way, with SAR and dwindling odds of survival.

Now that I think more about it, I wonder if the out-of-breath guys were his companions, having made a hasty climb back up the AMR side of the Great Range and down to the JBL side?  Or perhaps the boy descended down the AMR side and the ranger brought him back over to the JBL side?  I suppose that makes more sense, since their cars were parked at the Garden.  Anyway, enough rambling.

To end on a positive note: I love hiking with dogs.  Especially these dogs.  Indiana is a Husky and Autumn is a German Shepherd.  If you’re feeling tired, Indiana will literally pull you up the hill, as long as her leash is attached to her harness and not her collar.  It’s instinct for her, and I love it.  On the first hike I took with her, I was dragging far behind, and she kept an eye on me.  It was wonderful.  Autumn is excellent on the trail, too, finding her way very well, even over the steep stuff.  On top of all that, they’re both wonderfully affectionate, and well-behaved.  You couldn’t ask for better trail dogs.

(Thus concludes our trip backwards through time.  I'm caught up on trip reports.  Finally.  Time to go climb something new.)

Sawyer Mountain - 14 Jul 2013

(The TARDIS takes us back to July, now. Don't forget your bug spray.)

I set out one July weekend day with the intention of going for a walk and possible run over at the Hennig Preserve. 10 minutes into the drive I realized that what I really wanted to do was hike up a mountain. I didn't have enough time for anything too strenuous, but I knew of a few shorter trails relatively close to home. (I've been working on finding short and sweet hikes, for when I get to bring family members out.) I settled on Sawyer Mt, a 1 miles hike up by Indian Lake. I knew it wouldn't be enough to fully satisfy my craving, but it would be better than nothing. I confirmed with my spouse that she was OK with my sudden change in plans and headed out.

I arrived in Indian Lake and stopped at the Grand Union to grab a snack, only to find that the store had finally closed for good. I headed on to the peak. (I don't remember why I didn't stop at Stewart's or the shop just south of town, but I assume it had to do with the traffic. I know that Hamilton County prides itself on having no stop lights, but a light at the intersection of routes 28 and 30 in Indian Lake would really help when the town is busy.)

View From the Ledge Just Past the Summit of Sawyer Mountain

I parked at the trailhead, sprayed on some bug spray and got hiking. Immediately it became apparent that my bug spray (California Baby) wasn't phasing the mosquitoes. I hiked as fast as I could, and topped out in less than 30 minutes. I walked past the summit to check out the view from a nearby ledge. It was decent, but the mosquitoes wouldn't let me longer to take it in. I explored a little bit, looking for herd paths to other viewing areas, and found none. So, I booked it back to the car.

The hike back was uneventful, and I headed back home. My cravings were at least partially satisfied, though I wouldn't have minded a little more elevation and a lot fewer bugs. Still, it was nice just to get out.

(Next up, a High Peak, a mistake, a wounded pup, and the conclusion of our journey backward through time.)

Eagle Cliff and Sky Top - 24 Aug 2013

(The TARDIS takes us back a week and across the Hudson to the beautiful Shawangunk Mountains.)

This trip was a repeat of a hike that Ken and I did last year, with a few alterations.  Ken, Justin and I headed out in to the Mohonk Preserve from the Coxing (Clove Road) trailhead.  We hiked along the Old Minnewaska Trail over to Giant's Workshop, and proceeded through that.  I decided to explore the cave immediately to the left of the entrance a little more.  It goes a few meters in, curving to the right a bit, and then appears to dead end.  While I was exploring the, Ken was attempting to fix some piece of gear.  Justin went on ahead of us, and ended up missing one of the turns.  He ended up at a completely different area, wondering what all the fuss was about.  Meanwhile, I pushed on ahead trying to catch up to him, and ended up at the top of the cliff with no one else around.  I headed back down to figure out what had happened, and caught up with the guys as they were nearing the top.

Eagle Cliff, The Trapps, and Beyond

After that we made our way over to the Eagle Cliff ascent, where we had yet another good laugh at the markers that are completely invisible to me.  The markers are red, and several of them I cannot see because I am colorblind and this particular color blends in very well with the rock.  I occasionally have a problem with red or green markers, but it's never as bad as it is with the markings on the Eagle Cliff ascent.  (Usually if I change my angle in relation to the marker I can see it.  With these, I had to use GIMP at home to shift the colors around so that I could see it.)

We made our way over to the Lemon Squeeze (the Crevice).  This time we found the correct side trail that bypasses the majority of the talus scramble to the base.  As we approached the base of the crevice another party let us go ahead of them, since they were in no rush to start up.  The ladders are a bit sketchy looking, and they're definitely intimidating at first, but they don't move and they're made out of solid wood.

There was a bit of a queue, and it took us a few minutes to move through simply due to the line ahead of us, but we made our way up to the top without incident.  It's nearly impossible to get through the top third of the route without taking your pack off, and we did a bit of pack shuffling as we made our way up.  Once on top, we took in the view, and then found the exit scramble and made our way up to the tower itself.   The usual crowds were loitering around the tower and the summit area, but we found a nice spot in the shadow of the tower to eat our lunch out of the midday sun.

On the way back, we checked out the spring labelled on the map, but it didn't look safe to drink, at all.  We made our way over and down to the Rhododendron bridge, walking at ease and talking about sports, of all things.  We took the Overcliff road back, instead of the Old Minnewaska Trail, but it didn't provide much in the way of scenery, and I wouldn't recommend it.  I dropped my map at one point and I (literally) ran back to get it.  This was when I was still recovering from my Achilles tendon issue, and I hadn't run in months.  It felt amazing to run, and that's probably the best way to traverse the Overcliff.  (It reminded me a lot of the Upper Awosting Carriageway: it served a purpose and offered a walk through the woods, but didn't seek out the best views, like many of the other carriageways in the Gunks.)

When we got to the end of the Overcliff, I was delighted to find that we were at the bridge over 44/55.  We gawked at the erratics for a moment, then turned right, and found our way to the old native trail, the Shogum Trail.  It led back to the Old Minnewaska Trail, and back to the car.  As we got close to the Old Minnewaska Trail, the trail underfoot was lined with many small rocks, forming a stone pathway of sorts, which I found very strange, and out of place.

We hadn't seen many people near the parking lot when we first arrived, but as we passed through now, the Coxing Kill was full of people out enjoying the water on this hot day.  We made our way back to the car and headed out.

(Next stop in our travel backwards through trip reports: a quick jaunt up an Adirondack peak.)

Equinox Mountain - 29 Aug 2013

(The TARDIS takes us back to August of 2013 now, and there's singing in the distance... not quite elvish, not quite dwarvish...)

