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!
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