Okay so I know the Adirondacks aren’t exactly the Himalayas, in fact they are just about the shortest mountains I have ever heard of, which given that the whole definition of mountain is predicated upon height makes for quite the caveat, but what they lack in mountain-ness they surely make up for in mud pits. Vast, black holes of soupy boot-death stretching as far and wide as the Everglades, generally centered in the middle of a “trail” and surrounded by an impenetrable jungle. Of course in the really big vats the “trail stewards” attempt a bridge, but it generally resembles more of a boat ramp for redneck squirrels, tempting one down into the muck, begging the questions, “how deep could it really be?” “how much worse could my shoes really get anyway?” and, “why am I here?”
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| "Hiking" a "Trail" |
To be fair, the park rangers themselves don’t even use the word “trail”. Sometimes there is a sign that says “herd path to Couchsachraga [mountain]” but mostly hiking a “high peak” consists not so much following signs or a trail as it is wandering lost through the forest, looking for the supposed top of a mountain in order to stare at more trees and if one is lucky, finding a sad little sign scrawled with a sharpie on a piece of cardboard declaring that though there is nothing apparently distinct about this particular tree, it does in fact denote the peak of the mountain; and that brings me back to my previous question, “Why am I here?”
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| "Donaldson" - One of the 46 High Peaks |
It all started when Nora and I were looking for a place to quarantine in the fall of 2020 after having left the state of New York for a couple weeks. We came up with a brilliant idea to camp in a wilderness to meet the state requirements. The largest wilderness in New York happens to be the Adirondack Park, which is larger than five states and more wild than Wild Thing herself. Nora decided that not only would we camp, but we would also climb mountains and before we knew it, we were standing at a trail junction with backpacks full of bear canisters, staring at a map, and getting confused about what the “46 high peaks” were, why there were 46, and which mountains exactly they were (after all the name changes and elevation discrepancies over the last 140 years). There was only one way to answer those questions, and that was to climb all of them ourselves. This of course led to more questions, such as, “why is this 4000 foot mountain harder than a 14er?” and “where did the trail go?”.
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| Don't Slip! |
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| Just a normal trail in the Adirondacks |
Despite having our tea-ball stolen by a mink, shivering through nights 20 degrees below the survival ratings on our sleeping bags, and running out of stove fuel and all food except for ramen (which somehow we had enough for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for multiple days), we managed to summit 28 high peaks (plus who knows what else) during our quarantine. And so, like an engineering major who finishes his degree just because he started it, we returned the next chance we got (August 2021) and climbed the remaining 18 peaks, and thus became “46ers”. It all sounds so easy on paper, sitting in a comfy chair and not clinging to a twig on the side of a 40 foot boulder covered in slime with a waterfall pouring down my rain jacket while “hiking” a “trail”.
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| River Crossing |
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| Lucky to have a ladder on this "official trail" |
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| Changing Colors of Autumn |
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| We climbed every peak you can see in this photo. Plus many, many, many more |
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| Ausable Lake above the Colvin Range |
Lest this somehow inspire you to start your own High Peaks journey, heed this warning from a veteran 46er: Hiking the mountain ranges of the Adirondacks will destroy your shoes, your feet, your hygiene, and your Zeiss camera lens; it will mud-fart on your morale and then laugh a thunder storm at you, it will give you runny diarrhea and leave you lost and rain-soaked in the dark 10 hours from the nearest porcelain toilet, and it will undoubtedly push on you an unhealthy addiction to the trail-less upper half of the state of New York. Alright, you’ve been warned; make your own choices.
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| Split Rock Falls - you can camp here! |
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| Good weather in the Dix Range |
