Bearpen & Vly and WHP 12/11, 12/12/2010

Goodness the Catskills are boring! Or maybe it’s just the TR section of the forum.  Did anybody besides elkhiker hike this weekend?

I’ll keep this short because I know you don’t care (not that I care if you care or not, even if you did).  Saturday’s hike was Bearpen & Vly from Heisinger Road with debmonster (aka Baby Carrots), ValleyGirlHikes (aka Poison Ivy, Valtron), FatVegan and Vladimir (aka I have no idea but this guy’s a f*cken animal).  Here’s the tracklog over at my EveryTrail page.

After picking the girls up in NYC, we drove up to meet Vladimir at the Halcott PA on 42 and stuck him in the back of FV’s Toyota Yaris:

which is just about the size of that picture. Between the two of us, it’s “the big car.”

Then we drove over to Heisinger Road, parked, peed and headed up Bearpen. We hit the trail around 10:30 or so (fellow forum members on this hike, please correct me if I’m wrong).  A couple of hours later, we were at the summit of Bearpen, despite my initial boo-boo of taking us up the tongue on the left-hand (eastern) side of the brook, which actually turns out to be correct because it avoids the private land.  Mikie’s post (linq) would have been useful research, but I only do research for money.  Yes, I do other things for money too, but that’s not important in the context of this TR, so stop what you’re thinking right now, mister.  Pervert.

No, seriously:  stop it.

There were about 8 inches of fluffy snow on the ground (probably washed away at this point by the nor’easter), and though one or two of us mentioned that snowshoes would have been nice here and there, microspikes did the trick just fine.  When they didn’t fall off our feet because we can’t bear to part with old-friend microspikes and get new ones.  Debbie.  Finding the ro-ads depicted in de pictures in Mikie’s post were a special kind of joy.  I particularly enjoyed the steep parts and the fact that I was totally overdressed in long johns.  Sweating through them at different points during the day was simply delicious.

The summit was a winter wonderland, untouched by human feet.  We saw some bear tracks on the way up, but they were from a boy bear, so I didn’t follow them this time.  Once on the summit, we followed the snowmobile trails down and around an in and out and somehow ended at the hunter’s cabin, despite the best efforts of the snowmobile trails to get us lost and confused (which was too bad, because I was really kind of hoping to go all Lord of the Flies on FatVegan and Vladimir and keep the women for myself).  The NY/NJ TC maps have some of these trails on them and that was helpful as well.

We ate some lunch in the saddle, looking fondly at the smoke rising from the hunter’s cabin (and the ceiling fan on the inside).  FatVegan wanted to burn it down and eat the hunters (apparently, cannibalism is acceptable within veganism – not that it matters to me:  I’ll eat anything), but I said no.

Then we went up to the top of Vly, signed in at the canister and headed back down to the saddle and north on “Route 3″ – we chose to exercise our bail-out option because we only had a couple of extra hours of daylight left and we didn’t want to be ‘wacking in the cold dark snow over South Vly, Sleeping Lion and Hawkit.  That makes us smart hikers, you effin lurker no0bs.

Dinner and more belly-laughing at Brio’s, followed by a relatively uneventful (not) ride home.

We parked at the end of Heisinger Road, near the DEC signs, but still got a nasty note fingered into the scum on the back of FatVegan’s car from Mr. Heisinger stating “private property, [unprintable]“.  Just kidding, it was printable, but I don’t remember what it said.  Anybody know anything about any other issues parking at the end of this road?  We weren’t blocking any of the gates.  Maybe it was our route – it looks like Mikie made a left right out of the gate, while we went straight up and did in fact  step on some private land.  Good intentions/road to hell.

Debbie is now 37/39, with only Halcott and Blackhead-in-the-winter to go.  Vladimir has Graham, DT, BI, Fir and maybe one more to go, and ValleyGirlHikes has no idea how many she has left to go “but I’m sure it’s only a few.”  Right.

On Sunday I cliimbed WHP in the nor’easter with my sister Katie.  This was 5/39 for her and while I’m sure I’m not as good a guide/teacher with her as Woolybear is/was with his brother Karol, I’m pretty sure Katie’s better looking than Karol, so there.

Not much to say on that one.  We did it the “regular” route from Peck Road in Maplecrest.  Where there was snow and ice on the way up, there was mud, flowing water and ice on the way down.  And wind all around.  It was a great day to be out and though we both got a little wet here and there, we were both well outfitted with the proper gear and fairly floated up the mountain in a cloud of waterproof and goretex goodness.  Note the ‘and’: goretex is NOT waterproof AND breathable.

