“Highpointing has changed my life in so many ways. The first way is the reconnection with my “”Gramps.”” He has become absolutely enthralled in the project: printing me maps, wanting to proof my photos, and insisting that I use his house as the base for my northeastern expeditions. This is how I found myself on the floor of his family room, sitting in front of a roaring fire (in July), checking my gear. It had only been a few weeks but I was back in New Jersey and gearing up for an epic Northeastern trip with Dash and his buddy from grad school, Big Bird. Gramps looked over my gear slowly and then looked at me and said, “”Looks good, you’re going to have so much fun! I wish I was young enough to go along with you.””

It had meant so much to me that Gramps went to my very first highpoint with me. But the four we had planned for this long weekend were going to test my resilience and were definitely a little much for my 87-year-old grandfather. Don’t get me wrong, with the right amount of time and support crew, I have little doubt that Gramps couldn’t will his way up any mountain, but this was not that trip. The line up was:
Mount Marcy in New York (15.4 miles roundtrip – as an overnight because we won’t get to the trailhead until after noon)
Mount Mansfield in Vermont (3.7 miles roundtrip – half-day hike)
Mount Washington in New Hampshire (7.9 miles roundtrip – full day hike)
Mount Katahdin in Maine (10.2 miles roundtrip – long day hike)

First up was Mount Marcy. Mount Marcy is the highest point in the state of New York and is located in the Adirondacks, very near Lake Placid. With an elevation of 5,344 feet, Mount Marcy is the “”highest of the High Peaks”” in the heart of the Adirondack High Peaks region of the High Peaks Wilderness Area. The most popular trail starts at the Adirondack Loj parking lot. We went back and forth on logistics because we knew we wouldn’t get there until at least 3 or 4 in the afternoon. We figured this would be too late to start an out and back hike but the Loj is pricy and even the campsite would run us over $50 for the three of us. Meanwhile, if we packed in, we could find a backcountry site that was free and make an earlier summit attempt. All three of us decided this was the best option despite the extra gear we would need.

We arrived at the lodge right around 4 pm, as we had expected, and got set checking our packs and situating our shoes. –Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise: the MOST important things when hiking are good, comfortable socks and shoes — Thirty minutes later and we were on the trail. The Van Hoevenberg Trail starts out with a slow and steady rise in elevation as you follow along the MacIntyre Brook. Almost exactly a mile in, the trail comes to a tee. To the right, the trail circles back to Heart Lake and the Adirondack Loj. Straight ahead, the Algonquin Trail takes you through the valley and eventually up to Algonquin Peak (the second highest peak in New York). But we were going to the left, where the Van Hoevenberg trail wraps around the base of Whales Tail Mountain and heads for Marcy Dam. Marcy Dam was originally built in the 1930s by the Conservation Corps but had been rebuilt a number of times since then. It was also the first opportunity for us to find camping.

We arrived at the dam and stream crossing around 5 pm as it is only about 2 miles up the trail. We took a break for a snack and to discuss staying the night. It was 5 pm and we could settle down, cook some food and try to get to sleep early, but it was the middle of summer which meant the sun wouldn’t be setting for nearly 4 hours and the standing water was attracting a force of bugs. We decided to press on. From here the gradual incline increased a bit and our pace slowed slightly with our large packs. About a mile and a half later the trail got downright steep as we made our way towards the base of T.R. Peak. Here the trail mellowed out and we were able to resume a decent pace. After another half mile more we had reached Indian Falls Lookout. We took another break, taking off our packs and wandering around the falls. Dash and Big Bird started inspecting the fracture lines in the rocks and explaining to me what that could mean (hiking mountains with geologists can be wildly informative). There were a few campsites here, but they appeared to be occupied already so we slung our packs back on and pressed forward. It was only about 6:30 pm and the light was still high(ish) in the sky. The trail stayed relatively easy for about another mile as we traversed a sort of high mountain valley and then the ascent began again. For over a mile we pushed upward. Slowly. And then all of a sudden we were descending. We all slightly questioned why were descending so much but pushed the thoughts aside as we were beginning to lose the sun. Combined with the time of day, clouds had rolled in and accelerated our timeline. (In hindsight, we absolutely should’ve stopped when we realized we were descending more than expected and checked a map – but you know what they say about hindsight.)

