Adirondacks COVID Style

 Vacationing in times of a pandemic is a tricky ordeal, but after sticking almost exclusively to Tompkins County since March, Gail and I were ready to venture to the Adirondacks.  The reports from there sounded as bad as we've been seeing in Ithaca: hordes of people doing outdoor activities, many of them for the first time and completely out of their element.  Nothing wrong with that, but we weren't looking for a crowd or finding lots of trash left by people who have never heard of the Leave No Trace Principles.  There were lots of stories in Adirondack publications about the impacts of the crowds, and a really poignant one by a summit steward.

I'd been hiking at least a few hours a day, sometimes with a decent bike ride added in, and Gail has been swimming in the lake several times a week since the pools closed down.  I was looking forward to a few challenging hikes in the mountains, and she had a notion to do her longest swim ever.

  With lots of planning and flexibility, and our willingness to get up at 4:30 am on occasion, we avoided the crowds for the most part and had another amazing trip together.  We figured traveling on Saturdays would be the best bet, so we drove up on a Saturday and stopped in Piseco to visit and have lunch with our good friends, Ann and Chips.  Always good to see them but hard to limit the visit to a couple hours.  We drove home the next Saturday and replayed the visit and lunch with friends we typically would stay with, Mary Ann and Glenn, at their house on Lake George.  Special thanks to our friend, David, for loaning us his kayak so we could paddle together, a real treat.

In between the Saturdays it was a mighty fine time.  Check it out:

 

Adirondacks COVID Style

 One way to avoid crowded trails on a weekend, and fulfill Gail's goal of swimming a 10K, was to head to Follensby Clear Pond before 6 am.  She had registered to do a 10K in Vermont, but like much of life these days, it was canceled due to COVID. The location was excellent, we had the lake to ourselves for most of the morning.  There are lots of campsites along the shores and on the islands, but people were just getting up.  Small motor boats are permitted for fishing but we only saw a couple.

She sets her watch:

A few minutes into the swim a juvenile bald eagle flew over and then perched in this tree to watch the excitement.

 

We'd never seen and heard so many loons before.  They were neither shy nor quiet.

Official open water swimming events have lots of stringent rules, unofficial swims have lots of opportunities to break those rules and no one can do anything about it. 

 No kissing the support.

                                                                                                                

No footwear or walking through shallow channels.

No wearing of unconventional head coverings.

No hanging onto the boat.

When all the rules had been broken, and she out-swam a dog that ran into the lake from a campsite and pursued her, she swam back to the boat launch area and checked her mileage: 6.25 miles or damn close to 10K.  The swimmer's equivalent to running a marathon (which she did many times before hip surgeries).

 

Now if she could only master the inhaling part of underwater breathing.

The swim successfully completed, it was time for ice cream.  Ice cream was also on the menu after paddling and hiking, even getting up in the morning on a good day. 

We had a tip about the special ice cream at Donnelly's north of Saranac Lake, and we were going by just as it opened so what choice did we have?

It turned out there wasn't much choice, Donnelly's only has one flavor per day, so we got sundaes.  Behind Gail in the photo above is Whiteface Mountain on the left and the McKenzie Chain of mountains west of Lake Placid.  I made a half-hearted attempt to climb McKenzie once but didn't have enough time or water so didn't make it.  Since Gail took less than half the day for her swim I figured I'd give it another shot that afternoon and biked to the Jack Rabbit Trail.  I'd read part of it was closed but didn't consider it might be the part I wanted to hike.  I'll get there someday. I did make it up Whiteface at the end of our week.

Back at our pad we rented for the week I wasn't to be deterred and went in search of the illusive trail to Seymour Cobble just down the road.  It wasn't too hard to find, not a hard hike at all, and it offered excellent views of the high peaks and Scarface Mountain just to the west.  Where were the crowds?  I hung out admiring the views for almost two hours and no one else came along.

 

Seymour Cobble is just a little hill above an old dairy farm.

Adirondacks COVID Style

 What's the first thing to do the day after swimming a 10K?  Hike the distance of a half-marathon?  Timing of our rainy-day hike was out of our control, and that's what was predicted for Monday so off we went into Avalanche Lake and Lake Colden, keeping us off of the summits, therefore out of the clouds, and with an early start, away from the crowds.  Of course, being the Adirondacks, a little rain fell every day.  This route also offers unlimited spots to sit, whether you're tired or not.

Features of this area, besides the mountains and lakes themselves, are the Hitch-Up Matilda walkway along Avalanche Lake, and the Trap Dike that extends a half-mile from the lake to the top of Mt. Colden, there's a change of elevation of over 1,600 feet and it's a popular climb.  It's also a popular spot for rescues when people leave the dike too soon and end up on the steep slabs of Colden, unable to go up or down.
 

I wasn't worried about leaving the dike too soon, I knew enough to climb to the top of the mountain.  The problem came when I couldn't find the trail to the bottom to get stated so I swam across.  Wouldn't you know it? I stubbed my toe when I got out and had to turn back.  Look closely at the bottom.

On the swim back across something came to me:

Wow.

We never heard what this State Police helicopter was doing flying less than 100' high in a wilderness area (no motors allowed), but if it was for a rescue it didn't make the DEC report for the week.

It eventually did rain for our rainy day hike, but after we'd gone back over the ladders and rock slabs along Avalanche Lake, so footing wasn't much of an issue by that point.  Except I had to pose under a sign that goes to my heart.  I slipped and fell twice trying to get in position a couple feet off the hiking trail.

