Third Time's a Charm! Adirondack Tropical Winter Traverse: March 7, 2009

How does one measure success? In the counterintuitive sport of carrying excessively heavy backpacks on excessively long treks up excessively steep mountains under potentially fatal conditions, finishing the final 2 miles of a death march after your legs give up in protest is, in the words of a wise Central Asian man, Great Success! Above: Bad hair on the summit of Mount Marcy/Tahawus, 5,344 feet. Unreal day.






















Above: High peaks from Adirondack Loj Road, Adirondack Loj Welcomes You (for a mere $9 to park), Colden from Marcy Dam and Colden en route to Feldsbar Brook.

I joined an ambitious hiking group from Albany for an 18 mile masochistic attempt to summit Gray (4,840', #7 in height), Skylight (4,920', #4) and Mount Marcy (Tahawus, 5,344', #1). I'd done Marcy twice previously and thought it'd be fun to round it off with a third ascent, making it three ascents in three different seasons (summer, fall, winter) from three different approaches (Van Hoevenberg, the Garden and Feldspar Bk). FYI, I have zero interest in being anywhere near the Daks in Spring, aka "Bugs and Mud Season." I Metro-Northed it Friday to Poughkeepsie and rode up to a cheap hotel near the Loj with Chris who drove like he should've been holding an XBox 360 controller instead of a steering wheel (a sincere compliment, btw, otherwise I would've said drove like he should've been holding prison bars instead of a steering wheel). Right: Intended route.

The forecast for Saturday was the type of day you anticipate hearing liberals make some remark about global warming over: high 40's and sunny in Lake Placid in early March! I honestly found it too hot at some points and ended up hiking in no more than a base layer without gloves on for 90% of the way, granted I cleverly developed my own natural layer of insulation through the holidays. The bulk of the weight in my pack turned out to be pointless; a winter shell, fleece, expedition weight mits, balaclava, half of my food and a 2 lb pair of crampons, all went untouched. But hey isn't that what hiking's all about? Left: Tahawus in background, dork in foreground.




















Above: Lake Tear of the Clouds, ascending Skylight, Tahawus from Skylight, reaching Skylight's summit.

By the time we hit Marcy Dam, leisurely knocking out 20 minute miles, I realized I'd either have to compulsively vomit to keep up or lag behind at my own pace. Jon, who led most of the way, was hiking as if he had just freebased a bottle of No Doze and mixed an eight ball of coke into his Nalgene for good measure. The man was a machine and Chris and the rest of the gang remarkably kept in stride with him for most of the trip. A few words of encouragement from Julie, a hardened and hardy "unofficial" 46'r (someone who's climbed all 46 high peaks above 4,000') led me to stay the course and I fortunately never fell that far behind. Right: Haystack from Skylight.

Something magical happened when I started going at a comfortable pace en route to Feldspar Brook: the world opened up to reveal a valley between great giants (Colden and Gray) and that gay fuzzy feeling overtook me that you can only know from being alone in the mountains. The Richard Simmons moment died down a little once I started the climb from Feldspar Lean-to to Four Corners, catching over 1,000 feet of elevation in a mile. I managed not to visit Vomit City in the process despite feeling like a fat kid climbing Everest. I was also excited to visit that tiny tarn (glacially formed lake) of auspicious title, Lake Tear of the Clouds, the highest source of the Hudson River at 4,295 feet. Left: Yes, there was that much cocaina on the trail.




















Left to right from top: Jon ascending Marcy from ridge with Gray in upper left of photo (look closely), climbing Marcy's steep SW face from Four Corners, Haystack with Colvin and Dix Ranges in background, Colden with the Macs behind it and Algonquin scraping the sky.

Whomever invented the Televator Heel Bar on MSR Denali Evo Ascent snowshoes seriously deserves a brand new Xbox 360. I'd never used the feature before but amidst Skylight handing me my own ass I flipped the bar up under my heel and it quickly turned the calf-destroying ascent into a staircase, what a novelty! An unimpeded sun helped make Skylight live up to its name and crowned the summit in a shining spectacle of solar splendor (say that 5 times fast). Julie flexed her 46'r prowess by pointing out and naming the visible peaks to me from the summit, pretty cool. Right: Bad hair in front of Tahawus summit plaque.

Legend has it that bringing a rock to Skylight's summit will ensure good weather on the return trip. In a brazen effort to debunk such foolish superstition I took a dump on top of the cairn of rocks that hikers brought up in vein effort to appease the Adirondack dieties. Okay, I did not leave a steamer on Skylight but neither did I bring a rock to the top and lo and behold by the time I descended Skylight and reached treeline on Marcy the heavens above were filled to the brim with clouds for Tahawus to split. That's also exactly what the forecast had predicted but nonetheless, a fun coincidence. Left: Great Range from Marcy summit.

As a side note I'm a secular person but am convinced Tahawus grants those who climb it additional strengths. Mythology just enrichens the overall experience. I also tend to prefer indigenous names over the Western protocol of naming peaks after "great persons." Tahawus the "Cloud Splitter" or Mount Governor Marcy, I mean really? Sir George Everest just happened to be a cool name but it's still not as cool as the Tibetan Chomolungma, "Mother Goddess of the World." And even as cool as "Camel's Hump" is nothing beats the Abnaki Indian name for the mountain: Tahwahbodeay Wadso, roughly translated "prudently, we make a campfire in a circle near water and rest at this mountain." Right: Whiteface Mountain in distance, note the ski slopes.



















Above: Insane hikers on Marcy summit, looking back up Marcy on descent, Algonquin and Wright Peak from Indian Falls, "fir" trees.

In order to keep good time I decided to skip out on the detour to Gray Peak and my suspicion that it'd be a tortuous bushwack turned out to be true. Even so the ascent up Marcy from Four Corners turned out to be much hairier than I anticipated; one wrong move and I'd be going for a ride thousands of feet below to Panther Gorge. Being the responsible hiker that I am I decided to whip out my camera and take videos on the steep face instead of concentrating on my footing. I reached the summit just as Jon and Chris were cresting the summit ridge, Julie and another member of our group, Ralph, soon followed. Ralph brought the most intensely delicious homemade chocolate chip cookies and we quickly went to work on them...perhaps Tahawus also makes cookies taste even better?

We may have well just zip-lined back to the Loj considering how fast we did the descent down the much kinder Van Hoevenberg trail, jogging almost 4 miles straight in snowshoes. When I hit Marcy Dam with just 2 miles left my upper thighs decided to stage a sit-in against the day's transgressions and made every step painfully arduous. Miles 16 and 17 were just hellish, I was dragging myself along with poles as visions of Bataan flashed through my head. Ralph waited for me at the final junction with the trail to the MacIntyres, which gave me a huge lift, just in time for the rain to start. I managed the 17 miles (and the rest of the group, 18 miles) in around 9 hours. Left: Wright Peak from Marcy Dam - same photo in autumn.

Oh yeah, one member of our group was uh, misplaced(?) very early on in the hike but that is a story for another day. As a wise man from the East once said, "speaking without investigation is worth less than cow shit, at least cow shit can be used as fertilizer."

Chris Burnout Paradised it back to Poughkeepsie through monsoon rains and I somehow made the 9:30pm train back to the city. Not only was I at New York State's highest and lowest points in the same day (Mount Marcy, 5,344', Brooklyn, sea-level) but I also returned to the mouth of the Hudson River from its highest source, Lake Tear of the Clouds. I probably won't be able to carry a full backpack for the next week but that is of course just an enduring testament to Great Success!