Adirondacks

The sun was piercing annoyingly through my polarized sunglasses on the afternoon of October 21st as I sat in the car. Just this once I got to put my legs up even though my Dad opposes this practice because he says it leaves footprints on the window. My ticket was the hard workout I’d completed less than an hour ago, and no one wants deep-vein thrombosis after a threshold run. The trip to Lake Placid was a relatively good one, as car trips go. 5.5 hours passed quickly enough, with pizza and ice cream breaks, and I got away with only driving once; not for a very long time, at that. I scraped through some of an AP American outline before my lovely laptop ran out of batteries. I have never loved that piece of machinery so much. The usual wave of excitement came when the road signs switched to brown and yellow, the Adirondack colors. When we finally zoomed to Comfort Inn in LP, I was overjoyed to find that my hotel room did not lock. Perfect! I love being vulnerable! Actually, that is a lie, so I quickly switched my room keys for my father’s whilst he puttered about unknowingly, unpacking the trunk. I took a heavenly shower, and, as they say in cowboy-ville, “hit the sack.” Only the sack in my case was an unclean bedspread covering a distasteful purple fuzzy blanket. Fortunately, I had foreseen that sort of a dilemma and had brought my own blanket, with the side bonus there being pictures of dinosaurs on it. The next morning I awoke to the peaceful sound of my Dad pounding loudly on the door. Thinking the hotel had possibly been set on fire, I actually got out of bed, ready to escape death. The urgency, however, was not for such an infinitesimal reason. Had I known breakfast was only being served for another half an hour, my awakening would have been much quicker. Outside, a layer of fog was draped heavily over any sizeable object, making normal vision difficult and confusing. I hoped the visibility would be better on the mountain. After a top quality continental breakfast, we headed out to Keene Valley to get down to business. I pulled up to the parking lot of the Adirondack Loj, the epicenter of Adirondack hiking. This is unfortunate. I believe that the spelling of “Loj” (pronounced “lodge”) is ironic and upsetting. In a society where people are too indolent to spell entire words such as “night” and ancient traditions of language are lost in the twisted simplicity of modernity, I consider it a blow and an insult to hope that even in the paramount of culture could such an offense to language exist. Please take the time to include the extra letters; I think it’s worth it. Inside, I rented a pair of stabilizers, which I considered to be like cross country spikes for mountain climbing. My biggest conclusion in reflection of the climb would be that I could really use a pair of crampons. Also, they make you look good. In touristy high spirits, I also purchased a little emblem that said “Algonquin Mountain” on it. I hiked to Marcy Dam, thus making my first mistake barely two miles into the day. I hightailed it back to the turnoff for Algonquin, which I’d missed over a mile ago. This added a few miles and some precious time to my day, which had been carefully calculated to squeeze between the waning hours of daylight. My little headlamp, whose use I thought inevitable, began to command much of my respect and passion. The mountain was drop-dead gorgeous, as expected, with its crunchy orange leaves strewn quaintly across the rocky trail. Much to my delight, curls of hoarfrost lined the trail. These are formed when water is pushed out of pores in the ground and freezes. Comparable to those contraptions where you stick the play-doh in between the two clamps, one of which has holes in it, and “spaghetti” comes out when you squeeze them together. But mostly I just like saying the name hoarfrost, for obvious reasons dealing with pronunciation. After a while the dripping streams of water began to turn to thick sheets of ice. This was doubly good news because it was also the point where things really started getting steep, my favorite part of climbing. In fact, there is little I like more on this planet than looking straight up and seeing my destination looming directly vertical above me. A fair amount of ice climbing later, at .9 miles to the summit, I looked off to my right to see a massive, rounded peak of rock slabs slashed with criss-crossing striations left from the glaciers, which was, indeed, the top of the mountain. Once the thinning trees gave way to bare rock, I followed the yellow paint stripes and cairns up so as not to crush the endangered arctic vegetation. On top, I surveyed my environs to find that I knew many of the surrounding mountains. In an emotional state of glee, I called Lindsey and attempted to call others, but reception isn’t the best at the second highest point in New York State. I scampered down the mountain parallel to a striking waterfall and tried to regain feeling in my hands. I noted the peculiar lack of ice on the descent; the North side had been far more treacherous, if less steep. At almost 2 o’clock I passed an underdressed, jean-clad party of clearly ignorant hikers, who said they aimed to summit and then make it over the other side, undoubtedly before dark. I wished them luck, and then made a note not to read the paper tomorrow so I wouldn’t have to see their obituaries. After the ground leveled out, I turned onto the blue trail and passed Lake Colden. Mount Colden rose from its tranquil waters in a rounded cone of strapping grace. However, Avalanche Lake, so named for a snow slide that swept its slope clean thousands of years ago, paled Colden in comparison. Avalanche Lake sat placidly between two cliffs that shot up on either side, huge black rock ledges facing each other, the lake a buffer between their tremendous presences. I followed a trail right along the cliffs, balancing on narrow ledges directly over the dark but clear water. If I looked at the cliffs for too long, I felt dizzy and about the size of a mosquito. They were powerful, conquering, and spectacular. I got a big kick out of looking at the GPS, which displayed Algonquin as a giant spike. I started getting really jazzed up after seeing Avalanche Lake and took to bursts of running en route. I got back to Marcy Dam via a trail along a roaring brook, and took the Dam trail back to the Loj. I took the damn trail back to the Loj. The second I got in the car it started to rain. Amazing, really. Driving through Lake Placid I picked up some hearty peanut butter fudge from an all-time favorite candy store. With the rain drumming on the windows and Dave Matthews strumming out his mellow tunes in the background, it was easy to fall asleep in the car, a good ending to a good experience.