Adirondacks COVID Style

 Tuesday morning Gail did an early "normal" swim, merely an hour, on Mirror Lake in the village of Lake Placid.  I was happy to sit and do some planning for my hike on Wednesday.  I got a nice picture of her as she came back to shore.

 

 

Less than an hour later we were on Lower Saranac Lake for some exploration via the kayaks.  Gail had done this back in 2018 when her hip was bad and couldn't hike.  This year she wanted to do her swim here but we were advised not to as the motor boat traffic can get intense, especially on weekends.  We mostly had the lake to ourselves, an early start again, and it was a weekday.  We headed out on the lake and turned northeast towards Eagle Island where we got out and followed a blazed trail around most of the circumference.  From there we headed to the inlet on the southwest end of the lake to go up the river where we turned around at the lock to Middle Saranac Lake.  We heard thunder rumbling as we finished, even had a little rain, but the water remained calm enough we never had much to worry about.

 There was a point when the wind was in our faces a bit.  Something occurred to me in that moment:

Eagle Island had some cool features, lots of rock bluffs for views and many nice hemlocks and white pines.  None of the maps we've consulted showed the trail, and some had a lean-to on the north side but we didn't see it, I suspect it's been removed.  We did happen upon this rare stone lean-to that maps indicate is a picnic area so camping would be prohibited. 
 

I contemplated staying on the island for a few months when I found my old friend, Wilson.

 

Adirondacks COVID Style

  After our trip to the mountains last summer, I realized I was getting close to hiking all the 25 highest peaks in the northeast.  There were seven left in the Adirondacks and I planned a hike that would get me to three of them.  This is a picture I took from Pharaoh Mountain in March of 2019 that shows four or five of what I still needed to reach to complete the list.  On this day I was going for Haystack, Skylight and Gray.  On the extreme right of the photo is Basin, also on the list.  On the extreme left might be Iroquois which is on the list but I missed a perfect opportunity to get there when Gail, Tii and I hiked Algonquin together a few years ago.  It will not be a hardship to have to climb Algonquin again to get there.

 I chose to go up the VanHoevenberg Trail to Little Marcy and then drop down a bit before making the steep climb up the north side of Haystack.  That took me past Indian Falls with the great view of the McIntyre Range, Avalanche and Colden.  The hike Gail and I did on Monday passed between Colden and Avalanche.  I think that pointy knob on the left of the McIntyre Range is Iroquois, so close to Algonquin.

A little later I had my first good view of the summits of Little Haystack and Haystack.  Right after taking this photo the 3% chance of rain turned into 100% with a bit of hail thrown in.  Since I knew I'd be doing a steep climb in a few minutes and the sun would eventually burn off the clouds I just covered my backpack and allowed my shirt and pants to get soaked.

On top, looking back to Little Haystack.  See the people on the right?  I found a video on youtube of someone doing this last bit which I watched several times before the trip, and have to say it helped ease my mind of anxieties about this part, I also picked up the wise idea to wear gloves for it as there was much contact with the rough stones along the way. 

 What my mind wasn't at ease with was going down the south side of Haystack to Panther Gorge.  I'd read that people do it, but not many, and most of the info about the trail just advised against going up with a full backpack because of the steepness.  It turned out to be not so bad, I think it went to that scar at the top of the shadow and down to the bottom of the shadow.  There were a couple spots I was wishing for a ladder, and that it hadn't rained an hour before to make the rocks wet.  So it goes.

The trail from Panther Gorge up to the Four Corners between Skylight and Marcy was a real treat with lots of the bolder stairs I'm so fond of.  I sat on the steps where there was a nice view of Haystack and had one of my many snack breaks of the day consisting of delicious and nutritious food Gail prepared for me.

Without question the highlight of the day was being on top of Skylight for an hour, much of it the only person there.  The views are fabulous, and the wind wasn't as bad as on Haystack. Somewhere in the third picture down, far in the distance, is Pharaoh, but I have no idea which one is it.

Well, I had to leave Skylight sometime and I still had Gray to go, so I went back down to the Four Corners and past Lake Tear of the Clouds where the Hudson River starts.  As I was going up Gray I stepped off the trail to let someone descending get by, I'll admit I didn't see them enough to say whether it was a person, woman, man, camera, or TV, but when I turned to get back on the trail I recognized the guy behind that person as a neighbor from Ithaca.  Ian told me he was pacing and supporting a woman who was competing to set the women's record for the fastest ascent of the 46 high peaks.  I made him stop long enough to take his picture and then advised him to catch up with Sarah who had long since left him behind.  Ian and I ran into each other again in the parking lot as I waited for Gail to come pick me up.

I just missed encountering Sarah again on Whiteface/Esther on Friday after Alyssa, the other woman, had finished first, but since the competition was over and she was slightly injured she waited for the rain that I finished my hike in to let up before she started.

Since Gail and I had hiked around Lakes Colden and Avalanche, I opted for a shorter route back to the trail head at the Adirondack Loj.  This is a well known trail for the swamp it passes through, but the high peaks guidebook said it had been improved in the past few years.  I guess it doesn't actually say it has all been improved.  No problem, my feet were in need of being cooled off and the water only reached half way up my shins.  Not sure of my exact mileage, I'm calling it 20 miles.

Gail did some solo paddling on Lake Placid, house hunting for our retirement home, no doubt.  She also ventured south of Keene Valley to visit some swimming holes that she gave favorable reviews except for the high yahoo factor.