Less than a mile later we found ourselves briefly in a ravine before the trail seemed to go straight up a series of rather smooth rock faces. And then the rain started. We threw our ponchos over ourselves and our packs and pressed up in the (now) dark. It was slow going on the wet, slick rock and through the mud but we continued on as we shouted promises of freshly cooked stuffing and sausages when we finally found a camp. We couldn’t camp here, the terrain was too steep so we went up and over the next ridge. Just as we popped above treeline and reached the ridge, lightning struck in the not-so-distant-distance. We descended quickly, alternating between sliding and slipping down the muddy slope. It wasn’t long before we spotted a flatter area with a camping marker and all heaved a sigh of relief. We were cold, wet, and tired.

Each of us worked to get our tents up as quickly as possible before we looked for wood for a fire. Everything was soaking wet so we decided to just cook up the food on our jet boil in batches. We unloaded the stove and the fuel before opening the bear canister only to find plenty of stuffing, but no sausages! I can’t tell you how many times we questioned what could’ve happened to the sausages as we boiled up the water for the stuffing. We hike with stuffing because it is extremely lightweight, all you have to add is water, you can boil the water and then “”cook”” it in the bowl so that your pot doesn’t need cleaning, it’s heavy on the carbs and it has a decent amount of salt too. It’s legitimately my favorite hiking food. I add it to everything: freeze-dried meals? Bulk them up with a bag of stuffing. Hot dogs, sausages, or burgers? Mix them in a bag of stuffing. But that night… that night all we had was stuffing and a random can of beans. We each ate an entire box of stuffing to ourselves and then grumpily retreated to our tents to try and forget the storm raging outside and the missing sausages.

In the morning, the rain had stopped but everything was soaking wet. We got up, made some oatmeal (it was at this point we realized we had run out of drinking water), and broke camp. Luckily there was a stream nearby so we set up a sort of assembly line of water purification. Dash would fill our Nalgene bottles from the stream and bring them to Big Bird who was manning the Jet-boil. When the water had boiled for a bit, Big Bird would pour the boiling water into his metal water bottle and give it back to Dash. Dash took the hot water bottle back to the stream to be submerged in the cold water. After a few minutes, I would collect the metal container and take it over to our Camelbaks that we had hung on some nearby branches. It took us a couple of rounds to get the timing right, but by the time we were filling up the third Camelbak we operating like a well-oiled machine. Needless to say, we did not get the early morning start we were looking for, but as we waited for the water to boil and cool we found that the marker on the campsite said we had reached Sno-bird. According to our maps, this meant we had missed a turn somewhere, overshot Marcy by nearly two miles, and had climbed over Little Haystack Mountain. This also meant we had to climb back over Little Haystack this morning. Despite its name, this was no little feat. After raining nearly all night the trail alternated between a thick covering of mud and steep slick rock faces.

About an hour later we figured out where we had gone wrong. A mere half-mile from the summit we had missed an intersection and gotten onto the Phelps Trail rather than continuing up the Van Hoevenberg Trail. We dumped our packs at the intersection and headed to the summit. When we arrived we found a park ranger and whiteout conditions. She explained that more often than not visibility was bad at the summit. Big Bird and Dash chatted with her for a while about the formation and what it was like working as a ranger. I wondered around the summit while they talked hoping for a break in the clouds. But alas, my 8th high point was destined to remain shrouded in clouds.

Soon we bid goodbye to the Ranger dubbed Mountain Mama and headed back down to where we had left our packs. There were a few people coming up the trail who warned us the whole thing had basically turned to a stream with last night’s rains. We weren’t excited about it, but we got started down the trail. An hour or so later the sun had finally come out from behind the clouds. Our socks were soaking wet from the trail and Big Bird was having some knee issues so we settled in for a snack and took the opportunity to try and dry our socks a bit before moving on. We made good time down to the dam and then it seemed like a quick trip on to the parking lot.

Once we had made it back to Big Bird’s Subaru we started in on the task of separating wet from dry to pack up the car. While Big Bird worked out the logistics, Dash tended to his blistered feet, and I tried to find some wifi to look up somewhere to get a good hot meal.