The Grouch Who Stole Winter: Adirondacks, March 21, 2009

(Above: Looking to Mount Marcy from the summit of Mount Colden, 4,714') It's been 22 years since I decided to traverse the earth solely by foot, bike and sail, to forego all motorized forms of transport in protest of a massive oil spill I witnessed as a teenager. 17 of those years I spent entirely silent, vowing not to utter a single word so that I could finally listen to those of others. I taught college courses at this time assisted only by emphatic gestures and an impassioned sense of purpose. I even became a UN Goodwill Ambassador and co-authored legislation regulating oil transport. Okay, I did not, but John Francis did all of the aforementioned and I strongly urge you to listen to his story (and not simply because Will Smith expressed a desire to portray him in a film based on his extraordinary life). Okay, moving on...










(Above: ice splendor en route to Avalanche Lake, photos by Andre Grotto and Rachel Shields)

Warning: Slightly misanthropic diatribe ahead. Vernal Equinox passed last week, aka the Grinch That Stole Winter. Look okay, I know you're all so frickin' relieved the blanket of winter has been lifted, the City roused from its dormant state with a promise of long-sleeve permitting temperatures, frisbees in parks, homies on stoupes, lovers on benches, flowers in bloom. Yeah, f@*k you too. I like winter. I like winter a lot. And I fully acknowledge biases inherited from being born within visible distance of both the Adirondacks and Canada (you can see Russia from my house!). There is a tangible magic in the great white silence that falls upon the world between the drop of the last autumn leaf and arrival of the first petals of Spring. Sure, Spring is orgasmafriggintastic in the City but in the hills it means blackflies, mosquitoes, ticks, rattlesnakes, mud, thunder, impenetrable foliage, allergens and the arrival of the most heinous of all creatures: throngs of other hikers. Alright I'm being a bit sarcastic here. I appreciate that many people hike primarily for the social experience but I think the biggest reason I enjoy hiking after the physical challenge is getting the chance to sort through the cacophony that builds in my head during the workweek; to exist in a zen like state with my cabeza floating freely about like a balloon. The primacy of the task at hand brings the rest of the world into acute focus. Winter just feels the most conducive to this end: the world opens up and quiets down in a way that pulls the childhood sense of wonder out of you and slaps you silly with it. I'm sure come September in the Whites or Rockies my hypocritical ass will be all "Hell yeah I'm so glad it's not winter yet!" but until then...


















The trip: Now that I've gotten completely off track I'm going to turn down my usual grating verbosity and let Andre and Rachel's lovely photos do most of the rappin' (yeeeah boooyee). I decided to go on one last (de facto) winter trip to the 'Daks with a band of notorious rapscallions, er, a few ambitious members of a group I'd hiked with previously. For reality's sake let's call them Anna, Andre, Susanna and Rachel (no need to change their names since that is a measure reserved to protect the innocent). These kids were an irreverent set of troublemakers, proper company for sure. We stayed at a quaint Keene Valley hostel, pigged out on ridishulous Noonmark Diner pies, quibbled, quobbled and hobbled up mighty Mount Colden via the Loj to Avalanche Lake and over to Lake Arnold under crystal blue skies no Crayola could capture. Maybe Photoshop on a nice flat screen monitor, but still, quite beautiful (the last time I was on Colden's summit with Karen we were greeted with a 360 degree view of a gray overcast wall). Just a wonderful and fulfilling day overall with the exception of managing to stick a crampon point into my right leg while glissading (yeah, brilliant).













We plodded up Noonmark Diner's namesake mountain the following day but were turned away from the summit due to time constraints. Nonetheless the views of Giant of the Valley and the Great Range were intoxicating (or drunkinating as my friend Derek would say). Susanna traversed steep ice and conditions she'd never been on before with worthy intrepidation. Rachel feigned Pacific Northwest pride while being secretly humbled by the quiet majesty of our Laurentian Shield peaks. Andre led the charge with poise and grace worthy of an Olympian. I followed with the grace of at least a Special Olympian. Anna kept the bunch warm with good (and no shortage of bad) humor. All in all, hats off to everyone and may Jah bless us with safe passage to great and lofty heights this Spring.