Katie led the way up and down the mountain and we did the 6 miles in just about 3 hours – 2 mph is not too bad, especially for her fourth time out hiking in the Cats.  She’s improving every hike and I’m blessed to be able to be there for it.  She’s 30, btw, and will shank you quicker than a lifer in prison, so don’t get any ideas fellas.  Seriously: they call her ‘icepick’ in Astoria.  Oh yeah, she’ll cut a b*tch.

Anyway, like I was saying: having the opportunity to watch my sister learn how to walk on- and off-trail up and down mountains in the woods has been a wonderful experience so far.  It’s been very good for our relationship overall.

Hm.  No idea where to go with this.  Sometimes a blank screen can be positively disconcerting.

Suppose I tell you about the Grid, dear reader?  I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before.  The Grid is 420 mountain-climbs.  Mine is in Excel, so that’s kind of the way I think of it overall.  The row labels are the 35 highest peaks in the Catskills; the column labels are the months of the year.  35 x 12 = 420.  Each of the 35 mountains climbed in each of the months of the year.  I don’t know of anybody who’s done it in a year (climbed all 35 mountains in each of 12 consecutive months); it’ll probably take me another year – starting in August 2011 – to complete (ending in August 2012).

I’m currently at 123 of 420; I’ve climbed 11 of the 35 in December.  I doubt I’ll climb the other 24 mountains this December.  I have 4 left to go in November and 10 left to go in October.  I’m not sure about September:  I started keeping track probably back in June or so, but really only started making a concerted effort on this gargantuan list in September or October, I believe.  July and August have traditionally been light hiking months – in the Catskills, at least – for me.

The nice thing about having this particular list to work on is that I can use it as a means of narrowing down hike possibilities for the weekends.  For the last I’m-not-sure-how-long – hell, maybe the last couple of months – I’ve been hiking (or, to be more specific, peakbagging) both days of the weekend.  I wouldn’t say I’m in phenomenal shape right now, but I’m in pretty good shape.  If the Ted of early December 2009 were to hike with the Ted who’s writing this to you right now, dear reader, the former Ted would say that the latter Ted (this one, that is) is in phenomenal shape – there’s no way he’d be able to keep up with me right now.

For the last couple of months, I’ve been hiking one day of the weekend (generally Sundays) with other people, and the other day (generally Saturdays) solo.  I’ve been blowing my doors off on Saturdays and still doing decent-length/strain-level hikes on Sundays.  This weekend is the first in which I don’t have any particularly strenuous hike planned for Saturday.  Sunday I’ll be hiking with Katie, Scott and Debbie – we’ll be climbing Rusk Mountain (and possibly Hunter and SW Hunter, though I kind of doubt it).  I have no idea what to hike tomorrow (which will be today – Saturday, that is – in about 5 minutes); though that’s not entirely true:  I’m currently considering hiking the Burroughs Range (Slide, Cornell, the Wittenberg) tomorrow.

After last weekend (trip report below), my Achilles tendon was a bit sore.  Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.  I don’t remember which foot was bothering me now, because it seems to have gone away.  I’m tempted to take the day off tomorrow – er, today – to allow it a bit more time to heal, but the thought of bagging down my December Grid by three peaks is very tempting.  Plus, I enjoy the solo time in the woods.

I’ve been wondering of late if I’m hiking too much.  While I could certainly use the day off tomorrow – I have plenty of errands to run and housekeeping tasks to take care of that just don’t seem to get done during the week – I’m fairly certain that I can take the short route for those three peaks and be done relatively early.  I’m pretty fast right now, dear reader:  especially on a trail.  Besides, if I took the day off, all I’d really do would be sleep until 11 or 1 and then futz around, wondering which task I should get started on, and wishing I’d woken up earlier.  And that’s a fact – there is no “just wake up early and get started on the errands” on a day off.  Not for me.  Days off are for sleeping in.  And I haven’t had one of those in a LONG time.

So yeah, I think I’m going to hit the sack now and wake up tomorrow to hike the Burroughs Range.  I hope my Achilles doesn’t fuck with me – I’d rather not have the soreness continue into Sunday and the rest of the week.

Oh, and I think I’ve got an idea for a novel.  I’ll need to start typing out an outline and such pretty soon, before the motivation leaves me.

Pleasant dreams, dear reader.  I look forward to seeing you soon irl.