Yet my eyes are drawn toward
The mountain in the east
Fascinates and captivates
Gives my heart no peace
The mountain holds the sunrise
In the prison of the night
Till bursting forth from rocky chains
The valley floods with light

...
I do not know of dust to dust
I live from breath to breath
I live to climb that mountain to
The Fountain of Lamneth
- Neil Peart, RUSH, The Fountain of Lamneth

I grew up in between the Adirondack and Catskill mountains, and visited both frequently, with my family and with the Boy Scouts.  From our house, and from the surrounding land, however, neither region was particularly visible.  Despite this lack of visibility, there was a mountain that I saw on a regular basis, off to the east.  The vision of it was so ingrained in my head that when I saw it again, a few years ago, I stopped in my tracks and stared at it in wonder.  “Which peak is that?”  I asked myself that question over and over again, stopping whenever I visited my old hometown and attempting to take seat-of-the-pants measurements.  There’s no good place, really, to stop and take a bearing, since all of the good vantage points are along a busy road.  Nevertheless, after months of obsessing I was fairly certain that I was looking at Equinox Mountain, which belongs neither to the Adirondacks nor the Catskills, but to the Taconics, the stubby remnants of ancient giants that run through four states.  I drove over to take a look at it a few times, though never when I was able to get out and actually walk up it.  From up close Equinox looks even more impressive.  I don’t know how the Taconic peaks do it, but they all look much larger and much more difficult than they generally are.

The View

Finally, one clear winter’s day, I was driving along Northline Road in the Ballston area when I came across a view that made me pull over and gawk.  Instead of seeing a single peak or a double peak, I saw peaks.  Plural.  Several of them.  I snapped a few pictures for later analysis and moved on.  When I posted the pictures to Flickr, a kindly gentleman named Kevin was kind enough to show me Peakfinder, which is an excellent utility that takes a location and a compass bearing and displays an approximate view of the mountains in the distance, complete with labels.  Once I had that I was able to confirm that, yes, I was seeing Equinox, and Little Equinox, and their neighbors, including a smaller mountain over in Greenwich called Willard.  To the south of Equinox I saw Grass Mountain and its neighbor Spruce Peak.  (I had mistaken Spruce Peak for Stratton Mountain, which sits across the valley and is a Green Mountain, not a Taconic.)

Just confirming the names of the mountains that I had been fascinated with was enough for the time being, and I was a bit put off by the topo for the Equinox summit trail.  It looks treacherous.  I decided to put it off until the snows had gone.  Come August, I found myself with a spare day, somewhat unexpectedly, and I decided to go climb Equinox.  I drove over to Manchester, VT, found the correct back road(s) and parked at the Equinox Preserve and Trust parking lot.

The lot was nearly full, which was a bit surprising for the middle of the week, but it seemed like most of my fellow hikers were just enjoying the trail network down below.  There are miles of trails at the foot of the mountain; from what I could see they were almost entirely old woods roads, wide and a bit eroded.  It reminded me a lot of the Gunks, with their quaint old roads leading through beautiful woods.

I made my way up the red trail and then the Blue Summit Trail, past a heavily graffitied water tower, a small information booth, and numerous junctions.  At the final junction in the lower section, with the Maidenhair trail, there was a sign attached to a post, warning hikers that a trip to the summit was a strenuous hike.  Well, they were right, though it was nowhere near as steep as it looks on the map.  The trail climbs steadily for about 2600’ over about 2.85 miles, which is on par with an Adirondack High Peaks hike.  The key difference between climbing Equinox and climbing a High Peak is that there isn’t a 2-4 mile walk-in to start climbing, which is often the case for the High Peaks.  The other differences were that the majority of the Equinox trail is wide and gently rising, and the only exposure I got was in a section even more eroded than the rest.

Around 12:30, an hour after setting off, I came to a bench by the side of the trail, and a junction.  The left side of the junction led to a spring in 250’, and the right continued the hike.  I chose to skip the spring for the time being and just focus on summitting, so I headed right.  The trail immediately narrowed and steepened.  At once I felt like I was transported to the Adirondacks or Catskills - the mud was much darker now, and the roots of nearby trees were visible and ready to catch a toe or two.

The trail continued up, occasionally clinging to the edge of the mountain, but generally proceeding up on a reasonable slope.  Eventually I came to an especially damp and dark section, which wouldn’t have looked out of place along the Porter ridgeline.  The woods were gorgeous, and they marked the point where the trail really started to level out.  A few minutes later I was in the summit woods, surrounded by stunted trees and on a different trail network.  Ahead of me, the summit trail continued on, and to my right a path led over to Lookout Rock.  Another trail led off to the left, unmarked.

I continued toward the summit, and in a very short time I came to a bizarre metal building with a chain-link fence attached to it.  The trail continued around it, as did I, and I immediately came to another junction.  Though I didn’t know it at the time, I had come upon what appeared to be the remains of an old road, one that used to climb over the summit and continue on down to Beartown Gap and Dorset.  This wasn’t obvious at all from where I stood, but as I headed left toward the summit, I passed an old road sign on rocks that looked far too narrow to support motor traffic.  Later, when I hiked over to Lookout Rock, I found another pair of road signs, along the same track, as well as a wide corridor through the trees that looked a lot like an old road.  I suppose it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise: there are roads all over this mountain, and there were roads all over the other Taconic peaks I’ve visited to date.  The trail to Mt. Berlin is entirely on an old woods road, with roads coming in from all different directions at regular intervals.  When I mentioned that I had hiked to the summit of Mt. Berlin, a buddy of mine told me that he had wheeled up it years ago.  The Greylock massif is covered in paved roads that provide motoring tourists with summit access, as on Equinox.  People really like driving over the Taconics.

The Summit of Equinox

I found the summit not long after heading left at the junction.  The summit of Equinox is viewless, or at least it was that day, due to some low clouds.  Just off of the summit is a massive aerial - well over 100’ tall.  What really caught my eye, though, was the visitor’s center.  I had read about it, briefly, but when I first saw it, it looked more like a shrine to a Christian saint than an actual visitor’s center.  There was a massive, larger than life painting, presumably of St. Bruno, facing the summit.  It was illuminated in the gloaming, presumably as a call to the faithful.  I hope he wasn’t too disappointed.

I circled around the mist enshrouded building, self-described as the “Saint Bruno Scenic Viewing Center”, and found that there were several people on the other side: a summit steward of sorts and 4 or 5 motoring tourists.  The steward was explaining to the motorists that people also hike up to the summit from Manchester, using me as an example.  I smiled at the motorists, said “Yep!” and kept moving.  I don’t particularly like being made into a spectacle.  As I was wandering around the outside of the building, the steward stopped me for a few minutes to discuss my choice of footwear; she was astonished that I had hiked up in my FiveFingers.  I stopped myself short of saying “well, I almost hiked up barefoot, but the gravel near the base would have slowed me down way too much” and instead just explained that I had been getting nasty blisters from my boots, and the FiveFingers worked much better for me.  We chatted a bit more, and I took my leave.

I headed back the way I had come, and then headed along the old road towards Lookout Rock.  I passed by a few pet burial sites, and arrived at Lookout Rock a short while later.  At least I assume it was Lookout Rock, since there are a few vantage points along the way and none actually bear a label.  The view was nice, and the clouds had parted slightly, but it wasn’t anything spectacular.  I could see the Green Mountains, and Manchester in the valley below.  The view is probably better without clouds obscuring it, and I have to assume that the view from the summit viewing center is much better, since it sits at a better vantage point, and is, after all, a “viewing center”.

I would have liked to explore the old road some more, and head down towards Beartown Gap a bit, but I needed to get home, so I left it for another day.  I was thrilled to at least have seen those signs at this point along the mountain, since I had seen the old road on the USGS topos, but couldn’t find anything about it online.

In case there's any doubt, THAT is the Yellow Trail.