Lawdamercy.

Children of the Sun, Music Video

I had the privelege of being on my friends' group Deep Foundation's recent album on a joint called Children of the Sun, a track both in homage to Golden Age rap posse cuts ("here we go yo! here we go yo!") and to the legacy of the Philippine struggle at home and abroad. The original song sampled is the legendary Filipino folksinger Heber Bartolome's Tayo'y mga Pinoy (We are Filipinos), a patriotic anthem from the late 1970's when opposition to the brutal Marcos regime was at its pinnacle. The song is dedicated to the memory of the late great Pinoy rap pioneer Francis M.

A few quick references explained in my verse:

• "Rise like Bulol..." - Bulol is the god of rice to the Ifugao people of the mountainous Cordilleras in Northern Luzon, Luis Francia in Eye of the Fish describes the great rice terraces as rising in obeisance to Bulol.
• "high like Apo..." - beautiful Mount Apo is the highest point in the Philippines, 9,692 feet.
• "oo, bayan ko" yes, my country.
• "My lola's tears fall and water this tree" lola, grandmother.
• "Pinatubo of our perils...", Mount Pinatubo, which erupted with disastrous effect in 1991, destroying some of my relatives' homes and livelihoods in Angeles City
  
• "lay siege to the Palace, see..." Malacañang Palace is the president's residence and was stormed by thousands of people in the 1986 "People's Power revolution" that deposed Marcos
• "DF, my kasamas..." DF, my comrades...
  

I haven't been performing nor working on music that much lately for a variety of reasons, and yes the sometimes inescapable draw of the hills among them. Chiefly though I tend to work in great spurts, ebbs and flows, in frenetic creative sessions at 3am...momentum seems to be everything. The vibrance and importance of this video really struck me and is giving rise to a current of ideas. Hopefully I can manifest the better ones into being. Be on the look out, it's high time to bring hip-hop to the heights!

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!

Crouching Panther, Hidden Beacon: Weekend Recap, March 1, 2009

I wanted to get some good hikes in prior to a masochistic Daks mountaineering trip this upcoming weekend (18 miles: Marcy, Grey, Skylight) so I signed up for a Catskills snowshoe trip with Outdoor Bound. I wouldn't normally join a guided hike but this was very reasonably priced, likely cheaper than taking the bus to Phoenicia and grabbing a cab to the trailhead. However, I managed to not see that the date had been rescheduled to Sunday so there I was at 7 am Saturday morning on an empty Manhattan street corner, a pair of snowshoes hanging lonely on my back. Not to be defeated I shrugged, jumped over to Grand Central and headed to Cold Spring for a good 10 miler or so to Beacon over Mount Taurus (see map to right). Awesome day and almost no one in sight until the usual multi-use circus on Mount Beacon. You can get a sense of the distance of the trek in the lower-right photo, taken from Mount Taurus, the fire tower of Beacon is in the distance.

And on to Sunday. Panther Mountain, 3720'. A little geological oddity, Panther Mountain was formed by an impact crater nearly 400 million years ago. Alas, as in Acadia I was unable to make successful contact with otherwordly sentient beings...the search for intelligent life on this planet continues. Perfectly packed snow all the way up, lots of fun, steep, icy sections. Great views of the Burroughs Range to the S and SE, Devil's Path to the NE. A charismatic and friendly alpinist-canine joined us. I had a somewhat mediocre experience on my last and only other OB-guided trip but I was anything but disappointed this time due to the traildog millionaire prowess of our brazen, vastly experienced and quixotic leader Joe. Joe had thru-hiked the AT last year in impressive time and extolled the virtues of kilts, yes, those loveable man-skirts native to the Scottish Highlands, for long distance trekking. The chafe-free action makes perfect sense but I'm not making that commitment yet, even if I did go to Vassar.





















THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE.