Tales from the Hike

[Gargamel]

On 8/11/2018 at 2:36 PM, IncongruousGoat said:

Specifically, from the summit of Gothics, taken yesterday.

Hey I was there!    Climbed that and did most of the Great Range in a day back in the 90's.  

Edit: I split this off from the Put a face to the Name thread, so we don't bog that one down.    

Post your hiking climbing Adventures Here!

Edited February 20, 2019 by Gargamel
Split

[IncongruousGoat]

57 minutes ago, Gargamel said:

Hey I was there!    Climbed that and did most of the Great Range in a day back in the 90's.  

Out of the Great Range, I've only done Gothics so far, although I'd like to do at least Upper and Lower Wolfjaw once the weather warms up a little. I'm going to be going on something of a hiking spree in the coming months; I'm moving to the West Coast in late May, so I've got a limited window of opportunity in which to bag as many of the High Peaks as possible. It's amazing how much a hard deadline motivates you to go out and do things.

[Gargamel]

1 hour ago, IncongruousGoat said:

Out of the Great Range, I've only done Gothics so far, although I'd like to do at least Upper and Lower Wolfjaw once the weather warms up a little

We (college buddy and I) hiked into the JBL (John Brooks Lodge), stayed at one of the lean-tos  at the base of Gothics, got up early, Nailed Gothics and the next 6 (?) peaks heading downhill (towards Keene valley), dropped off the range, back up to the JBL, and stayed there, home Sunday night.    We went light for the day trip, leaving most of our gear at the lean to.  This trip was really uneventful, but that was because we had experience from before. 

The previous year we had done the same, but shorter, route, but it went to hell pretty quick.  It was the last good day of fall, mid October.  Hiked into JBL on Friday night, stayed at the same lean to we would the next year.  After we were settled in, a couple other guys showed up, planning to do the same route the next day also, We'll call them Fred and Bob for the sake of the story.  We slept in a little bit the next day, and the other pair got a head start.

Having completely under estimated the Daks in fall, we had some difficulty getting around some of the ice that was blocking the path in secluded, not sun facing spots at the base of Gothics.  Ascending Gothics, my water bottle slipped out of it's holster, and I had to descend back down the cable, climb down into a crevasse in the face and retrieve it from a 'cave' about 20 feet in the mountain. Back up we went.  Up that never ending face.

As we get near the top of the mountain, the trail does that loop around the top to actually get to the summit.   Well there's a really nice crack on about a 50ft face leading straight up the face.  Being a decent climber, I laid back on the crack, and headed up.  It was an easy climb, I was still wearing my pack and hiking boots.  But about halfway up, I looked down.   I had completely forgotten that this crack was at the top of the 700 ft face, with nothing to slow me down if I slipped.   So now I'm slightly panicked, and I have to finish this crack.   I make it no problem.   We spend a bit of time looking around, enjoying the view of Marcy and the rest of the Daks. 

So now we continue on down the rest of the ridge trail, and reach the second peak, Armstrong (I believe, Anderson?, something like that).  We have lunch here.   Now, the weather was beautiful, mid 50's, clear day, no weather forecast until midnight.  And since we were only doing the day hike, we only brought lunch, no jackets, and 3 bottles of water between the two of us.  Since we (thought) we were halfway, we enjoyed our little break for lunch.   We then continued on to Upper Wolfjaw.  

Did UWJ, and it's mid afternoon now, time to get off the mountain and back to base camp.  We descend down the ridge trail, down the giant timber ladders they built to get over the big cliffs, and reached what was "obviously" the bottom of the shoulder between Upper and Lower Wolfjaw.    We then spend an hour or so looking for the trail that drops down off the ridge back to camp.   We can't find it.   We keep going back and forth between the base of the two peaks looking. 

Sun is now setting, we're almost out of water, a few sips each left, and we do not have any gear to make an overnight stay on the Great range Ridge in October a sane idea.   So we decided to do Lower Wolfjaw, and the next peak, and take the next trail off the ridge and back up to camp.   Did i happen to mention we had almost no gear for night?   Luckily we had one flashlight between us.  It mostly worked. 

We're heading up LWJ.  It's now dark, the trail is weaving in between the trees.   Luckily it's staying clear, and relatively warm (still in the high 40's), slight breeze.  As we're climbing, we keep hearing this noise. 

*ting*

We'd go another hundred yards or so.

*Ting*

It's getting louder. Another few hundred yards up the trail.

*Ting*

We can't figure out what this noise is.   Oh, did I happen to mention that on Thursday night, our other college friend decided to introduce us to the movie "Deliverance" for the first time?   He thought it would be fitting.     We keep going, starting to get a little spooked.

*Ting!*

It's louder now.   We're looking all around, we don't see much, it was a tiny flashlight.  

Mike says, "Maybe that's what killed Fred and Bob".   What?!  Don't say that!