I took the yellow trail from Lookout Rock back to the first summit trail junction I had come to, which was a much prettier route than the old road, and then started my descent back down the Blue Summit Trail.  I stopped to check out the spring, which, to my surprise, was running through a gigantic white pipe thrust into the hillside.  The rocks below the pipe descended in a cascade of brilliant green moss.  I didn’t dare walk over to sample it.

Now, at last I fall before
The Fountain of Lamneth
I thought I would be singing
But I'm tired... out of breath
Many journeys end here
But, the secret's told the same
Life is just a candle
And a dream must give it flame

The key, the end, the answer
Stripped of their disguise
Still it's all confusion
And tears spring to my eyes
Though I've reached a signpost
It's really not the end
Like Old Sol behind the mountain
I'll be coming up again...
- Neil Peart, RUSH, The Fountain of Lamneth

(The TARDIS is only taking us back a week or so for our next stop, to another Appalachian feature.)

Sawteeth - 23 Nov 2013

Next stop: November, 2013.  A bright, sunny, beautiful (windy, cold, desolate) day gets even more fun as the snow starts to fall and Sawteeth plays her tricks upon us all...

My brother (Don), Ken and I met up around 7:00 at a Park ‘n’ Ride along the Northway.  The wind was blowing so fiercely while I waited for the others to arrive that I swapped my soft shell for my hard shell and kept it on the whole day.  Once we were all assembled, we jumped into Ken’s Jeep and headed north.  We arrived at the AMR lot, geared up, and headed out around 9:00.

It was bitterly cold as we made our way up to the trailhead and then headed along the Lake Road Trail, but after a mile or two I felt myself start to warm up some.  I was wearing new boots, and they felt a bit stiff, but they were better than my alternatives: running shoes designed for breathability.  I had gotten rid of my old pair of boots after Slide, and I had finally come to terms with the fact that my feet didn’t fit inside them, but hadn’t bothered to pick up any new boots since my FiveFingers were fine for warmer weather hiking.  Faced with the prospect of snow and icy streams, I thought it wise to pick up something waterproof and protective.  I fell back on an old favorite: Merrell Moab Mids, and ended up going up a full size, from 10.5 to 11.5, in order to get a fit that didn’t crush my pinky toes.  It’s still not perfect, but it’s infinitely more workable.

By 10:20 we were at the dam, and checking out the view.  I’ve heard this described as one of the few fjords in the area, and it is most certainly a waterway bounded by steep cliffs and of glacial origin.  The view was incredible, though a bit hard to admire from where we stood, due to the position of the sun and the winds coming across the lake.  The wind hit us with its full force as we trudged across the bridge over the Ausable, and we didn’t dally.

Once on the other side, we picked up the Scenic Trail.  The trail wandered along the side of the lake for at least another mile before it finally decided to start climbing.  As we started to gain elevation we saw the only other hikers we would see that day: a pair of French Canadians.  We let them pass and never saw them again.  I remarked that every time I go hiking in the High Peaks, I get the urge to learn French, since a large number of the people you meet on the trails up here are speaking it, except to say hello.

The snow started falling lightly, and by 11:20 we were at one of the more picturesque lookouts (Outlook #2, I assume).  The snow was actually coming upwards from our point of view, due to the wind hitting the cliff that we were standing on, and the wind was strong enough to rock a massive erratic sitting on the cliff.  We kept moving on, but by the time we got to Outlook #3, Ken was starting to have serious doubts about our ability to summit safely.  I know we were lagging, but figured we would still have enough time.

After a short, steep climb, we were at the next outlook, #4, and in to the snow in earnest now.  It was 12:45, an in our earlier discussions, we had figured that we would be on the summit by 13:00.  The guys pushed on while I stopped to get my poles set up.  The combination of snow and a descent into a minor col meant that I was getting unsure on my feet.

We passed the turn-off for Marble Point, and at 13:20 we passed a sign labeled “Cougar Gulch".  I saw the first DEC marker of the day at the top of a small slippery face.  I grabbed ahold of a nearby tree to snap a picture of the marker, and then turned around to take a picture looking back, since the view was pretty in the misty, snow-filled air.  We stopped 15 minutes later, near what I was certain were the cliffs of the false summit.  Don and I tucked in to our lunches and some coffee; Ken had already eaten his lunch while waiting for us in Cougar Gulch.

Shortly after heading out again, we were at outlook #5, with only a few misty masses emerging from the clouds to hint at how wonderful this outlook must be.  A few minutes later, as expected, we dropped into a col and started what I assumed to be our final push to the summit.  We found the highest ground, which was viewless, and then set off on what we thought was our descent.  We found a great view a short way down the trail, where we posed for pictures, and then we came to a tiny col.  I searched around for our next trail, to no avail.  It took me a few moments to realize that Sawteeth had tricked me: the high point we had thought was the summit was actually the false summit I was expecting to find, and the peak that we had seen when posing for our summit pics was the real summit.

I stopped briefly to try and put on traction devices, only to realize that they weren’t going to fit on my new boots.  I trudged on, bushwhacking slightly to get around an icy ledge, and caught back up to the guys.  The rest of the trek to the real summit was uneventful.  We reached the turn off for the Warden’s camp and then the real summit around 14:45.  We posed briefly for actual summit pictures, admired the view of Pyramid looming in the gloaming, and then set off to find the Weld trail.  We were immediately greeted by a series of slick, steep descents, and Ken and I took to glissading down a few of them.  On one particularly steep drop off my fear of falling kicked in, and I was momentarily paralyzed until gravity kicked in and I landed hard upon the rocks beneath the drop-off.  (It was steep and slick enough and situated such that I think it would have been tough to reverse [go UP] without front points or ice tools.)

We found the junction with the Weld trail around 15:10, and headed down.  The trail was considerably narrower than the trail that we were on.  I watched, in horror, a moment later, as my brother flew through the air after finding a particularly slippery spot.  He saved himself by wrapping his arms around a nearby tree.

The rest of the descent was relatively uneventful, though we took a few more spills on the slick ground.  Ken, as per usual, flew on ahead, and I slowed down.  I watched his tracks for evidence of slippery ground as Don and I made our way down.

The valve on our hydration packs kept freezing up on the descent, and we kept reminding each other to drink in order to keep water flowing through the hose.  I ended up stuffing my valve down my outer shirt a few times in order to thaw it out.

We paused briefly near some waterfalls, and chuckled at the nearby sign: “Don’t be a drop-out.  Keep back.”  By 16:25 we were on level ground.  Ken had paused near one of the junctions: he had heard a cacophony up ahead and was waiting for us to catch up before proceeding.  We never did catch sight of them, but there were several of them and their tracks indicated that they were probably staying at the AMC lodge: smooth soles wouldn’t have done well on the slick mountainous trails.

The four mile walk out was uneventful.  We walked stubbornly through the fading light for 2 miles before putting on our headlamps.  We reached the gate, signed out and then encountered blinding wind and black ice on the short paved section. When we finally reached the parking lot, we were met by a Canadian woman asking if we had seen another party - they had been together on Round Mountain, and then split up.  The rest of her party were heading over to climb Dix.  We said that we hadn’t seen them, and I made sure that she had the DEC emergency contact number in case she needed help.

