Retracing Steps | An Adirondack Journal
Waking up at 3am is rarely ideal. Especially if a mere 3.5 hours before, you find yourself sitting in a ground level Helinox chair in the middle of a field–hypnotized by the dim glow of an iPad screen beaming images deep into your sleep deprived brain of the Buffalo Bills getting rolled by the Ravens in primetime. Waking up at 3am then, is just about as far from ideal as you can get. On one of the first cold Adirondack nights of October, my brother and I chose to do just that. We didn’t know why we chose to do so until that first sip of freshly ground coffee at the trailhead of Giant Mountain. 4:15 AM pour overs on the go have a way of starting to make things feel a little more idealistic. Add a few bites of oatmeal, a few deep breaths in the lot, and a few cold miles off the jump and the name “Derrick Henry” is left ever further behind us with every step.
Cameron and I chose to spend our time in the Great Range; summiting Gothics via linking the A.E. Weld trail up to the Pyramid junction. From there we’ll continue on to Armstrong then Upper Wolfjaw, potentially adding Lower Wolfjaw to the traverse before beginning our descent. Prior to any of that, we head out for the first mile up. A quiet, chilly, dark mile—lit only by the red hue of a headlamp, bright stars, and an Ausable Club building that I’ll likely never see the inside of. We elected to take what I find to be the worst part of the hike at the launch; 3 miles up Lake Road on a densely packed dirt road to the Ausable River. 2.5 miles in, there's a brief sense of relief in the trek. Morning fog rolled over the marsh and the sun peaked over the seasonally responsive tree line - pocketing our Petzl headlamps in favor of a light-blue and orange sky. Crossing the handmade wooden bridge over Ausable Chasm felt bittersweet. A momentary pause to take in the tranquility; an acceptance that the next 4 miles are uphill under dense tree coverage until we reach our first elevated vantage point of the hike.
We meander upward through switchbacks and ladders. Weaving a tale of protein packed energy bars, abused camelback tips, musings on our lives, and the chocolate covered espresso beans we purchase every year from Green Goddess in Lake Placid. This trip has become a bit of a reprise for my brother and I. A yearly callback to our childhood of dirt filled sneakers, Wal-Mart tents, and camp fires that nearly engulfed their surroundings. The sneakers graduated to Salomon boots, the tents are lighter than they need to be to travel 24 feet from trunk to dirt, and the campfires are more contained. The song is still the same, though. An autumnal hum with a hi-hat ringing the balance of summer's heat, the bass of an ensuing winter. 3 days of freedom confined only by our willingness to push a mile longer, chop another log, tell another joke.
Just before reaching the peak of Pyramid (which is above 4000 ft. but not defined as a High Peak due to its proximity to Gothics Mountain) we encounter an exposed rock face that looks less than welcoming. The damp granite slabs rest at about 45°, meaning about 10 feet in we toss our hiking poles and go hand to stone, gaining whatever kind of traction is left from a slide that has become polished and smoothed from the millions of times it’s been scaled before. Once we reach the top of the slide we’re met with our first true view of the day. The canopy covered vistas of the Adirondack range in all their sunlit fall glory. Leaves of the once chlorophyll-rich forest breaking down and preparing the woodland for winter. We carry on, passing through Pyramid and moving up toward Gothics. A brief descent into the valley is followed by a sharp ascent up more rock slides beside sub-alpine growth. Rare, fragile, and highly endangered plants that are strong enough to survive thousands of years in this climate of high winds and heavy snowfall.
Gothics is known for having some of the best views in the whole of the Adirondack Range. A range that flows like an Andre 3000 verse before he discovered the flute. We cast our sights onto rivers, opposing peaks, the Green Mountains, and other hikers that probably started their day after us but beat us to the same point. We can see Pyramid if we turn around and Armstrong if we look forward. I indulge in a couple slices of pack-warmed Cabot cheese and, contrary to the label, not Vermont's Best Beef Jerky. Cameron pulled out his Gigapower stove to cook up the standard dehydrated backcountry meal, more honestly labeled “mountain meal”. We pack up and trek towards Armstrong. A peak too close to pass up.
From there, we hit Upper Wolfjaw and begin our descent. The decision to skip Lower Wolfjaw is one we make as swiftly as we’ve made any decision all weekend. The climb up and down would add a few more miles to the end of the hike and the sun sets a lot earlier this time of year. We carried forward. Cameron spends the descent about 100 yards ahead of me, careening over rocks that lay a path for streams in the wet season and recently fallen leaves that will feed the earth beneath them for another year. Following the paths back to Lake Road, we got the sense that although it looked a bit different in the sunlight, it still felt exactly the same. Dirt that has been packed by shuttle-vans adventure seekers, numbingly echoing beneath now-hallowed knees.
We sign out at the end of the trail and make our way once more past the tennis courts and golf courses to the reservation-only lot. Retracing our steps yet again with boots full of dirt, a tent waiting back at camp, and a bag of wood in tow.
CREDITS:
WORDS + PHOTOS: JUSTIN DUSETT