Friday, October 03, 2008
Hiking the Range Trail
Since Dave and Pickle's Wedding wasn't enough excitement for us, afterward Jester and I decided to go hiking.
Jester is from southern California. He's done quite a bit of hiking recently, including Mt Baldy and the 8000m challenge, where he summited 3 mountains totaling 8000 meters of vertical in one day. On the day after the wedding, he kept talking about how our hike couldn't be that hard. After all, we were only going to go 15 miles or so. Shouldn't take much more then 8 hours, right?
Much to Jester's chagrin, I insisted that we hit the trail early - around 5am. We parked at the Giant Mountain parking area on NY-73 at 4:30am, and hiked over to the Ausable Club. The club has some beautiful buildings, and they manage the Adirondack Mountain Reserve (AMR), a large area of private hikeable land.
The map we had indicated a short hike down the trail to the right of the tailhead, then a turn left onto a long trail that runs along the river. We figured that this would be easy in the dark with our headlamps and experience. We didn't count on the rather large number of unmarked trails.
While we were never lost, we did spend too much time simply wandering around. We ended up back on the service road that runs to the Ausable Club's private lake. I thought we might follow this road for a while, until we were farther away from the club house and could find an alternate trail that went to the same place (there were a few on the map). But we didn't have any luck. It was simply too dark, and the trails of the AMR are not marked in any way. Jester and I decided that the best course of action was to simply ford the river and find the trail that must be on the other side.
There's a certain natural beauty to a river in the dark. You can't see the stones or the bottom, so you simply see the water on the surface as it rushes over rocks, turning white and reflecting more moonlight. We hopped in. The first few steps weren't so bad. Jester, in his low-top light hikers, was instantly soaked through. My large Gortex boots kept me dry. But then I put my foot down and was suddenly above my knees. The next fifteen feet or so consisted of me up to mid thigh in the water, trying desperately not to slip, desperately grabbing onto any rocks I could find.
But we succeeded, and forded the river. No oxen died. But Jester had the last laugh with the boots. His would start to dry out quickly. My Gortex boots would hold water in them the rest of the day. Turns out waterproof works both ways.
The trail on this side was easy to find, and we made good time. Jester was amazed at the way the trail was built. There weren't really any switchbacks. The trail would simply approach a rock face, which might be fifteen feet high, and you'd just need to find a way to the top. We made it though, doing Lower Wolfjaw, Upper Wolfjaw, and Armstrong, before running into people at the top of Gothics. They were nice enough to take a picture.
Sadly, all day long we only saw terrible fog. The closest it came to burning off came at the top of our next mountain, on Sawteeth. But even then, visibility was less then a quarter mile. Normally, the views are stunning, and it's possible to see all the way into Vermont.
The trip down the mountain had one of the most impressive sights we saw the entire trip. Tucked away almost at the bottom of the trail is Rainbow Falls, a stop which we only knew to visit because my father and brother had suggested it from one of their previous hikes. While we did have a stunning view from the top of the falls, the brief hike into the bottom was even better. Apparently, when there's sun out, you can even see a rainbow form at the base of the falls, giving these falls their name.
Once we were off the mountain we had a long hike along the AWR service road. It was flat and fast going, but at the same time, monotonous. Those last three or four miles took forever, if only mentally. When we finally returned to the car, it was nearly seven. We'd spent the better part of 14 hours hiking. Jester later admitted that the East definitively had some real hiking.
I'm pretty sure this hike put me past the half way point in my quest to become a 46er. If I lived just a little closer, I might have a shot at catching up with my father and brother.
| posted at: 16:00 |
permanent link and comments