The ride home was treacherous, even in the Jeep, until we got off at exit 28 to go to the Stewart’s in Schroon.  Route 9 was mostly clear, then completely clear, and the snow had stopped falling by the time we got to the shop.  Not a moment too soon, either: I had a nasty charlie horse from sitting in the back of the Jeep.  We picked up some coffee and snacks and then headed home.  I had a big smile on my face as we headed back home: it was a tough day, but I had fun, and I was happy to have gotten to spend time with the guys in the wonderful Adirondacks.
 

Reflections on Minimalist and Imaginary Footwear, Part 1: Erosion

... so think positively and do not let the shod see you wincing.

- Richard Keith Frazine, B.D., The Barefoot Hiker

I have logged over 110 miles in minimalist footwear since last Fall, split up between running and walking, over a variety of terrain.  I have also logged 6 whole miles without any footwear whatsoever over the last month.  My imaginary footwear, if you will.  What follows are my observations and reflections on this experience.  This will be broken up into several posts, with each post focusing on a theme.  Today's theme is erosion.

This past weekend I had the pleasure to go off and hike one of the Adirondack 46rs.  While the majority of the peaks are still under a voluntary closure, due to the trails being sodden, a few are on the "OK" list, including Big Slide, which I hiked up with four companions: two humans and two canines.  I did this trip in a pair of Vibram FiveFingers, specifically a pair of Bikila LSs, and this was my second time hiking up a mountain in this pair of shoes.  Their intended purpose is for running, but I have found them adequately suited for hiking.

There was a bit of mental tennis about going out and doing it barefoot, but Mr. Frazine convinced me, through the book quoted at the top of this piece, that this would be a very bad idea for a first barefoot hike.  I did get out yesterday to do a shorter hike in my bare feet, over relatively flat terrain.  Yesterday's hike was over well-drained, sandy ground, so some of what follows is necessarily hypothetical and not empirical.  I have never walked through six or more inches of blackened standing water in my bare feet, and I have no intention of ever doing so.

I would like to address one of the stated reasons for wearing minimalist footwear on the trail, which is to reduce damage.  The idea is that you are stepping with less force, in footwear that weighs less than a traditional boot, and therefore you are damaging the trail less.  This was mentioned in The Barefoot Hiker in Chapter 4, although he also talks about damage to grasses or other plants, which does not come in to this piece.  I am talking strictly about well-established hiking trails here.

I understand the concept, that wearing less on your foot would reduce erosion, but until a controlled study has been done, we're only left with empirical evidence.  The only thing that comes close to a study of this that I am aware of, is the Leave No Trace pratice of always walking through muddy areas, which has been shown to strengthen trails and reduce damage.

Here are my thoughts and observations:

1. Over dry ground, I do not see a difference between the various forms of footwear, or lack thereof.
2. When the ground is damp, I do see a difference.  Minimalist footwear or bare feet will often leave only a slight impession, whereas a boot will often leave a deeper impression.  So, over slightly wet terrain, I agree with the hypothesis.
3. When there is standing mud, this becomes less true.  The minimalist or barefoot hiker must will themselves to step into the mud of unknown depth.  This does get easier over time, but I found it to be a constant effort.  In boots, an inch of mud is no problem, whatsoever.  It doesn't even touch the upper.  A few inches of mud is generally not a problem, either, and it only ever really becomes a problem when the boot is submerged past the lowest point of entry (usually the top of the boot, but occasionally the tongue, in a poorly constructed boot).  In minimalist footwear, an inch of mud will soak your foot.   When barefoot, you run the risk of stepping on something hidden in the mud, and so must take great caution.  The natural tendency in minimalist or imaginary footwear is therefore to avoid the mud, and to walk on (and therefore erode) the edge of the trail.  This tendency can be overcome, but it takes willpower.
4. When this mud gives way to deep pools of standing water, I feel that the barefoot hiker is at a loss.  Unlike a stream which can generally be peered into, the mud puddle is impossible to penetrate with the eyes, and the water itself must be avoided, regardless of the footwear.  This is especially true for the barefoot hiker, for whom the pool provides almost certain danger, in the form of unseen sharp objects and a large supply of microorganisms feeding off of the decaying material.  This is further complicated by the fact that the dead wood and slimy rocks that we walk along to traverse these deep pools are, well, slimy.  It's easy to fall off of them.  I would not want to risk this while barefoot.  I would go around.  At least in the minimalist footwear, I can accept a slightly higher risk factor, and balance along the logs and rocks placed haphazardly in the mud.  I still do not want to fall in, since I could still suffer a puncture wound.  In boots it becomes much less of an issue.  The worst that will happen is that your foot might get wet if you fall in.
5. Finally, continuing the empirical evidence, in my experience over the weekend, I found that I displaced as much mud in the deeply muddy sections as my boot-shod companions.  Every time I watched them walk through a muddy section that was several inches deep, and then watched myself walk through it, the mud displacement was very similar.  Granted, I weigh slightly more than they do, so it would be good to repeat the observations with someone who weighs the same as I do; preferably someone who weighs the same when gear and clothing is taken into consideration.

So, in conclusion, on this first point, I do not see minimalist footwear or bare feet causing any less erosion on the most sensitive terrain I have encountered: muddy trails.  The weight of the user is far more important than the style of footwear.   I would love to see this disproven or confirmed through repeatable tests, but in the meantime, all I can do is observe.  I would also advise hikers and runners to look for and respect voluntary trail closures, to help keep the trails in the best shape possible.

P.S. On a personal note, I will say that I enjoyed walking through the mud and streams.  I alternated between rock hopping and simply walking straight through the muddy sections, and found that I preferred just walking through them.  Yes, my feet were sodden by the end of the hike, but I had already anticipated this, and had a towel and a clean pair of sandals waiting for me in the car.  The rock hopping was actually more painful in the Bikilas than it is in boots, presumably because of the extra impact on the ball of my foot.  The streams felt refreshing, and it was interesting to see how much of the mud would be scrubbed off by the action of the water alone on each iteration.  While I expected them to be wiped clean every time, a decent amount of mud remained after a few seconds in the running water.

Well, that's it.  Until next time, "be excellent to each other..."

Spruce Mountain - 25 May 2013

I have had a bad, bad case of wanderlust for the past few weeks, and this weekend I finally got to satisfy a small chunk of that.  For the most part, I have spent this year on level ground, working on cardio fitness and overall training.  It has been fantastic, and while I feel great and have had some wonderful experiences, it’s time to get some elevation.

I also needed to test out my gear, since I am pushing myself to transition fully into minimalist footwear.  Since, I knew that none of the shoes I have are waterproof, I wanted to know how bad it would really be.  Saturday looked like the best bet, and when the opportunity presented itself that afternoon, I geared up quickly and headed out.  The day was cold and rainy, so I stopped at the Stewart's in Greenfield Center to get some coffee.  I was at the trailhead by 15:15, and headed up the trail by 15:20.

The trail itself is comprised primarily of multiple logging roads with a few single track segments thrown in to keep you guessing.  There are very few markers, and some of the markers that do exist lie boldly to your face.  “The trail goes this way!,” they whisper, knowing full well that no one believes them.  Only an idiot would choose to blunder out the door without at least reading the trail description one more time, so as to be forewarned about these myriad follies.

I am that idiot.

And I stumbled through myriad follies.

