ADK – High Peaks 09

(view from Gothics)

Well I am back from my first trip up to the Adirondacks and had an absolute blast. My cousin and I had been planning a trip for about a year and decided on trying to do the Great Range. We didnt get to finish, but that only means we have another trip to plan up there.

Day 1: We arrived in the Garden parking lot around 2am on Thursday. Since we didnt feel like night hiking to one of the lean-tos we ended up trying to sleep in the car. After tossing and turning for almost 6 hours we gave up any hope of catching any sleep and just decided to pack up and head out.
We figured that we would start at Roostercomb and finish up back at the Garden. So we walked back into town and had breakfast at the Noon Mark Diner. After a decent meal we dragged ourselves another 1/4 mile down the road and started out ascent of Roostercomb.
The weather was nice and the climb was not to bad with full packs and bear cans (my gearlist can be seen here: NE Gear List ). We both took our time and neither of us was looking to set any speed records this trip. I have to say that the view from both the Valley View Ledge and the summit of Roostercomb was impressive. We sat down for a bit and then made our way up to Hedgehog. The ascent and descent of Hedgehog was uneventful and since there are no views at the summit we made our way over to Lower Wolf Jaw. At this point the weather started to change and we had the pleasure of getting cooled off by a little rain, but we also lost all visibility due to the encroaching cloud cover.
Lower Wolf Jaw was a blast to climb. We got to the top and the weather started to break a bit so we were treated to some limited views of the range and of the valley. We also figured that it was good time for lunch and ended up spending a bit too long at the summit. Since we did not really have an actual goal for this trip we figured that we would just head down to the Wolf Jay lean-to and set up shop for the night since the 2 hours of sleep we had wasnt exactly getting us through the day very well. On the decent down LWJ I managed to take a hard fall after some mud gave away from under me and I landed on my shoulder (still sore BTW). As I started to pick myself up my cousin stepped down to see if I was ok and fell in the exact same spot! The rest of the descent was uneventful, but still fairly steep.
We made it over to the WJ lean to without any incidents and ended up sharing the lean-to with 2 guys from the MA area. They were good company and I was reminded how cool it is to be able to share a meal and good conversation with complete strangers while out.

Day 2: We actually managed to get more than 2 hours of sleep so we got up early and headed out pretty quickly after breakfast. (sorry work calls, will finish up later…..)