North Country Vacation

  Our friend, Tii, came to visit us from Vermont.  She joined us for dinner in our cottage and camped across the road in a state campground, then picked us up at 6:30 am to go climb NY’s second-highest peak, Algonquin.  It’s 5114’ above sea level, though I don’t know if that number has been updated in the past decade.  It’s still a formidable climb.  The Adirondacks have a reputation as having more punishing trails than many other places, but on this one I thought there was quite a bit of trail improvements, especially in the form of stone steps.  As this was my first of the 46 peaks over 4000’ feet in NY I probably shouldn’t draw any firm conclusions.  Gail had misremembered there was asphalt on the summit to deal with erosion, it was all plants and rock. They have implemented a stewardship program to deal with erosion to the sensitive plant life.  The steward reminds everyone who summits where to walk and where not to.

  Tii has been doing forest consulting, mostly plant inventories lately, so she was anxious to get above tree line and test her plant knowledge there.  It proved difficult for me to get a picture of her when she wasn’t looking down.  The clouds added stunning drama to the views, the peak of Marcy at 5344´ would come and go, we saw a butterfly getting tossed about as it passed over the high peaks rather than flying around.  Tii got into an extended conversation about specific plants with the steward who was more than happy to talk with her about them, and with all three of us about life up there and on a few other peaks he monitors.  We were there on a pretty quiet day, at least so far, but he described what it’s like when the parking area at the Loj overflows like this.

Plants are also central to the streak on Mt. Colden between Tii and Gail in this photo. The bare bedrock was exposed when all the trees, plants and soil slid to the valley below in an avalanche during tropical storm Irene.  I read this week that was NY’s highest rainfall event in recorded history.