I managed to guess correctly at the first junction, based on a trail marker that consisted of the remnants of a piece of paper stapled to a tree.  I wish I was joking.  When I arrived at the point where trail cuts back on to private land, I wasn’t convinced that I was supposed to proceed across the private land, and instead followed what appeared to be a trail that went off on the public side of the property line.  That turned out to only be a herd path, going nowhere, fast.

Backtracking, I started to head back down the trail, looking for an unmarked junction that I must have missed.  Eventually I gave up and consulted my phone; I confirmed that the trail did, in fact, still proceed over private land.  Eventually the trail dwindled down to a grassy old woods road with a single track running through it.  To keep up the excitement, it disappeared briefly right near a junction.  To the left, I could see a woods road that was still in use, based on its condition.  To the right, I could see the grassy remains of a wood road, with a broken single track pretending to wander down it as it had down the previous lane.  After a minute or two of Pooh-ish pondering, I headed up the right-hand track, which turned out to be the correct route.  Eventually I saw a few cairns marking the path, and knew I was on the correct course at last.

The excitement was short-lived.

After the grassy section, the trail heads into the woods again, following a stream up the mountain.  I stopped and took several pictures of the first honest marker I had seen that day: a white Saratoga PLAN marker.  As the trail proceeded upwards, the stream got wider and wider, until there was no distinction between the two.  This was good for my LNT training, since it gave me ample opportunity to walk through the wet sections.

Not far up the trail, I came to a proper pond, the size of any respectable kiddy pool.  To the left, just a short way up, I could see a Saratoga PLAN marker.  I waded up, only to find that I was quite literally walking up a stream.  There was no sign of a trail at all, except for the markers on the trees that told me I was heading in the right direction.

They lied.

This was the abandoned side trail that the ADK Guide Book authors had warned me about.  Once again my decision to not give the guide book a proper read came back to haunt me.  I blundered onward, and came out to an old woods road, which I would have been able to follow had I gone straight at the kiddy pool instead of angling to the left.

C’est la vie.

The rest of the trek was uneventful, aside from losing the trail several times over the next quarter mile.  Eventually I came to realize that the trail just kept splitting and rejoining itself, and that it didn’t really matter.

By 4:30 I was standing on the summit.  I took a few pictures, had a snack, and then headed over to check out the fire tower.  Right next to the fire tower was an interesting looking pool.  It wasn’t immediately obvious what was feeding it, but it seemed to fall away at the far end.

As for the descent, well, the service road that went back down to where I had parked loomed right behind the fire tower.  The wind had picked up, and it was still raining, so I opted for the easier route down.  Down I went.

The road leads past several buildings and numerous side roads. Perhaps the most interesting feature of the road and the surrounding land was how open it was, often with grassy fields on the side.  At one point, I came to a junction with a map and several signs sitting on one side of the field.  Walking over, my first thought was that it was some kind of promotional sign, but it turned out to be a map for snowmobilers.  The map showed where the user was, and the trail network in general. There was also a junction sign on the other side of the clearing, similar to what you would find on a hiking trail.  To top it all off, there were route markers (corridor 8) and real, reflective trail markers leading off into the woods.

Near the bottom I passed one soul enjoying his or her (or their) cabin.  I realized that that was the first sign of another person that I had seen on this hike.  A few minutes later, I was back at my car.  I cranked up the heat, downed the rest of my coffee, and headed on my way.

This trail crossed private land, so I’d just like to say “thank you” to everyone who opened up their land for us hikers to enjoy.  Thanks!

P.S.  I realized while I was posting this that I forgot to describe how the shoes did on the hike.  I intend on writing a full post on this in the future, but for now, here's what I wrote on the Flickr picture, which I think sums it up:

So, this was my first hike up a mountain wearing VFFs.  They did very well, in terms of traction, but this particular model (Bikila LS) has no water resistance at all.  They breathe really well, which works on warm days, but doesn't work so well on wet ones.  Especially not trails that have been turned into streams by the May rains.

So, I'm looking in to my options.  There are a few water-resistant models (no GoreTex, though). There's always wax/oil, as well.

Despite the permeability issues, I had no blisters after the hike, which is the main reason why I transitioned into them: to reduce blisters caused by my feet getting crushed inside traditional boots.

One other positive aspect is how well they flex; on several occasions I felt more of my foot go against a slanted or rounded surface than would have made contact if I was wearing a traditional boot.  This extra traction was a plus, and I can't wait to see how they perform on more difficult hikes.

Thanks for reading!  Until next time: "be excellent to each other!"

Slide Mt - 30 Mar 2013

Ken and I set out from his house around 9:00, and made our way down and around to the trailhead on the west side of Slide Mountain.  We made it to the trailhead by 10:25, and by 10:40 we were on our way.  We opted to hike using micro-spikes instead of snowshoes; the trail was hard packed, and we figured that we would switch whenever we hit softer snow.  The first stretch of trail stays mostly level for a little while, and then it starts to climb up, at a steeper grade, to meet an old woods road.  We were on the road by 11:00, and 10 minutes later we were at the next junction, which would take us up to the summit.

The trail was still incredibly hard packed, so we continued on in our spikes.  It was mostly flat along the woods road, and then beyond, but it wouldn’t last forever.  After a few stream crossings the trail started to climb again.  Through this stretch we met a few people, including the requisite man-twice-our-age-and-in-better-shape.  We were also passed by a guy and his dog who was trail running; it wasn’t obvious until he passed us on the way down, though.  On the way up, at least where we saw him, he was hiking fast.

Around this time the trees started to shift from mostly deciduous to mostly evergreen.  To our right, we could see a valley, and on the other side of the valley was another of Slide Mountain’s shoulders.  As we ascended, the grade started to ease off slightly, and we found ourselves at a hard left turn in the trail.  A short distance later, and a hard right turn, and we were on the ridge that we would follow to the summit. It was wide, relatively flat, and offered decent-to-excellent views at select spots along the way, always on the left (north).

At one point, we stopped and took a measure of the snow depth with Ken’s walking stick.  It was somewhere between 2’ and 3’ (I know, very accurate).  I couldn’t believe it.  The snow on the packed trail didn’t move underfoot when we walked on it, and when I jammed my trekking pole into the snow beside the trail, it barely went in a foot.  Yet, the snow itself was actually well over two feet deep.

That snow depth explained how tight the foliage around the trail was, though.  At times we had to duck quite low under the partial blowdown that was ubiquitous up here.  I could imagine how fierce the wind must be up here at times, since it’s the highest point around by several hundred feet.  There was a section of heavy blowdown at one point, off to the right, possibly the remains of the eponymous slide.

We got to the summit itself at 12:40.  The only way that you can tell is that the trail ahead starts to go down instead of going up or staying on the level.  There was no view at the summit, but a short distance down the trail there’s an open area where a couple of other groups were stopping to lunch.  We could see Wittenberg and Cornell, and a bit of the Ashokan Reservoir, and the landscape beyond, but trees blocked the majority of the view.

The best view, by far, was actually seen five minutes before we got to the summit.  We were standing near the top of the col between two of Slide’s shoulders; the one that goes roughly north toward Panther and Giant Ledge was on our left, visible but unobtrusive.  The whole of the Catskills were laid out before us.  Panther was visible, over the shoulder, and peak after peak after peak stretched out before us.  I could even make out a bit of the Blackhead range, way off in the distance.  What struck me the most was how level the tops of the peaks looked.  For the first time, the geological history of the Catskills really settled in to my mind.  I could see the plateau that had once been here, before it eroded away to form these mountains.  In many ways, the plateau still exists, in the peaks of these summits.





