ADK Rick
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- Oct 6, 2003
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I am having a banner year weather-wise. I have been up to the high peaks on probably the 3 single best weather days of the year, and this one was just about perfect. Low humidity, cool temps, great views.-Pictures Here-
Drove up from Albany weds eve after a delightful dinner with an old friend I have kept in contact with, but haven't actually seen face to face in more than 20 years. Checked in at the Ark Trail Inn, which I recommend for its modest prices and friendly service, not to mention its location. $42/night is about as good as it gets for a decent room with bathroom, & the proprieters are very charming.
Overslept a little but still hit the trail at the Atomospheric Research Center at 6:05 am. Morning chilly, a little fog hanging over the Ausable, but otherwise crystal clear after the cold front blew through the day before. A relief after the hot & sticky from the past several days.
The trail up Marble Mountain is more grown in than in my imagination, since it used to be a ski trail. It is also a very rude awakening very early in the morning..there is no level hiking to get stretched out on. Rocky, with lots of round little rollers to trip you up. I discovered on the way back down that there is an intermittant parallel side trail..I recommend it if nothing else, for safety's sake.
Made the summit of Marble at 6:50, fog still hanging over the lower valleys. I was tickled to discover that I could see my breath for most of the morning, a real novelty after the recent hot weather. I calculated that I was averaging about 100 WPM (webs per mile), including a really sticky full-facer where in my mind there was a spider the size of a silver dollar clinging to the back of my head.
Picked up the main trail and took a nice detour up to the wide ledge on the north flank of Lookout. To find this ledge, look for a spot where the trail bends left at the base of a slab, with an arrow and sign to help direct you. Keep going straight up the slab to some very nice views. I took a nice break here.
There is a designated campsite a short distance beyond the ledge. I always wondered if there were any such sites up here. Shortly thereafter is the "sled house" which I photographed since I have never seen any pictures of it, even though it is in in all the trail guides/trip reports. Another few minutes and the painfully obvious cairn for Esther appears smack dab in the middle of the trail. I saw the old herdpath before this, but it is now covered with blowdown at the beginning to discourage its use.
I decided to do Whiteface first, for several reasons:
1. Get up there early & avoid as much of the tourista as possible
2. Everyone seems to do Esther first and I need to be different!
3. My uncle (46r #1387) finished on Esther, so he must have done Whiteface first
4. This reason didnt occur to me until I was on top of Esther later in the day....but Whiteface looks very daunting from the Esther summit & I was glad that it was behind me at the time!
It had begun to get quite muddy just before the cairn, & it got REALLY muddy after it. I knew that this area is prone to wetness, and the hard rain the day before didnt help. What I wasnt prepared for was how "close" this trail is in many places. I was getting soaked from below, & from the sides, too. I adjusted my attire several times, but it was little warm for the gore-tex to be comfortable & a little too cold for the continued soaking I was getting.
There is a nice little pond right in the middle of the trail a little ways after the cairn. It contains one of my favorite funny trail sights..a lone tree with a trail marker on it surrounded by 8-inch deep water. I ended up going in over my boot-tops and getting a good soaking (forgot my gaiters..Dang!). I move that this trail be officially dubbed the "Wetface" trail.
After this long wet stretch you begin to climb & eventually you start to hear cars above you. Suddenly the quite imposing retaining wall for the Wilmington Turn on the Whiteface Highway is right in front of you. Appx 10 minutes before you get to the Wilmington turn there is a very appealing and very illegal camping spot with a fire ring.
I heard voices above & I was treated to my first "Whiteface Moment" of the day. A couple with their 2 grandkids were up there, & they had that perfect look of amazement when I emerged ."You came up from the bottom?" I took in the view for a moment and moved on. Shortly after this you break timberline & the climb gets really fun. Looks like there would be a ton of blueberries along here in season.
Above timberline hiking always seems to go twice as fast, & presently I emerged below the observatory. Feeling a little playful I asked the two heavy-set fellows working on the generator, "You guys walk up here every day, right?" Deadpan response, "No". So much for humour. I called, "I dont blame you!" over my shoulder as I had a brief surreal moment where I walked through the warm diesel exhaust before hauling myself up the wall & onto the observation deck.
Only one person on the deck, bundled in a jacket. It was still a fog bank on the south side of the mountain, so I enjoyed the views to the north and west, checked out the thermometer (44 degrees @ 9:15!) & witnessed more people huffing up the trail from the parking lot. Presently, the folks I saw at the Wilmington turn came up, surprised that I beat them there. I hung around for a while, briefly enjoying the surrealism of sharing the summit with these other people..I say briefly because it gets old quick. I heard the words "four thousand eight hundred sixty seven feet above sea level" spoken into cell phones at least 10 times. Parents shouting at their kids to stay away from the edges. I was tickled however, when I heard one of the little girls from the Wilmington Turn say into a cell phone..."Mom, guess what? I met a guy who climbed all the way from the bottom! Can I do that someday, too?" Oh, and the tourists are also good for one other purpose...they can take a nice photograph of you where its not crooked from balancing the camera on a rock or a tree branch while trying to get a self-timer portrait.
