Going for it…

[Coulter]

Well, my daughter Tori and I are heading back up to the Adirondacks to try and finish climbing the Adirondacks 46 peaks that are 4000 feet or more. We have four left to do. Unfortunately they are some of the hardest of the bunch. We’re facing somewhere around 45 miles of hiking and 4 or more high peaks in 3 days. I may throw a monkey wrench into the plans if things are going well and take a different route back out on the last day that will lead us over an additional 5 peaks that we can claim for winter.

Here’s the glitch…the forecast is calling for 65 mph winds on the last day and also our most exposed peak. Haystack…the 3rd highest in the state that is just shy of being a 5000 footer. Not a good place to be with winds that high…fully exposed and nowhere to hide. Bust out the goggles and balaclava! This has been a three year journey for us and we have both learned a ton about being out there and what we’re capable of accomplishing. So, if we don’t get blown off the mountain we’ll be back on Wednesday…Hopefully as new 46R’s!

Steve

[coyote101]

Good luck. Have fun. Take pictures. Be safe.

Pat

[Okanagan]

What a  wonderful thing to do with your daughter!  I am envious of that part.

You likely won't read this till your return.  You seem to have good sense and your priorities right:  that coming down safely is more important than getting to the top.  That is a loose paraphrase of Sir Edmund Hillary.   Hoping that you are having a GREAT hike.

[FinsnFur]

Be safe Buddy and bring us lotsa pics

[Coulter]

Hey guys I'm back! Thanks for the support. Unfortunately, we only claimed one peak out of the four we were after on this trip. We had everything from equipment failures to plain old missteps and bad luck. Clyde...I know the saying you're referring to. I've heard another version that goes "Getting to the summit of the mountain is optional, coming back down is mandatory." I'm not so ure we would have made it back down had we pressed our luck with other climbs on this trip.

I failed to take many pictures, but here are a few. A full trip report follows the pics with details of what happened.

My daughter Tori just leaving the trail register...she's not a morning person at all.


Henderson Monument. This was erected ~ 4-5 miles back in the woods in the middle of nowhere along Calamity Brook. Mr. Henderson accidentally shot and killed himself back in the late 1800's while surveying for a water source. His family erected the monument for him afterwards.


Mount Colden from the Calamity Brook Trail. We climbed this one a few weeks ago.


Aftermath of a plane wreck back in Cold Brook Pass back in 1969. The pilot was more fortunate than Mr. Henderson. Thanks to some hikers and Rangers that saw him go down he survived the wreck.


Yours truly at the summit of Mount Marshall...still smiling even though I'm soaking wet.


This is what your boot/pants look like after falling in the brook and hiking for nearly 17 miles. Not sure why I carried my gaiters around in my pack all day, that was just dumb!


And the "official" trip report...

Yep, Cold Brook is indeed cold.

My daughter Tori and I were the only ones to sign in at Upper Works on Saturday. We hit the trail at 06:40, just before it got light out. The path is wide here and easy enough to follow that we didn't bother with the headlights at this point. It was light enough to see before we made it to Calamity Brook. The trail in from Upper Works was pretty bumpy from the frozen boot prints in the mud, but overall it wasn't too bad once you get past the frozen-muddy portions. We bypassed the Herbert Brook HP and continued on to the Interior Outpost. I didn't tell her this, but I wanted to see if we could locate the plane wreckage up in the pass.

We spiked up at Colden Dam and made our way past the outpost and up Cold Brook from there. We probably could have waited a bit longer to spike up, but the one big rock just before the dam was pretty icy so we made that call right there and never looked back. Some of the rocks in the brook were icy, so the spikes were definitely beneficial there.

The trail was easy to follow though it did get fairly tight at times. The brook itself gets pretty narrow and the HP is right in the brook which made for a lot of rock hopping. The worst part of the trail is trying to stay out of the brook when it gets narrow and deep with no exposed rocks to walk on. The trees continuously try to push you into the brook which was getting very frustrating. I was going kind of slow up the trail trying to locate the big rock that TelemarkMike described in one of his TR's. I wasn't sure of the exact location and I didn't want to miss it. Shortly after passing some wooden planks over a wet area I found a huge erratic approximately ten feet off the trail, just as Mikes TR had mentioned. I took a quick peek behind it and confirmed this was the spot. I waited for Tori and told her to look back in the woods. She spotted the wreckage after a few seconds and we went in to check it out. Thanks Mike! That was pretty neat to check out.