Lunch was relatively uneventful, aside from my ever continuing experiments on hiking food.  I decided to bring a can of tuna, and eat it on some rice crackers.  I had gotten the idea from my friend Justin, who often brings a can of sardines with him for lunch.  The tuna worked out well enough, but it didn’t sit as well in my stomach as I would have liked.  The granola that I had made the night before did, however, and that will be accompanying me on future hikes.

At around 13:20 we started heading back down, and an hour later, we were back at the trailhead.  The descent was uneventful, aside from slipping a few times.  Oh, and the couple headed up whose gear consisted of a cloth shopping bag.  At least they’ve got the “going lightly” bit mastered.

On our way back, we took a slightly different route, and ended up going right past Hunter mountain, the second highest Catskill peak.  The snow in the valley had completely melted, but there was still plenty of snow on the mountain itself, and it was a warm day.  We saw a few skiers getting in their last runs of the season, taking advantage of the nice weather.  In a way, it paralleled our own hike.  This would be our last snow-enhanced trip until next winter, and we were completely taking advantage of the mixture of warmer weather and snowy terrain.  All-in-all, I had fun.

Mts. Williams, Fitch and Greylock - 19 Jan 2013

There is a wealth of information on this hike available online.  I will point out two pieces of information that I wish I had known ahead of time: 1) There is a sign marking the summit of Mt. Fitch, and the summit is indeed off of the trail.  At least according to Wikipedia, there is.  2) The hike to Mount Williams, from the col where the Bernard Farm trail climbs up to the Appalachian Trail, is all of 0.2 miles.  It looks much farther on the map.



Ken and I had originally planned on meeting up around 9:00 AM, but I overslept and we didn’t end up meeting up until a little after 9:45 AM.  We donned our winter gear, took in the landscape around us, and headed off.  Given the paucity of snow around my house I had only a faint hope of seeing any deep snow here, and despite my ever present worries of avalanches and dangerous ridges, there was nothing to worry about.  (I suppose that’s the side-effect of listening to stories of mountaineering while taking care of the house.)  The snow conditions at no point were dangerous, not even slightly.  Despite walking along a ridge for several miles, there was literally no danger.  The snow was also at no point deep enough for snowshoes.  We set out in microspikes, instead (dull-edged, very short crampons, held to the boot by rubber).

We had originally talked about taking the farmer’s route up to the col between Williams and Fitch, and instead opted for the Notch Road approach.  I figured it would be faster, and would also give us more time on the Appalachian Trail.  I had never set foot upon it, despite having dreamed about it and read about it for decades now.  We made quick time up to the point where the AT traverses the saddle between Mt. Prospect and Mt. Williams.  At that point we stopped to have a snack and take a few pictures before heading up to Mt. Williams.

Perhaps the most difficult thing about navigating the AT in the winter is that the blazes look just like patches of fungus on a tree, and that they don’t particularly stand out against the white snow.  Despite this, there was a clearly stamped trail, made by other hikers, and though we were keeping an eye out for blazes, the trail was true.  There were several small, frozen waterfalls to climb up, and I was thankful that we had both opted to wear the microspikes.  We made it up to the summit of Mt. Williams around 12:05, about 45 minutes after setting out along the AT.  The view was decent, and there was a small register, which I signed.  When I asked Ken how he wanted me to sign his name, he replied with a nickname that I won’t repeat here.  I suppose that’s his AT name, now?

We made our way along the ridge, and I took the time to tromp around the summit plateau of Mt. Fitch, in an effort to find the true summit.  It was completely flat, which is typical of Taconic peaks.  (I found out after the fact, via Wikipedia, that there is, in fact, a marker denoting the summit.  I’ll have to go back at some point.)

We arrived on the final push up to Mt. Greylock at 13:40, and topped out around 14:05.  This was, by far, the hardest section of the trail, simply due to the terrain.  The last 400’ of elevation gain (roughly) follows an old ski trail (the Thunderbolt trail), and the footing for hikers in the winter isn’t superb.  It was also on this push that we left behind the solitude of the AT.  We had seen one other party, the entire morning, and now we saw group after group after group.  On our way down from the summit, in fact, we passed a large party hanging out by the Thunderbolt shelter, and we saw several more groups as we headed down.

The summit itself is crowned by a memorial to soldiers who have fought in the defense of Massachusetts.  It’s also a bare summit, mostly flat, thanks to the erosion of the once great Acadian mountains that are now called theTaconic mountains.  Despite having been eroded down from peaks that once stood as tall as the Rockies, the Taconics are still tall compared to the surrounding landscape, and are a beautiful range in and of themselves.  In fact, the Taconics claim two of the state high points in the Northeast: Massachussets’ and Connecticut’s high points, Mt. Greylock, and the south shoulder of Mt. Frissell, respectively.  We didn’t spend much time on Massachussets’ high point, however, since the winds were ferocious. We admired the summit for a few minutes and then sought shelter before exploring some more.  Just off of the summit proper, there were enough buildings and trees to cut the wind.  We took in the sights around us, had a quick bite, and headed back down.  I had talked Ken in to taking the road back, since despite it being a longer trip, I knew we could follow it easily if we got caught out in the dark, which seemed like a possibility given how late it was.  He reluctantly agreed, and we headed off.

The rest of the trip was uneventful.  We stopped for a few minutes near the point where Notch Road and Rockwell Road meet, and chatted with a local farmer who had come up to check out the view.  We then set off on our way, and made it back to the cars, as dark was falling, at 16:50.  I honestly don’t know if we would have made better time by taking a different trail back, such as the Bellows Pipe, or heading back along the AT to the old farm trail.

At any rate, it was a fun day out.  I hiked my first few miles along the Appalachian Trail, and hope to hike many more miles in the future.  There are several other state high points along it, including two that I’d like to visit in the near future: High Point, in New Jersey, and Mt. Katahdin, the northern terminus, in Maine.
For whatever reason, the Taconics seem to be my go-to range for winter hiking.  It isn’t a bad choice; during the summer I’ve heard that they can be quite crowded at times, and even during the winter I’ve never truly been alone on these trails.  The woods are beautiful, and the rocks are different.  The summits are often flat, almost plateaus.  Mt. Williams’ was actually slightly knolled, which was something I don’t recall seeing anywhere else.  The trails are also generally gentle, which has helped me ease into winter hiking.  I suspect I’ll be aiming for more difficult routes in the near future, but for now, these are fine.

Strangely enough, both Ken and I experienced something akin to a runner’s high afterwards.  I’ve never experienced this after a hike, but I hope I do again!  I couldn’t stop smiling.  In fact, I’m smiling now, as I write this, a week later.

Olomana - 8 Nov 2003

I didn't get a chance to go for a run this weekend, due to the way things worked out.  Instead, here's a trip report that I wrote up a year ago, for a hike that happened almost ten years ago.  I was visiting my brother out in Hawai'i, where he was stationed.  He wanted to show me some of the local hikes, so we did Olomana and Rainbow Falls (on two separate days).  The latter was interesting because we hiked down to it almost the entire way, since we started at the Pali look out.  The former was interesting because it was my first and only real experience on an arête.  Both of the hikes were simply fantastic.  I'll do my best to get a picture or two scanned; the sunset peeking through the peaks across the valley was truly fantastic.  I've never seen anything like it.

