Mount Adams

Dingo and I decided to head out to Hike Mt. Adams which is located in Upper Works of Tahawus. This area has always seemed erie to me, an old abandoned mining town. Just like the many across the country, this place was once a prosperous mining community, like many before it, has shuttered its doors.

There are many mountains in this area, several are considered some of the 46 high peaks of New York. Mt Adams is not one of them, but offers some of the best views of the High Peaks, especially from its restored fire tower. The ADKHighpeaks Foundation took on the restoration, and much can be read upon it at their website.

Dingo and I had a late start. We left the house around 9:30 and made our way to Upper Works, its about an hour and a half drive to the trail-head. I was surprised when we arrived at the trail-head that there were no other hikers in that area, we would be alone all day.

We signed in at the trail register at 11:30. The trail was in pretty good shape, it was still cold enough the ground was frozen, it was 28 degrees when we left the truck, but that would change as the temperature rose throughout the day. The trail consisted of ice and frozen spine. The spine is the remnants of the packed trail from snowshoeing. This year has not been a very good year for snow, a lot more ice than anything.

We made our way down to the swinging foot bridge, and soon found myself on the other-side, alone. I looked back and poor Dingo didn't want to come across it. I had taken advantage of it, and never really gave it a thought that he had yet to experience a swinging foot bridge, that was screened and you could see the flowing river through it. With a little bit of encouragement he soon followed suit and was on the other-side with me. This earned him a lot of praises!

The trail continued down towards Lake Jimmy. The floating bridge has long been gone, but now there is a trail around the north end of the lake, that sweeps around to the other side where we picked up the original trail. The trail continues to a junction with Mt Adams trail that veers left of the main trail, and if you were to continue straight it would take you to Allen mountain, one of the 46 high peaks.

The trail up to Mt Adams is pretty uneventful, zigzagging up the mountain. At about the halfway point I decided to put on my micro-spikes, as there was a few places with a hard flow ice, I would end up keeping them on until I returned back to the junction.

This hike is very rewarding, and one starts to get some decent views about halfway up. Before you know it a bench appears, and the girders of the fire tower can be seen. We arrived at the summit just before 2pm.

The views from the fire tower are amazing.

Gray Peak

We had a late start to our day, which did not deter us, other than we did not see as much as we wanted, we did meet our objective (Gray Peak). We signed in at the trail head at 8am on the dot. The sky was a beautiful blue, with not much of a cloud in sight. As the day wore on this would change and gradually the clouds would role in, but not sock in the summits. 

The trail was a hard crust of ice and some powder snow (less than an inch). This season has been horrible for snow accumulation. This makes hiking not as enjoyable in some regards. While the lack of snow does allow the ability to hike further with micro-spikes and not show shoes, it makes it hard on the feet wearing micro-spikes all day.

We made good time to Marcy Dam, just under an hour for the 2.1 miles hike into it. We walked across the frozen Marcy pond and continued up avalanche pass trail to the Lake Arnold and Feldspar Brook trail. The trail was solid the entire way.

Once we crossed over Uphill Brook we were able to continue in micro-spikes up to around 4000' in elevation. From this point we wore snowshoes with approximately 3-4 inches of snow. The accumulation gradually increased as we increased in elevation.

Once we got to Lake Tear of the Cloud we took a lunch break and fueled up for our final push to the summit. We started searching for the herd path to Gray Peak. The path was elusive at first, but Derek soon picked up the remnants of it, and we were off.

From the beginning of the herd path to the summit is a quick jaunt, about 5-600 ft in elevation. There are several views once above the tree line just before the ridge. We obviously enjoyed them as we proceeded upward.

Soon we were on the ridge and wandered over to the true summit. We found about 6" of fresh snow on the summit.

On our return trip we opted to go out over the lakes. This proved to be a good decision, that initially was based on our energy levels at the time. Walking over frozen lakes on the level is a lot easier than climbing back over lake Arnold and down, about 530' gain and 745' loss. Going down can be just as hard as going up. Going out over the lakes allowed us the reprieve of climbing, but also the exploration of the Mt. Redfield and Mt. Cliff herd paths that we will need to get.

We signed out at 7:30pm.

Start time: 8:00am
End time: 7:30pm
16.05 miles RT
3528 feet of elevation gain.
And then there were 9 remaining.