Marcy Dam and Tabletop with vid and pics: 2/20/10

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Chip

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Puck stayed at my place in western CT Thursday night and we left for the Adirondacks at 3am. We were to meet Paradox at the Loj parking lot at 7:30. We needed every minute of the 4 1/2 hours allotted for the trip and were signing the register at about 8am with full winter overnight packs, heading for Algonquin (and maybe Wright and Iroquois and Avalanche, but...http://www.vftt.org/forums/showthread.php?t=34762).

After the Algonquin adventure, we left Paradox at the intersection and headed out Whale's Tail Trail towards Marcy Dam. Yes, we hiked a ski trail and I'm not even sure it saved us any time, a little distance maybe. Now 15 hours into our day, we were happy to find an empty shelter. We set up, boiled water, melted snow, shared cookies, MRE's and Puck's home-fermented Applejack :D. There was also Kosher Beef Salami, but after Paradox's report, I hesitate to mention that here ;). Lights-Out was about 7pm. Sleep wasn't bad, but always is better near dawn, for some reason, so we slept late. I don't think we started to move until 8:15 and by the time we had cooked, cleaned and left it was almost 10am.

We had planned to bag Phelps and Tabletop but, due to our late start, heavy packs, sore backs and the pending Gathering that evening, we decided to pass on Phelps and just get up and off Tabletop. My previously infallible sense of direction being suddenly fallible this weekend, we naturally missed the cut-off for Tabletop. I mistakenly assumed it would be on the foot trail :rolleyes:. Soon after Indian Falls I checked the map again and we turned back to locate the cut-off at the top of the ski trail ! Thanks to Imarchant for telling me before hand EXACTLY where it was, I simply failed to commit his direction to paper or memory. I am slipping.

The "herd path" up Tabletop is a trail, if you're a Hobbit. The snow and ice had further narrowed an already narrow path. It was pretty steep going. Getting snow dumped down our necks and wrestling our full packs back from the shrubbery added to the brief challenge. We were happy to summit at about 12:30 and to head back down again. Back at the cut-off to Phelps we reconsidered "dropping our packs in the Col" :eek: to complete that peak but assured ourselves we'd be happier at 5pm if we weren't still on the trail; There was a hot shower at The Jack Rabbit and a gathering at The Ark Trail waiting, afterall. We ran into Tom, Laurie, Coldfeet and Mike at Marcy Dam and completed our hike with them. Good thing Tom was there, as I almost completed the day on yet another ski trail :D.

The ADKHighPeaks.com Foundation Gathering was a great time and deserves its own "Trip Report". Thanks to Neil, Rik, et al, for organizing. I had the pleasure of meeting many great people with recognizable names who will now be recognized, friendly faces.

Here's a vid of us at the summit.

Here's my pics.
 
I love your laid back way of saying "which is now one of my least favorite summits in the Northeast." and "Crawling though frozen ass." HAHAHAHA! I hear you. On a nice day you can hike a little further down the trail and see some nice-ish views of Marcy. :D
 
So tell me, why not just bring a day pack's worth of stuff to the peaks and leave the rest stashed or in a lean-to? Security concerns?
:p

We figured; Until someone pays us to do these things, it's all exercise, so we kept the gear with us. That and not wanting to upset anyone for "leaving the packs in the Col" on a winter outing !

Thanks for the kind words on the vids. I encourage anyone that carries a decent digital camera to get a larger capacity card and start taking video. It's a lot of fun to have these afterwards.
 
LOL!
So tell me, why not just bring a day pack's worth of stuff to the peaks and leave the rest stashed or in a lean-to? Security concerns?

Paradox also made a passionate plea that we never leave our packs in a col.
 
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Sounds like fun; sorry I missed it. Count me in for next year, though.

Can't view the video here at work, but I checked out the pics. My inner-Ansel-Adams wants to dope-slap you for not cleaning the shmutz off the camera lens.

Or maybe you were going after that soft-focus effect on purpose? (To go along with the wine, cheese and Barry White...) ;)
 
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