Olomana.  To this day, the word still makes me smile.

Don and I got a late start (nothing new there!) and made our way over to the Golf Course / Country Club where the start of the Olomana trail is.  I remember stopping by the Marine Corps or Navy store, grabbing bottles of water and probably some snacks, and then driving along numerous back roads (Oahu seems to either be back roads or major highways) until getting to the country club.

We nodded to the guy at the gatehouse (who evidently was used to ragtag hikers walking through), and turned off at the Olomana trail.  We wound our way through the woods, stopping to check out a large hollowed out tree (banyan?) and eventually making our way to what I think was a large sand pit.

This marked the start of the ridge, and from this point on, we walked on an ever narrowing ridgeline.  It was literally like walking on the edge of a knife in some spots.  As we made our way up, we encountered a short rock face - roughly 15' high - with a few ropes tied on to assist with the ascent.  Don and I decided to forgo the ropes and just climb up with our hands.  I believe we even made a sport of it, but I don't recall who won.

We pushed onward, and eventually made our way to the first summit: a long, narrow strip of land with amazing views all around.  We stayed long enough to watch the sun set through the mountains to the west, sending out amazing rays of light.  I took some pictures, but none of them even come close to the sheer splendor of that moment.

We headed back down in the dusk and made our way back to the car.

The trip back was, for the most part, uneventful.  There was enough light for us to make our way, and we had made it past the worst of the elevation before the dark was complete.  As we were coming out of the woods, though, we heard a rustling on our right.  Something followed us almost the entire length of the road from the trailhead back to the gatehouse.  It stayed off to our right, and we could hear it walking in the underbrush as we walked.  Given the high number of feral cats this is the most likely suspect.  Tales of spirits abound on those islands, though, especially on the peaks.

I considered posting the Rainbow Falls report as well, but in reading it over, I think that there's more to the story than what I had written last year.  It'll have to wait until I can get the rest of it down.

Blackhead Mountain and Arizona Ridge - 23 Nov 2012

Ken and I set out from his house around 07:45, and were at the trailhead by 08:10.  We geared up and headed out 10 minutes later.  The first stretch of this trail follows some kind soul’s driveway, and after that it follows the remains of a road through Dutcher Notch.  For the first segment of the road, there are private lands on either side, but eventually it comes to state lands.  Before we could do any of that, though, I had to double back and get my phone, which I had left on top of Ken’s truck.  It wasn’t the only thing I had forgotten.

Before we get too far into this report, I’d just like to give a “shout-out” to my trekking poles.  I really appreciate them, especially on steep, treacherous descents, where they help significantly.  My knees appreciate having some of the weight taken off of them, I’m far less likely to fall, and they engage my entire body in the exercise.  It’s unfortunate, therefore, that I left my poles sitting in the trunk of my car, parked at Ken’s house, a half an hour away from the trailhead.

Furthermore, I didn’t realize this until we were already headed up the trail.  I thought about going back for them, but I didn’t want to waste an hour or more on it.  So we pushed onwards.  10 minutes after heading up for the second time, we reached the register, and another 10 minutes after that, we were on state land.  The trail runs right beside the old road for most of its length, which is fortunate, because the old road was covered with several inches of leaves, which made it impossible to see what we were stepping on.

We made it up to the col (Dutcher Notch) by 09:30, and we hunkered down behind some rocks to our left, to get out of the wind a bit and have a snack.  15 minutes or so later, we started up the Escarpment Trail, literally up, passing first over more leaf-covered ground, up switchbacks, and then straight up into a more coniferous zone.  Along the way, I managed to scratch Ken on the head with a whipped branch.  I turned around to say “watch out” and the stupid thing was already scratching him.  To add insult to injury, the same tree got him on the way down.

After the climb out of Dutcher Notch, the trail opened up a bit, flattened out a lot, and we reached “Arizona”, a long ridge that may or may not be considered a peak, depending on what source you’re reading.  It doesn’t really matter; it was a pretty walk through the woods, and the going was mostly flat.  On the other side of Arizona Ridge, as I’ve decided to call it, we climbed down into the next col and then started our ascent of Blackhead proper.

At about 11:20, somewhere around the 3500’ marker, I started running out of gas, and I stopped to carb and salt up before the final push.  Ken joked that I would be at the summit before it kicked in, but Larabars work fast, at least in my body, and I was ready to roll after a few minutes.  We knocked out the last bit of ascent, arguably the most technical of the day, which is to say we had to use our hands a couple of times.  By 11:40 we were at Camp Steel, and a minute or two later we were at the summit.

The summit sits at the junction of the Escarpment Trail and the Blackhead Range Trail, and was windy, but just back on the trail we found enough shelter to eat a quick meal in relative comfort.  We remarked how we hadn’t seen anyone yet today.  At the trailhead there was one other truck, but the gigantic NRA sticker on his or her door indicated that he or she was most likely off hunting and not hiking up a mountain.  I took a quick walk down the Blackhead Range Trail, but saw no footprints in the snow.  I didn’t continue on the Escarpment Trail to look for prints, since it dropped down steeply, and I didn’t feel like climbing back up.

At 12:15 we headed out, and about halfway down into the col, we met the only other soul we would see on the trail that day.  We stopped to chat for a moment, then headed on.  I pushed the pace a lot on this stretch, where possible, and attempted to get over my fear of falling and my fear of my knees giving out and just ... bound ... down the mountain.  I thought about Reinhold Messner, his reputed deer-like grace on the hills in a National Geographic piece I had just read a month ago.  I thought about Sarah Lavender Smith’s write-up of her trip to Alaska, and her description of the “Geezers”, running down a snowfield in giant, bounding steps, sliding with every step. It worked, for the most part, though I wasn't quite bounding, yet.  I applied one of the few hiking lessons from my father that I can actually remember, and took quick, light steps down the steepest parts.  It was a leap of faith, for me, but my knee held up fine.  It was sore by the end of the descent, and for a good week after, but it held up.

When we reached the leaves, near the top of the switchbacks, the descent became downright treacherous.  We were in danger of and did fall several times on the way down, but we avoided serious injury.  Several times I froze briefly, unsure of where to step next, and I scolded myself for not bringing my poles.  There was no use in fretting about it, though, so I slid and skidded down.  Ken stayed close behind for most of the descent, but we spread out a bit over the sketchiest bits.

After making it safely down into Dutcher Notch around 13:30, we were on better ground for a while.  As we descended, though, the leaves on the ground grew thicker again, and there were several more stumbles, but it never got as bad as the drop into the Notch was.  We were back at the truck by 14:20, scratched and sore but otherwise unharmed.

Pics are here.

I stand corrected...

I mentioned in part one of my Lake Colden / Mount Marcy trip report how well I had been doing on a vegetarian diet. I said:

"On the subject of food, this trip proved to me that I could survive (thrive) on a plant-based diet, even under heavy exercise. I had finally made the switch to vegetarian stick at the end of July (after a decade of attempts).  Adding to the complication was the fact that I was essentially eating like a vegan, since I had found out a few years ago that a good deal of my physical ailments were caused by dairy products."

