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Dial and Nippletop

December 17, 2019, St Huberts

A pre-dawn breakfast

The journey to Dial and Nippletop began with a 5:30 am drive through a snowy and blustery Cascade Pass, descending down towards Keene and Keene Valley.  The plan was to arrive at the Noonmark Diner for their 6 am opening (per Google) and then scarf down some eggs before hitting the trail. To my dismay, the diner was completely darkened when I arrived. I stood there a few minutes, slightly panicked that my breakfast would be reduced to a few sad, frozen Clif bars. I decided to drive back up the road, north towards Keene.

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Tabletop Mountain

Morning sun illuminates the view from atop Tabletop Mountain, a classic Adirondack high peak.

December 16, 2019, Adirondak Loj

Almost Winter

More than halfway through my Adirondack high peaks journey, I still manage to encounter many “firsts”.  In fact, one of the best parts of trying to become a 46er is that it forces you to always explore something different: different trailheads, different ridgelines, different types of weather, and different seasons.

For my journey to Tabletop Mountain, those “firsts” would include winter hiking.  Well, almost winter hiking.  December 16 fell just under a week away from the official season.  To become a winter 46er, you must summit each peak between the winter solstice and the vernal equinox (late March).  But I harbored no such ambitions at present, and timed this hike to a wonderful winter hiking informational seminar the prior day at the Adriondak Loj.

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Colden and Phelps

A bolder perched precariously atop Colden

November 2, 2019, Adirondak Loj

Arrival

I arrived at Heart Lake before dawn on a brisk day in early November. The target, a pair of classic high peak day hikes: Colden and Phelps! My original plan consisted of hiking the Santanoni’s. But torrential rain and high winds had plagued the Adirondacks in recent days, and I decided to target a couple of peaks easily accessible from the relatively dry and well-trafficked Van Hoevenberg trail.

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Giant & Rocky Peak Ridge

October 13, 2019, Chapel Pond

Starry Skies at Chapel Pond

I arrived at the parking for Giant via the Ridge trail around 6 am.  The Autumn days were rapidly growing shorter. And on arrival, I was treated to a clear sky full of stars.  How beautiful! This was my second day-hike of Columbus Day Weekend, and my second high peaks adventure post-knee surgery.  Lower Wolfjaw had gone well the day before. And so I decided to graduate to Giant and Rocky Peak Ridge.

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The Sewards

Approach from the West

Spend time exploring the Adirondacks and you realize the land within the “blue line” encompasses far more than mountains.  This is particularly true of the western Adirondacks. Here waterways like the Raquette River (French for snowshoe) meander through countless lakes and marshlands. The whole swampy, flowing mess meanders towards the St Lawrence to the north.  That’s the sort of landscape I found myself in as I drove north and westward via NY 30. I was headed towards the westernmost of the high peaks: the Sewards.

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Mt Rainier (PNW)

August 14, 2018, Paradise WA

“The Mountain”

In summer 2018 I signed up for a guided mountaineering seminar on Mt Rainier, in the gorgeous Cascade Range in Washington.  My first trip to Washington, four years earlier, was to visit a friend getting her Ph.D. from U Washington in nearby Seattle.  While roaming around town, I caught my first glance of Rainier, towering over the landscape.  It was unlike any mountain I had seen before, clearly taller and more isolated than anything in the Rockies, let alone the Northeast.  I asked my friend if we could hike it.  She looked at me like I had three heads and said “What?! No!  You need to like, train for that.  And acclimate.  It’s like a real mountain.”  I decided then and there that the next time I was in Washington, I was climbing Mt Rainier.

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High Rock (PNW)

August 12, 2018, Ashford Washington

In the summer of 2018, I ventured to the Pacific Northwest to take part in a guided climb of Mt Rainier. The day before the program began, another participant and I decided to stretch our legs, post-travel, with a quick day hike. The folks at the motel we were staying at had an unsurprisingly excellent knowledge of the region and its hikes. They warned us to avoid Rainier National Park, down the road.  They predicted an hour-plus line on this sunny Saturday afternoon in August—just to get through the gates!  Instead, they wrote down a list of turns to take via dirt logging roads to a nearby hike outside the park.  The hike was known as High Rock.  For anyone without the inside scoop, Google Maps can get you there just fine.

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The MacIntyre Range: Iroquois, Algonquin, and Wright

August 29, 2018 — Upper Works

The Iron Works

The day began around dawn with some rough dirt roadways. Blue Ridge Road cuts nine miles from NY 28 to the “Upper Works trailhead” along Tahawus Road.  Driving deeper into the forest, I considered just how isolated this corner of the Empire State truly is.

Isolated, and vast. Since the recent purchase of the Boreas Ponds Tract, the High Peaks Wilderness now boasts a contiguous land area larger than the City of Los Angeles. And surrounding the “wilderness” itself are miles of private and mixed-use forested lands devoid of connected, improved roads.

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