Algonquin: Rock Like a Hurricane!

Cheating death. It's all part of the game.

Two weeks ago a professor died of a heart attack climbing Algonquin, the second highest peak in the Adirondacks (and all of New york State). Amy and I didn't know this until after we had chosen this as our next adventure. As it turned out, there was a lot to rattle us besides that, but first ...

Room Upgrade! Score!

Amy and I arrived at base camp Friday - All Tucked Inn in Westport, same as our last adventure. We liked it so much - the breakfast, the interesting hodge podge of art - it's on our short list now. So we get there and on the board it says "Amy and Craig: Room Upgrade." Turns out we were the only ones at the Inn that weekend. Which makes sense, being the week before Labor Day, moving in day for lots of students ... plus Hurricane Irene, which we remained pretty ignorant about.

Anyway, the upgrade was about half the size of my house! And it had a fireplace! Plus a bed that was so big, we briefly considered subletting a portion of it. It was so high off the ground, that climbing into it was a good trial run for Algonquin. Anyway, it was very luxurious. We had actually asked for a smaller room so we could get used to European-sized hotel rooms (practice for our Paris trip next week). But you don't get everything you ask for in life. Thank god.

The next morning, packed with French Toast and Bacon (Amy skipped the bacon - more on this later!), we drove to the trail head of Algonquin.

Yeah, It's Big

Wright and Algonquin share about 70% of the trail, and since we had done Wright a few months ago, this was like visiting an old friend. With lots of rocks, that is. The Sawteeth trail was so luxuriously packed with soft, spongy growth, that the Wright/Algonquin trail was a rude awakening. But the waterfalls were still there, and they were pretty. And the vertical ascent wasn't too bad.

Then the trail split, and we were tackling the last mile. Algonquin is pretty popular with hikers, so we met (and passed) a lot of them on the way up. There were some difficult spots to be sure, but mostly it was just a longer version of the last half mile of Wright. We got to a point where the trees cleared, and we could see the Wright summit and where we had stood just months before. The people over there looked like ants. We were once those ants.

And then the summit! It was huge, spread out, and full of hikers - this being prime time for a day hike (about 12:30 on a Saturday). It was also a bit hazy, but it was definitely the most surreal of all the views we had seen. It looked more like a painting than something real - most of the peaks being far into the distance, and the lakes just splashes of blue across the canvas. Wright and Iroquois, the two closest neighbors, looked like dwarves as well. Marcy, which you see to the right here, covered up the other peaks of the great range.

Amy said, "I have a confession," as she ate her peanut butter sandwich. The professor+heart attack incident had so rattled her, that she had been eating a low fat diet all week. She didn't want to be carried off Algonquin in a body bag. Well she didn't, and I was of course pretty glad of that. And all the way down, I kept checking back at her a bit more than usual.

I really started to feel my right knee on the way back down. Put it in the right place, on the rock rock at the right angle, and pain shot up through my body. When we got to the restaurant that night, I needed three Tylenol Extra Strength to quiet it down. A fellow hiker had told us at the top of Algonquin that he was hurting too and that, "You get the body you're given." He was in his twenties. Ay carumba.


Vamonos!

OK, so yeah ... we didn't know much about Hurricane Irene. We were busy climbing mountains, after all. So the next morning we were listening to the radio as we waited for our breakfast. Uhhhh, so they shut down all the mass transit in New York City. Hmmm, that sounds kinda serious. And then I got a phone call from a friend of mine that said Albany, who was two hours due South of us, was getting hit and losing power. Amy's friend said they were expected to get pounded in Ithaca pretty soon.

So basically, we bolted down out breakfast and jumped in the car just as the rain and wind started getting bad. According to my calculations, we skirted around the North and West edges of Irene. The further inland we got, the lighter it became. But there was still debris in the road. It was ... well, unsettling.

Syracuse and Ithaca didn't do too bad, but the places we had just left didn't fare as well. Keene, where I had downed three Tylenol the previous night, got plowed by the Ausable River which rose 19 feet above its banks. Westport wasn't bad, but just across Lake Champlain in Vermont, they got majorly socked with flooding. It was pretty sobering to see this.

It's all part of the mixed bag of nature. There are beautiful vistas that awake your senses and beckon you. And there are storms that pelt you and blow your belongings all over the place. Perhaps one makes you appreciate the other more.

Equipment We Used: I gotta say, I'm loving my Marmot jacket. Light, waterproof, and yet breathable, it sits quitely and unobtrusively in my day pack until I need it. Like at the top of a summit, where it's chilly. Then out it comes! I'm taking it to Paris with me.

Food: Need I say it? The Great Range. Amy had pheasant - unlike my old standby of pheasant sausage, this was the whole kind. Very different than the tough, stringy pheasants we got in South Dakota! Me, I had pork ribs with Monkey Gland sauce. I was a little disappointed to find no monkeys or glands were used. It was invented by a South African chef who called it that simply for shock value. I say "shock yeah!" Shockingly good that is. After Algonquin, we did Tippacanoe in Keene again - eating as much fried food as humanly possible to break Amy's fat free diet. Fried fish, Pinot Gris and Tylenol. Does life get any better than that?

Oh yeah! There's Paris! Stay tuned. There are gonna be some stories!