Then I finished loading in my recent walk, hike, run and (exercise) bike data in to rubiTrack, an activity tracking software for OS/X that I was recently clued in to.  It comes with reporting capabilities, including the ability to review a data point (i.e. distance, pace) in a given set over time.  You can define sets by tags, location, time, distance, equipment and more.  While playing around with it, I stumbled across data that suggested something was amiss.  The most telling number came from my "Speed Trials", which are walks where I walk one of a few set courses as fast as I can.  I had known, from a spreadsheet that I used to keep, that my speed had decreased a little after going vegetarian.  I had no idea it was so obvious, though:



It becomes even more obvious if you remove the blank month (October), though, due to the way the graph renders:



My pace has absolutely slowed over time, after July, when I was approaching the 4 mph mark.  I cut out meat at the end of July.

Hiking also supports this view:



That's insane.  The June hike is Lower Wolf Jaw, the September hike is Mount Marcy, and the October hike is Giant Mt.  The only thing I can think is that the long walk in to the base of LWJ and the flatter sections on the Marcy hike are skewing the numbers.  On Lower Wolf Jaw, my brother and I were stopping to catch our breath every 20' on the steepest portion.  Furthermore, we spent a considerable amount of time checking out a series of waterfalls at the base of the climb to the col.  (Perhaps the software is filtering out the stopped portions?)  On Marcy I did somewhat better, but I still had to stop often to catch my breath, and Ken was usually way ahead of me.  On Giant, however, Ken and I pushed hard and consistently throughout the hike.  We stopped occasionally, but I feel like we stopped far less on Giant than we did on Marcy.

That was my perception, at least.  I thought my performance on Giant was better than on Marcy, which in turn was better than on LWJ.  The numbers say something else entirely.

On the Giant hike, Ken let me lead, so I was setting a pace that worked for me.  That might explain the change in pace, but I would have assumed that a steady pace would be better than a slow, halting crawl.  On Marcy, Ken and I had just carried 50-60 lb backpacks for 5-6 miles the day before climbing Marcy using day packs.  I felt like I was floating without the heavy backpack.

There are other examples, too, but they're a bit more anecdotal.  I ran the same 5k trail course twice during this period, once in September and once in November.  I ran the one in November a full minute and a half slower, despite having kept active that whole time.  It's hard to say for certain, though, what caused this decline, since I had been doing more targeted cardio prior to the September run, and that may have affected the numbers.

On the flip side, the numbers for ~2 mile walks at about 80% effort trended towards an improvement while eating vegetarian.  Furthermore, on the anecdotal side, my leg muscles look bigger.  A lot bigger.  Whether this is due to a size increase, a reduction in fat, or both, though, I'm not entirely sure.  I am at about the same weight I was went I went vegetarian.  The muscle change could all be in my head, since perception is a funny thing.

So, where does that leave me?  There are a few more points to consider.

Prior to this effort, I had tried several times to make a vegetarian diet work, and failed miserably.  In recent years, when I had tried, I actually became angry a few days to a week after making the switch.  It was this that caused me to try a semi-vegetarian diet (called "flexitarian" by those who like portmanteaus, like myself).  This provided a good balance, and seemed to work, but I wasn't fully committed to it, and after a while I found myself eating meat twice a day again.

This time around, I finally managed to come across a forum where another person was going through the same thing.  The suggestion there was to increase fat intake.  I tried that, and it worked.  I don't fully understand the mechanism.  My best guesses deal with the fact that our brains are mostly fat, and also that fat (cholesterol) is used in the synthesis of testosterone, but I honestly don't know for sure what caused the change in attitude.  I do know that eating more fat helped, and I began supplemented with flax seed oil in addition to eating olive oil on some portion of dinner almost nightly.  I also started using coconut oil for some cooking.

Other nutrients followed, and soon enough I was supplementing several times a week with protein powder and daily with brazil nuts (for selenium).  I also was careful to ensure that I was getting enough lysine every day; roughly 5-6 servings of legumes (or pistachios) were required to make this work, most of which came in the form of soy milk (which also provided calcium), peanut butter, and cooked beans.  On the subject of calcium, I was also careful to split my calcium-rich meals from my iron-rich ones, and to consume vitamin C-rich foods with at least one of the iron-rich meals.  In short, I read up at much as I could, and I applied it as best I could.

So, I don't think I was too deficient in terms of nutrients.  I also supplemented with vitamins to hedge my bets.

One more point:

A friend and former co-worker stopped by the office where I work the other day, and we got to talking.  He had been one of my motivations for going vegetarian, since he had been able to make it work for years, he was fitter than I was, and significantly faster on the trails than I am.  I mentioned to him that I had finally made being a vegetarian work, and his response was that he had eaten beef the other day.  I would have been shocked, except that this isn't the first time that this exact same scenario has happened.  Several years ago, another friend and former co-worker went from vegetarian to eating meat occasionally around the same time that I had made the switch to vegetarian.  She had been a vegan at the time we first met, and had eventually made the transition to lacto-ovo vegetarian, before finally beginning to eat meat again.

What this told me, the second time around, was that it can be difficult to maintain this diet.  In both cases, the reasons for eating meat were at least partially, if not wholly, driven by social aspects.  I drew the conclusion that it's difficult to sustain a vegetarian diet when your partner doesn't follow the same diet.  It's difficult to cook in this situation, because you're preparing two protein dishes for almost every meal, and potentially two starch or vegetable dishes, depending on everyone's requirements and tastes.  Furthermore, and this came up during my recent conversation, when you're visiting someone's house, it can be a bit difficult to turn down food that someone has prepared for you.

I could probably go on, but I'll skip to the conclusions.

I like my vegetarian diet.  It has forced me to learn and grow, and my meals are more healthful as a result of that.  I also feel like it's working, and I don't feel like I'm wasting away as some friends cautioned that I would.  However, I cannot deny the fact that my pace has slackened over time, despite continuing efforts to increase my pace that had been working prior to the switch.  I cannot say for certain that this is directly caused by my switch the vegetarianism, but I can say that it correlates.  The social aspects are taking their toll, too.  My wife has been incredibly supportive, but it's difficult for her to prepare meals when Thing 1 and Thing 2 are so picky, and I'm off preparing and eating my own food. 

I think that a vegetarian diet can be perfect for endurance sports, which by the way, a lot of people use it for.  No Meat Athlete is published by and read by people who run half marathons and up as well as triathlons on a vegan or vegetarian diet.  It absolutely works.  Brendan Brazier's success with a vegan diet also shows how well it can work at the ultra and triathlon level.

The problem is that it isn't working for me, once again.  I engage in activities that require both endurance and strength, sometimes explosive strength.  So, I'm starting to integrate fish and meat back in, in small quantities, while maintaining roughly the same diet otherwise (a semi-vegetarian diet).  Hopefully that will give me the results that I'm looking for.  I might give vegetarianism a try once again in the future, when I can keep a tighter control on the variables and determine more conclusively if I can make it work.  I want to make it work, and I'm a bit disappointed that it didn't this time around.

C'est la vie?

P.S. Dr. Google says the missing ingredient might be creatine, which we produce within our bodies, and also ingest through meat or supplements.  I sincerely hope that isn't it.  I tried supplementing with that years ago, for other reasons.  While the results were promising, I didn't like the way it made me feel.