Memories of the Adirondacks

 

Back in my younger days, in the 80’s, 90’s and 2000’s, I spent many pleasant times in New York State’s Adirondack Park.  It was my playground.  In the summer and fall there was canoe camping, car camping in some of the fantastic state campgrounds, day hiking and backpacking, and in the winter there was cross country skiing and snowshoeing.  My mind is racing, as I write this, of all the fun times I had there.

 

I have climbed 17 of the 46 High Peaks, including a few on snowshoes in winter.  My friend, Nancy Lauterbach and I, who unfortunately passed away some years back, spent many great times all over the place up there.  One trip, in particular, stands out as truly splendid.  We were spending a long weekend at a B&B in Keene Valley.  The innkeeper helped us shuttle cars, dropping us off first at our ending to leave a car and then taking us to our beginning.  We spent a wonderful day ski touring the Jack Rabbit Trail from Lake Placid down to Keene Valley.  The weather and snow conditions could not have been any nicer.  For most of the day we had the trail all to ourselves.  The scenery went from snow covered evergreen trees on a flat trail to rolling terrain through a forest of barren trees.  In the middle of the day we stopped at Mt. Van Hoevenburg to enjoy a lunch of hot bowls of chili before continuing on our way.

 

On that same trip, on another day, we decided to climb Cascade Mountain.  What a fiasco!  The snow conditions that day required full crampons on your snowshoes.  Our snowshoes only had a V-shaped metal piece underneath – not crampons.  We struggled along since turning back was not in our vocabulary.  We weren’t doing too badly, albeit slow going, until we came upon an incline, close to a 45 degree angle that was a sheet of ice.  “That’s it, I’m not going up that!” Nancy swore. 

 

“Oh, come on, Nancy, we can figure this out!”  She wouldn’t budge and neither would I.  We were so close to the summit and I wasn’t quitting.  Finally I realized if we held on to the small evergreen bushes/trees along the side, we could pull our way up.  Nancy wasn’t buying it!  I started up without her.  “Hey, this isn’t hard at all!”  I called back to her.  You can do it!  Piece of cake!  It took me maybe ten minutes to get to the top unscathed.  I turned around and tried to talk her into coming on up.  Finally she started up, cussing me and calling me every bad word she could think of along the way.  I had to go behind a bush so she couldn’t see me laughing at her.  She made it to the top and then glared at me, “Just how do you expect us to get back down this death trap?” 

 

“I don’t know.  We’ll figure something out,” I laughed.  As usual, the view from the summit was well worth all our struggles to get there.  On our way back down, we ran into a young man with a full backpack.  We asked him how to get down “that icy spot.”

 

“Oh, that is the fun part!” he smiled.  “I’ll show you”

 

He had an ice pick that ice climbers use.  He taught us to sit down with the pick to your side.  If you wanted to go down slowly, you pushed the pick harder into the ice.  If you wanted to go faster, you put less pressure on it going down.  He demonstrated, then quickly climbed back up, gave the pick to Nancy, who by this time was beginning to think this could be fun!

 

She laughed all the way down and couldn’t wait to get back up to the top to try it again.  After her second trip down, I said, “Hey, Nancy, mind if I get a turn?”

 

That young man probably told everyone he knew about these two crazy women he ran into on Cascade Mountain that day!

 

Rollins Pond Campground is a very popular state run campground that offers miles of paddling opportunities.  You could spend almost a week there and paddle a different destination each day.  One night, the boys were in their tent asleep, thankfully our dog was in her cage in the van.  It was just me and my husband sitting around the campfire.  Suddenly this large animal walked through our campsite and behind our fire pit.  It took a few seconds to realize this was no dog, but a bear, not even 8 feet away from where we were sitting.  “Don!. . . Bear!”  Those were the only words I could get out.  Seconds later we heard a loud crash.  The bear ran into our canoe at the edge of the pond.  That is one night I will never forget!

 

I led many outdoor trips for the local chapter of the Adirondack Mountain Club over the years.  You listed your hike/paddle/whatever in the newsletter and people signed up.  While I did try to screen the participants to ensure they would be able to handle the trip, that was not always fool proof.  Sometimes their definition of their skill level and my definition were not always on the same page.  Take Charlie (not is real name) for example.  It was February and my canoe trip was not until May.  As soon as the trip was announced, I got a call from this older gentleman.  He was so enthusiastic.  He had bought a brand new Wenonah Kevlar canoe and was anxious to get it in the water.  “Oh, yeah, I can handle myself well in a canoe,” he assured me.

 

Fast forward to May.  We were paddling from Blue Mountain Lake down into Utowana Lake and camping at a leanto.  As we all parked our cars, unloaded our gear, Charlie was ahead of us.  This was the first red flag.  His canoe was sitting on a dock, fully loaded with gear, NOT in the water.  We gently told him it might work better if he loaded it in the water.  I had paired him with an experienced paddler who was very patient with him.  Soon we were off and paddling down the lake.  I remember thinking everything was going to be fine.  The weather turned sour and it was either raining – which kept the black flies away – or the rain stopped and the black flies were out in force.  Most of us had prepared to deal with the black flies and we had rain gear. . . then there was Charlie. . .

 

The next morning, I crawled out of the tent to a sunny day.  The only person I saw was Charlie.  “Good Morning, Charlie!”  I smiled.  “How are you?”

“TERRIBLE!  When is the next train out of here?”

 

Oh well, you win some and you lose some.

 

Over about a ten year period, I hiked the 120 mile Northville-Placid Trail.  I have many fond memories of those days on the trail, some over weekend trips but mostly over weeklong trips on the trail.  Some with close friends, Nancy among those, and others with folks that signed up for my trips through the ADK.  I had the pleasure of introducing a few people to the joys of backpacking who were ever so grateful to me for.

 

On one of those trips, it was just Nancy and me, for a week long trek.  She brought along a 2 pound roll of German sausage.  Now 2 pounds on a backpacking trip is a lot of weight!  I didn’t really care for it, although I ate some of it with crackers.  It really was way too much for the two of us.  We talked about ways to get rid of it, but truthfully, throwing it away on the ground, or in an outhouse was just more than we could justify.  About the third day out, we ran into a couple who were hiking the trail end-to-end over three weeks.  For that kind of trip, you REALLY have to pack lightly!  We struck up a conversation with them and immediately, it was clear, these guys were GERMAN!!!  I looked at Nancy and she looked at me.  Finally, I think it was her that asked them if they would like to have our German sausage.  Their faces lit up with joy!  They had been eating rice cakes, dehydrated food, and crackers.  You would think we were giving them a treasure chest full of gold!  They were happy to get the sausage and we were glad to get rid of it!

 

I love all kinds of cooking and baking and learned to do camp dutch oven cooking with my canoe and car camping trips. . . kind of hard carrying a heavy cast iron oven on a hike!  As much as I love camp dutch oven cooking, even more so did I thrill to the response I got from campers who didn’t know what that was all about and were not expecting a delicious meal cooked over hot coals deep in the woods!    Years after one of those trips, I ran into one of the participants. . . I had actually forgotten about him, but he remembered me!  He raved about how he remembered that dutch oven meal and what a big surprise it was for him.  That was his first ever canoe camping trip!

 

These and so many more precious memories will stay with me for the rest of my life.  I have truly been blessed by my experiences in the outdoors of the Adirondacks