The views to the south opened up but the high peaks remained socked in during my summit stay.
After a full half hour of this nonsense I headed back down the trail. No other hikers encountered to this point. I was back at the cairn in an hour (10:45) and headed over to Esther. Also a mud wallow after the rain. I had a great VFFT moment at one point, where I was trying to skirt a deep wallow (just on the edge, mind you, and not through the trees) and got hung up in a thorn bush for my trouble. I smiled to myself as I thought that Pete Hickey would have thought this was my punishment for potentially widening the trail...in fact I think someone should search his backpack...I bet he has thorn bush seedlings in there along with his chainsaw!
Encounted my first other hiker just below the Esther summit, another solo hiker. Made the summit of Esther 45 minutes after leaving the cairn...and its a really easy 45 minutes, too, with hardly any climbing to speak of. Since I had the summit to myself I did a complete "wardrobe change" and dried out the socks some, and had a nice 1/2 hour break just to soak up some sun. The high peaks that I couldn't seem from Whiteface because they were socked in were now visible in the distance. A pair of ravens circled me and loudly chastised me for my trespassing. I headed back at noon and encountered two more groups. The first was a father son team with an unleashed but well behaved black lab. The father looks down at my legs and says, "Looks like you've seen some mud". I was about to respond that yes indeed it is muddy ahead when I realized that they had already come through the worst of it...with no mud visible on their boots above the soles. I guess I must be like the hiking equivalent of pigpen...a little cloud of mud follows me around and covers me from the thighs down.
Back to the cairn at 12:35 and then down the trail for the return leg. I met several other parties, each more unprepared than the last. I hate it when they ask for advice (I know there was already a whole thread dedicated to this topic) because its literally potentially life and death questions they are asking.
The Marble Mountain Deathmarch took as long as to descend as to ascend. The round rollers are particularily treacherous with tired wheels. I returned to the car at about 2:15. Easy day hike. My uncle always said it took 2 days to do these mountains right, but I am beginning to suspect that he just liked to camp out.
Back down the northway, stop at Stewarts for a coffee milkshake, and back to CT in time to see my daughter off to bed. Just about the perfect day.
By the way, went though 2.5 liters on this cool day. I had two 22 oz bottles in reserve so I had plenty of liquid.
No biting bugs seen all day.
ADK Rick
Drove up from Albany weds eve after a delightful dinner with an old friend I have kept in contact with, but haven't actually seen face to face in more than 20 years. Checked in at the Ark Trail Inn, which I recommend for its modest prices and friendly service, not to mention its location. $42/night is about as good as it gets for a decent room with bathroom, & the proprieters are very charming.
Overslept a little but still hit the trail at the Atomospheric Research Center at 6:05 am. Morning chilly, a little fog hanging over the Ausable, but otherwise crystal clear after the cold front blew through the day before. A relief after the hot & sticky from the past several days.
The trail up Marble Mountain is more grown in than in my imagination, since it used to be a ski trail. It is also a very rude awakening very early in the morning..there is no level hiking to get stretched out on. Rocky, with lots of round little rollers to trip you up. I discovered on the way back down that there is an intermittant parallel side trail..I recommend it if nothing else, for safety's sake.
Made the summit of Marble at 6:50, fog still hanging over the lower valleys. I was tickled to discover that I could see my breath for most of the morning, a real novelty after the recent hot weather. I calculated that I was averaging about 100 WPM (webs per mile), including a really sticky full-facer where in my mind there was a spider the size of a silver dollar clinging to the back of my head.
Picked up the main trail and took a nice detour up to the wide ledge on the north flank of Lookout. To find this ledge, look for a spot where the trail bends left at the base of a slab, with an arrow and sign to help direct you. Keep going straight up the slab to some very nice views. I took a nice break here.
There is a designated campsite a short distance beyond the ledge. I always wondered if there were any such sites up here. Shortly thereafter is the "sled house" which I photographed since I have never seen any pictures of it, even though it is in in all the trail guides/trip reports. Another few minutes and the painfully obvious cairn for Esther appears smack dab in the middle of the trail. I saw the old herdpath before this, but it is now covered with blowdown at the beginning to discourage its use.
I decided to do Whiteface first, for several reasons:
1. Get up there early & avoid as much of the tourista as possible
2. Everyone seems to do Esther first and I need to be different!
3. My uncle (46r #1387) finished on Esther, so he must have done Whiteface first
4. This reason didnt occur to me until I was on top of Esther later in the day....but Whiteface looks very daunting from the Esther summit & I was glad that it was behind me at the time!
