Layback
New member
Despite the fact that Susie and I were engaged near Marcy Dam in late fall of 2003, the reality that we're continuing to pursue the 46 from 3,000 miles away, and the fact that Dan (#1863) visits the Daks every fall, neither Susie nor I have ever shared a trip to the Adirondacks with my father-in-law. So needless to say that when the opportunity presented itself we were excited to take advantage of it!
Susie, Dan and I hiked into JBL on Sunday afternoon. Moving somewhat quickly, I shaved 2 minutes off of my fastest time to the loj and arrived 1 hour and 13 minutes after leaving The Garden. Perhaps it was my ridiculouslylight pack…
We shared JBL with Brendan, the exceptionally cool caretaker, and about 10 total guests. There were a couple of really nice ladies from NH and a pair of brothers who would be finishing the ADK 46 and the NE 111 on top of Haystack on Monday morning. Everyone was great.
We woke up Monday morning at 6:30 a.m. and were off by 7:30 a.m. Susie and I marched west towards the Ore Bed Trail and Gothics. Dan, who has recently undergone his second knee replacement (and is finally able to hike again properly after a 3 year hiatus), headed up the trail towards Upper Wolf Jaw to rendezvous with us along our ridge run.
The last time I spent any time on the Ore Bed Trail was during a descent after having bagged Marcy, Haystack, Basin and Saddleback. This was pre-Irene. Needless to say I was super excited to see first hand all of the debris and the changes that have been made to the trail. I can honestly say that Irene hitting that trail was a good thing. I was super-impressed by the trail work that was done to install the new steps.
We were on top of Gothics by around 10:00 a.m. Since it's such a fantastic summit we allowed ourselves a good thirty minutes at it's apex (agreeing that we'd just spend a minute or two on top of Armstrong in consideration of Dan). We did the usual photo-taking, view-appreciating, yodeling (since I'm Swiss it's required), etc. and managed to eat some chocolate to celebrate another summit. I won't bore you with any more of the details.
After a quick descent of Gothics we went up the west ridge of Armstrong and bagged Susie's 2nd new summit of the day.
On the descent from Armstrong I decided to yodel some more and yell out to Dan to see if he could hear us. He yelled back and I spotted him about 50 feet below the summit of Upper Wolf Jaw. He unfortunately, couldn't see me as I was in thick trees. So decided to do something about that and quickly joined him on the summit.
It was really great to share our first ADK summit with Dan. I made him and Susie pose for a number of photos and then Dan pointed out some of the summits that I'm not familiar with and shared stories of trips past. Regrettably, the time on summit together wasn't more than 30 or 45 minutes. Dan wanted to get down while we were bagging Lower Wolf Jaw and then we had the hike out to The Garden ahead of us.
Looking across to Lower Wolf Jaw I was reminded why my friends and I had bailed on the summit the last time I was up on the ridge. As you know it appears to be quite a distance and a fair amount of elevation drop and gain. I reminded myself that I was looking at Cripple Brush on the summit and that the drop and distance were a bit of an optical allusion and headed off. Half right about the view I had seen, we arrived on top of Lower Wolf Jaw a little worn out. We took some more photos and quickly descended to join Dan at JBL.
The descent back to The Garden was spent dreaming of the wonderful food that would eventually await us at the Noonmark Diner, which is a requirement on every trip back to the Daks.
Joe: 19/46 (1 new summit)
Susie: 10/46 (4 new summits)
Full set on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/7696568@N04/sets/72157635500866369/
Susie, Dan and I hiked into JBL on Sunday afternoon. Moving somewhat quickly, I shaved 2 minutes off of my fastest time to the loj and arrived 1 hour and 13 minutes after leaving The Garden. Perhaps it was my ridiculouslylight pack…
We shared JBL with Brendan, the exceptionally cool caretaker, and about 10 total guests. There were a couple of really nice ladies from NH and a pair of brothers who would be finishing the ADK 46 and the NE 111 on top of Haystack on Monday morning. Everyone was great.
We woke up Monday morning at 6:30 a.m. and were off by 7:30 a.m. Susie and I marched west towards the Ore Bed Trail and Gothics. Dan, who has recently undergone his second knee replacement (and is finally able to hike again properly after a 3 year hiatus), headed up the trail towards Upper Wolf Jaw to rendezvous with us along our ridge run.
The last time I spent any time on the Ore Bed Trail was during a descent after having bagged Marcy, Haystack, Basin and Saddleback. This was pre-Irene. Needless to say I was super excited to see first hand all of the debris and the changes that have been made to the trail. I can honestly say that Irene hitting that trail was a good thing. I was super-impressed by the trail work that was done to install the new steps.
We were on top of Gothics by around 10:00 a.m. Since it's such a fantastic summit we allowed ourselves a good thirty minutes at it's apex (agreeing that we'd just spend a minute or two on top of Armstrong in consideration of Dan). We did the usual photo-taking, view-appreciating, yodeling (since I'm Swiss it's required), etc. and managed to eat some chocolate to celebrate another summit. I won't bore you with any more of the details.
After a quick descent of Gothics we went up the west ridge of Armstrong and bagged Susie's 2nd new summit of the day.
On the descent from Armstrong I decided to yodel some more and yell out to Dan to see if he could hear us. He yelled back and I spotted him about 50 feet below the summit of Upper Wolf Jaw. He unfortunately, couldn't see me as I was in thick trees. So decided to do something about that and quickly joined him on the summit.
It was really great to share our first ADK summit with Dan. I made him and Susie pose for a number of photos and then Dan pointed out some of the summits that I'm not familiar with and shared stories of trips past. Regrettably, the time on summit together wasn't more than 30 or 45 minutes. Dan wanted to get down while we were bagging Lower Wolf Jaw and then we had the hike out to The Garden ahead of us.
Looking across to Lower Wolf Jaw I was reminded why my friends and I had bailed on the summit the last time I was up on the ridge. As you know it appears to be quite a distance and a fair amount of elevation drop and gain. I reminded myself that I was looking at Cripple Brush on the summit and that the drop and distance were a bit of an optical allusion and headed off. Half right about the view I had seen, we arrived on top of Lower Wolf Jaw a little worn out. We took some more photos and quickly descended to join Dan at JBL.
The descent back to The Garden was spent dreaming of the wonderful food that would eventually await us at the Noonmark Diner, which is a requirement on every trip back to the Daks.
Joe: 19/46 (1 new summit)
Susie: 10/46 (4 new summits)
Full set on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/7696568@N04/sets/72157635500866369/