Sawteeth: Clif Bars, Scenic Views,

At the top of Sawteeth, a Blueberry Crisp Clif Bar has an aftertaste like fine tobacco. I mean like Marlboro's not Lucky Strikes. I suddenly had a thirst for a bourbon and a snort of coke. "There's some psychadelic mushrooms on the trail," Amy pointed out. I quickly regained my composure.

We don't need drugs to exercise bad judgment. We were about to make a haughty decision that would leave us thirsty and sore ... all on our own!

Luxury. *Sigh*

This was going to be our longest hike yet, so we started around 9 AM. There's a three and a half mile hike down the Ausable Club road just to get to Sawteeth's trail. Biff and Skippy pass you with their tennis rackets and their designer water bottles. I don't really feel jealous. But I just wished my walking stick ... sorry, my TRACTION POLE (just in case you hoity-toity people from Eastern Mountain Sports are reading this) ... would stay straight. It kept collapsing on me. About an hour of fiddling with it along the trail, and I finally figure it out. I twist it to the just the right length and lock it in place. Triumph! I felt a sense of accomplishment already.

The road ended and the trail began ... and Amy and I fell instantly in love with it. It was cushy, like carpet, full of ground cover and hardly any rocks. My traction pole sunk a little in the dirt, giving my arm a little push for some needed torque. The vertical climb was perfect. It'd be steep and just when you ran out of breath, it would level out. This was very unlike the trails at Giant and Wright, which were endlessly rocky and uneven in comparison. We saw the Rainbow Falls early in our hike. And yes, there's a rainbow in it. It was all so Brigadoon-y. Except for the sign that says, "Stay back, don't be a dropout!"

The hike felt unnaturally short, and we reached the last ascent way ahead of schedule. It was 500 feet over 0.9 miles, and it mostly nice and easy except for one challenging pretty-near-mountain-climbing part. After that mess, we started along the trail and heard ... sleigh bells? "Santa Claus?" Amy asked. Nope, just a regular ol' hiker. As I looked over his equipment to see what was jangling (I didn't find it), he gave us the greatest gift of all - he said, "You're just about up top."

It was unlike the other peaks we've been on, in that the nearby peaks are quite close and higher than you are. You feel like you're in an audience. The Gothics beckon to the right, Saddleback and Basin in front of you, Haystack to the left, and in the background looms Mt. Marcy. They overlap each other a little, like the president's heads on Mt. Rushmore.

Feeling Too Good

After the best damn peanut butter sandwich we ever et' we were feeling pretty plucky. There are two trails up to Sawteeth, the Weld trail which we were just on at 2.4 files to the road, or the Scenic Trail which is 2.9 miles. Amy and I were feeling really good. Let's do the Scenic Trail! It's only half a mile longer!

Here's the thing. At the entrance to the Ausable club, we asked the ranger about the best way to hike Sawteeth. He said, "Nobody takes the Scenic Trail. It's just too hard." But Amy and I decided to ignore his advice.

You figure that at 0.5 miles longer, the descent should be more gradual than the Weld, since you end up in the same place. Easier on the knees, right? But once we started along the Scenic Trail it became apparent quickly ... we were going up AND down. And none of it was gradual. In fact, there were some spots that needed ladders, which were helpfully provided. Amy and I both got our legs scraped up a bit by the huge boulders. It was not luxurious like the Weld trail.

That said, the Scenic Trail is well named. It offered views of the opposite range, with Indian Head and Mt. Colvin. They were more like theater curtains, their big wide ranges blotting out the sky. And the Ausable Lakes below were very beautiful. The overlooks were nice, but scary in a way, and Amy and I found ourselves backing away from the edge gradually as we looked out over the distance.

But man! That trail seemed to go on forever. We ran out of water, my knees were crabbing at me. and Amy stomped down the trail as if she were angry at it. Finally we got close enough to the lake that we dunked our tootsies in the water and felt instantly better.

At the registration book at Ausable Club, someone (God?) left an unopened bottle of Poland Spring, which Amy snatched up like gold. We downed the whole thing in a few swigs. An 11 mile hike, the longest one so far ... and here's the weird thing. I looked back at Sawteeth, how high it was against the sky, and I still don't know how we did it. You'd think that with experience, I'd be getting more used to how much we can actually do in a day. But the mountains look bigger to me.

Equipment That Worked: You gotta love Smartwool! These thick socks look like they'd be wearing cement on a warm summer day. But they are cool and dry and so completely comfortable. I'm tempted to get their hiking shirts as well, but I find bicycle jerseys act pretty well in that capacity. Since I'm not doing as much biking this summer, it's good to keep the clothes workin'.

Food: The Great Range in Keene Valley continues to be our go-to restaurant for good eatin'. We had a summer tart appetizer, with some interesting goat cheese and vegetable filling. Amy had quail. I had pheasant sausage with mashed potatoes and a rosemary sauce over the whole thing. The menu is a bit different every time we go, so we keep being surprised. On Saturday we went to the Westport Marina and tucked away salad grilled chicken and grouper and Toasted Head Chardonnay. Amy now swears by the following rule - always end a hike with a really, really good salad and wine. It lubricates the joints, and makes one feel instantly fresh and reconnected.

Next up? Seems to be a tossup between Algonquin and The Gothics. Both are close to peaks we've already climbed, so the trails are a little familiar. But the ending vertical ascents of both are very difficult. Then again ... when the payoff is this cool, what's difficult?