*TING*

We try to start going faster, but that seems to be towards the source of the noise.   But we have no choice.    But during this whole time, the sky has been clear as I have ever seen it.   And this deep in the park, there is no light (which was part of our problem to be honest), and the stars, My god, it was full of stars.  

*TING!*

WHAT IS THAT NOISE!? It's coming from all around us now!    And one of the stars.... it was glowing brighter.    And brighter.   The noise is is getting louder, all around us, that light is getting bigger, it's coming for us.  We're starting to panic, I'm pretty sure Mike said "They're coming for us", but it could have been me. 

Then the plane, with it's landing lights on, flew over, headed for Lake Placid Airport.   The breeze had been just right to hide the small engine noise as it approached.  

*TING!*

And there... on tree in front of us, is a metal trail marker, swinging in the breeze, making this tinging noise.  

After we had caught our breath from almost screaming, we kept on going up the trail to the summit.   We make the summit, and are treated to this absolutely beautiful view of a very dark mountain range.   If the sky hadn't been so clear, we wouldn't have been able to see that much, but even then, it wasn't a lot, but it was still breathtaking. 

We break out the topo map and compass.   Ever since realizing we were not where we thought we were, or that some super villain had stolen the trail off the ridge, this was our first 'clear' view of our surroundings, and our first chance to figure out where we really were.   After doing a bit of triangulation, we thought we were actually 3 peaks farther down the ridge than we though.   Which, in hindsight, sounds ridiculous.   So we decided our best option was to keep heading down the ridge into Keene valley, grab some food at the gas station, and hike back up the access road to base camp.  

So we started down the mountain.   At this point, we were breaking off icicles from overhanging rocks for drinking water.  Those that don't know the Daks will wonder how ice would form in 50 degree weather, and in October.   Well it's the Daks, and that crazy stuff happens.  Descending down another timber ladder, in the dark, with one barely working tiny flashlight is no picnic.  

Finally, a bit later, we see a fork in the trail.   Finally!  A trail sign pointing in each direction is beside it.  We hurry over to it. 

Turns out, this was the fork we were looking for originally.  When we thought we were on Armstrong and had lunch, it was actually just some exposed bump on the ridge between Gothics and Armstrong.   So we were a whole mountain shy of where we wanted to be when we first started looking for the trail off.  What we had thought was UWJ was actually Armstrong. 

We headed down the mountain, finally reaching our camp somewhere around 1am.   Fred and Bob were there waiting for us.   They were actually getting ready for one of them to head down to JBL to get a ranger, thinking we had fallen somewhere.  They knew we hadn't taken off as most of our gear was still there. 

I plopped down, ate a pack of dry hot chocolate mix, a granola bar, and passed out with my boots still on. 

And that folks, is how not to do the Great Range in a Day.    When we came back the next year, Our day trip started earlier, and we carried enough stuff to make it all the way through the day if needed. 

That good enough @Dman979 ?

[IncongruousGoat]

@Gargamel Are we doing tales from the Dacks now? I haven't got anything quite that good, but I've got a couple of fun anecdotes.

5 college buddies of mine and I decided it would be a good idea to hike Giant, early last May. What we didn't realize was that any trail in the Dacks in early May is going to be covered in a foot of sheet ice, where it isn't 2 feet deep in snowpack. And none of us had brought crampons or spikes, and three of the six didn't have a great deal of experience walking on ice. Somehow, we made it as a group to about 3/4 of a mile from the summit (somewhere around the turnoff from Rocky Peak Ridge), but at that point those aforementioned three decided that the going had gotten too hard, and turned back. The remaining three (myself included) forged on to the summit, but it was slow going. Eventually, several falls and one minor cut later (after one of the guys slipped and fell on some rocks), we made it up to the summit, and then back down to where the other three had retreated. Upon re-union with the rest of the group, we discovered that one of the guys who had turned back had injured his arm (sprained it, or pulled a muscle, or something - we never quite worked out what). So we had to make the remaining 2 1/4 miles of icy, slippery trail with a guy with only one working arm, a poor sense of balance, crappy shoes, and not much experience with ice. I count myself lucky that I made it to the summit without slipping and falling, but even that didn't stop me from falling down 3 times on the descent.

Somewhat less exciting (from a things-going-wrong perspective) was our trip up the Dial/Nippletop loop. Nothing bad happened, but the weather conditions made several sections of the hike very creepy. It was really cloudy that day, and the summits of Dial and Nippletop (as well as the whole ridgeline between them) poked up into the clouds, which means we got several miles of trail with ~30 feet of visibility through the mist. It genuinely felt like something out of a cheesy horror movie, with the way the ground seemed to drop off and vanish to either side, disappearing into the clouds. Easily one of the most surreal places I've ever been.

[Gargamel]

8 minutes ago, IncongruousGoat said:

Are we doing tales from the Dacks now?

Sounds like a good idea, thread has been split, starting this one anew.