It had begun to get quite muddy just before the cairn, & it got REALLY muddy after it. I knew that this area is prone to wetness, and the hard rain the day before didnt help. What I wasnt prepared for was how "close" this trail is in many places. I was getting soaked from below, & from the sides, too. I adjusted my attire several times, but it was little warm for the gore-tex to be comfortable & a little too cold for the continued soaking I was getting.
There is a nice little pond right in the middle of the trail a little ways after the cairn. It contains one of my favorite funny trail sights..a lone tree with a trail marker on it surrounded by 8-inch deep water. I ended up going in over my boot-tops and getting a good soaking (forgot my gaiters..Dang!). I move that this trail be officially dubbed the "Wetface" trail.
After this long wet stretch you begin to climb & eventually you start to hear cars above you. Suddenly the quite imposing retaining wall for the Wilmington Turn on the Whiteface Highway is right in front of you. Appx 10 minutes before you get to the Wilmington turn there is a very appealing and very illegal camping spot with a fire ring.
I heard voices above & I was treated to my first "Whiteface Moment" of the day. A couple with their 2 grandkids were up there, & they had that perfect look of amazement when I emerged ."You came up from the bottom?" I took in the view for a moment and moved on. Shortly after this you break timberline & the climb gets really fun. Looks like there would be a ton of blueberries along here in season.
Above timberline hiking always seems to go twice as fast, & presently I emerged below the observatory. Feeling a little playful I asked the two heavy-set fellows working on the generator, "You guys walk up here every day, right?" Deadpan response, "No". So much for humour. I called, "I dont blame you!" over my shoulder as I had a brief surreal moment where I walked through the warm diesel exhaust before hauling myself up the wall & onto the observation deck.
Only one person on the deck, bundled in a jacket. It was still a fog bank on the south side of the mountain, so I enjoyed the views to the north and west, checked out the thermometer (44 degrees @ 9:15!) & witnessed more people huffing up the trail from the parking lot. Presently, the folks I saw at the Wilmington turn came up, surprised that I beat them there. I hung around for a while, briefly enjoying the surrealism of sharing the summit with these other people..I say briefly because it gets old quick. I heard the words "four thousand eight hundred sixty seven feet above sea level" spoken into cell phones at least 10 times. Parents shouting at their kids to stay away from the edges. I was tickled however, when I heard one of the little girls from the Wilmington Turn say into a cell phone..."Mom, guess what? I met a guy who climbed all the way from the bottom! Can I do that someday, too?" Oh, and the tourists are also good for one other purpose...they can take a nice photograph of you where its not crooked from balancing the camera on a rock or a tree branch while trying to get a self-timer portrait.
The views to the south opened up but the high peaks remained socked in during my summit stay.
After a full half hour of this nonsense I headed back down the trail. No other hikers encountered to this point. I was back at the cairn in an hour (10:45) and headed over to Esther. Also a mud wallow after the rain. I had a great VFFT moment at one point, where I was trying to skirt a deep wallow (just on the edge, mind you, and not through the trees) and got hung up in a thorn bush for my trouble. I smiled to myself as I thought that Pete Hickey would have thought this was my punishment for potentially widening the trail...in fact I think someone should search his backpack...I bet he has thorn bush seedlings in there along with his chainsaw!
Encounted my first other hiker just below the Esther summit, another solo hiker. Made the summit of Esther 45 minutes after leaving the cairn...and its a really easy 45 minutes, too, with hardly any climbing to speak of. Since I had the summit to myself I did a complete "wardrobe change" and dried out the socks some, and had a nice 1/2 hour break just to soak up some sun. The high peaks that I couldn't seem from Whiteface because they were socked in were now visible in the distance. A pair of ravens circled me and loudly chastised me for my trespassing. I headed back at noon and encountered two more groups. The first was a father son team with an unleashed but well behaved black lab. The father looks down at my legs and says, "Looks like you've seen some mud". I was about to respond that yes indeed it is muddy ahead when I realized that they had already come through the worst of it...with no mud visible on their boots above the soles. I guess I must be like the hiking equivalent of pigpen...a little cloud of mud follows me around and covers me from the thighs down.
Back to the cairn at 12:35 and then down the trail for the return leg. I met several other parties, each more unprepared than the last. I hate it when they ask for advice (I know there was already a whole thread dedicated to this topic) because its literally potentially life and death questions they are asking.
The Marble Mountain Deathmarch took as long as to descend as to ascend. The round rollers are particularily treacherous with tired wheels. I returned to the car at about 2:15. Easy day hike. My uncle always said it took 2 days to do these mountains right, but I am beginning to suspect that he just liked to camp out.
Back down the northway, stop at Stewarts for a coffee milkshake, and back to CT in time to see my daughter off to bed. Just about the perfect day.
By the way, went though 2.5 liters on this cool day. I had two 22 oz bottles in reserve so I had plenty of liquid.
No biting bugs seen all day.
ADK Rick
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