We pressed on after that and the trail closed in on us again, though remained mostly flat. There was a narrow but deep pool with a log that seemed to be lodged into place. I stepped on that and it immediately rolled out from under me. Quickly employing my ninja-like reflexes I jumped for the bank only to find myself swimming in Cold Brook as the bank gave way. My entire left leg was soaked from mid-thigh down as I crawled up stream and out of the hole. Soaking wet and 14 degrees out… not a good combination! Tori asked if I wanted to turn around, but we were too close and I figured I'd be fine if we kept moving. Normally I'd have an extra set of clothes in my pack, but for whatever reason I had only brought an extra top layer for this climb. Lesson learned there.

It wasn’t long after that we found the cairn to Marshall just as the trail started to descend on the west end of the flat area. As we reached the top of the bump before Marshall we ran into another couple that had come up via Indian Pass. They thought they had reached Marshall already and turned around. We talked to them and they said that they could see another peak off in the distance (which was Marshall). But they felt they had hit the summit already. I mentioned the false summit, or bump, to them but it apparently it didn’t register. They continued back down to CBP. They never even dropped into the col after the sub peak according to their boot tracks. Oh well, what was I supposed to do?

Too add more insult. There was plenty of frozen boot sucking mud holes in the col cleverly disguised as solid ice. I stepped on one and went right through with my dry leg and quickly soaked my other boot. Of course there were roots there that latched onto my boot and held it there until a sufficient amount of mud had ooozed its way into my book soaking my other foot. Admittedly, there were a few choice colorful words at that time. Good thing Tori is in the Navy…, she has certainly heard worse. Of course, she found it quite amusing as she plucked my spike from the gaping mud hole. "You want this back Dad?We hit the summit and checked out a few of the restricted views. We didn’t take many pictures while we were up there. I didn’t want to take my gloves off, I just wanted to stay warm and not linger around much. Our summit pictures will just be in stored in our own memory banks for this one. The crampons stayed in the packs as spikes were plenty sufficient for us. We made our way back down CBP since there was no readily apparent trail going down Herbert Brook. We were looking, it just never appeared to us.

Tori broke one of her microspikes on the way down and made due with one spike for the rest of the trail. Unfortunately, with only one spike we ended up canceling the rest of the peaks we had planned to finish our 46 on (SE/BA/HA). Crampons would have likely been way overkill in most situations. The last three will just have to wait until next year. Marshall really sucked the ambition out of me too. I like to go on these adventures and enjoy myself. With all of the mishaps that occurred on this trip we both felt the rest needed to wait for a better day.

Steve

[nastygunz]

 Very well written adventure!

[FinsnFur]

Wow!....just reading that made me get up and put another hunk of ash in the woodstove.
Pretty cool pics. Interesting lil story on the plane there.
Thanks for sharing the trip and glad to see everyone made it back unscathed.

[Coulter]

Thanks Jimbo and NG...We're planning to head back up in late February to try them again. Snowshoes won't likely be an option at that time of year. Less ice to contend with though...I just want to put the 10 point crampons on my boots and see what I can climb with those bad boys on. They look pretty wicked.

Steve

[Okanagan]

Great account.  Thanks for taking the time to write it out for those of us interested in such hikes and climbs. 

My favorite line was  " ...went right through with my dry leg and quickly soaked my other boot."

Sounds real!

I love my micro-spikes and have wondered if they will break one of these days.  For less sure footed codgers like me they are fabulous on wet wood and moss as well as on slick snow and ice.

Good time with daughter.  It makes a man appreciate being in a warm place with a warm drink.  There is some kind of extra pleasure in sitting in a restaurant in a place where you have been on one of the nearby snow peaks.