How to Cheat the Devil’s Path

by Ted Wallace
Age 34

Step #1:  Do it in two days.  The Devil’s Path in a single day is for . . . well, I’m not going to tell you who it’s for right now.  Maybe when I’m a little older.

Step #2:  Don’t start from Prediger Road, start from the Long Path TH at the end of 16.  You can shave at least a couple of flat boring miles off.

Step #3:  Don’t sleep outside in late November.  Sleep somewhere warm and dry that offers hot showers.  And eat like royalty when you’re not on the trail (do so when ON the trail for an even more advanced move).

Step #4:  When planning the route, be as flexible as possible.  Euthanize, castrate or tranquilize any alpha route-planners in the party well in advance of the trip itself.

Step #5:  Do it with really cool people – you’ll never notice the miles go by.

Last Saturday (11/27) we did the eastern section of the DP.  ’We’ being yours ever truly, SSMonte288 (or whatever effin number I can’t remember; hereinafter referred to as “Bill”), Halia (of H&F; hereinafter “Heather” or “Heather The Famous Author”), debmonster (hereinafter “Debbie” or “the monster”), and Valerie (hereinafter “Valerie” or “Valtron”).

We slept at Bill’s house (well, it wasn’t really HIS house, but I’m not going to get into the whole story of how that worked – suffice to say that we all had warm beds and hot showers) on Friday and Saturday nights.  SAT question-worthy car spotting problems were solved and cars were spotted, un-spotted and re-spotted on Friday night, Saturday morning, and Sunday at some point but I don’t remember because Sunday was a long day.

Mudhook’s TR describing the trail conditions of the eastern section of the DP on Sunday were relatively close to what we experienced on Saturday: some ice (microspikes were used), not much mud (but it was there), and a general chill in the air.  Snow fell lightly and sparsely but steadily throughout the day on Saturday.  I lost my sunglasses while bushwacking up the first ledge on Indian Head, so if you find them, please return them.  Do not attempt to invoke the I Look Better in Them Than You rule because that’s frankly impossible.  As a matter of fact, please send your girlfriend to me with the sunglasses as well.

Sunday was much nicer because the sun was out.  Heather was on the KHP hike, so, being that she hasn’t yet figured out how to be in two places at once (amateur), she wasn’t on the western section of the DP with us on Sunday as well. Seriously, that’s like negative mom-cred, Heather. 

I don’t remember what time we started out from the Notch Lake PA on Sunday, but our timing was perfect, because by the time we got to the lookout on West Kill (Buck Ridge?), FatVegan (hereinafter “Scott” or “that a$hole” or “my f*cken hetero lifemate”) and my sister Katie (hereinafter “my sister Katie” or just “Katie”) had just arrived as well.  They hiked in from the western TH terminus of the DP on Spruceton Road (or, as daLunartik would say “Sprucetown Road”).  Then we all hiked out together (Bill, Katie, Scott, Debbie, Ted, Valerie).  <– Ted sandwiches are recommended.  I ran off and bagged Hunter and Leavitt while Bill, Debbie and Valerie walked a little slower to give me room to catch up.  Peakbagging might be a disease, but I can stop whenever I want.  Scott and I bagged St. Anne’s Peak on the way down as well.  What?! It’s on a list.

After finishing up at the DP SR TH (nobody wanted to bag North Dome & Sherrill and I’d already done them in November), we drove all over creation to pick up our respective cars and then headed to that restaurant called Hickory on 28 near the Thruway, where we all gorged ourselves on BBQ.  FatVegan had a salad and the owner came out and led the whole restaurant in a good round of pointing and laughing, which is always good for the soul.

I’m not going to tell you any more about the hike itself because it was a porn hike and I don’t feel like giving you no0bie lurkers an opportunity to fap-fap-fap away at your computer when we did all the work.  I’m not saying we did anything dirty in the woods (nor am I saying we didn’t), but were I to attempt to relate the reasons for our laughter that were involved over the 20-something miles of the DP last weekend, your head would probably explode.  Seriously:  it’s for your own good, nOob. The secret to ripped abs is lots and lots of laughing.

Here are the tracklogs on my EveryTrail page:

11/27/2010 DP East

11/28/2010 DP West

I’m sure I’m forgetting things.  Scott, Katie, Heather, Debbie, Bill (forum members): please add whatever you think might be relevant.  As I said probably a hundred times, it was wonderful to hike with you.

Here’s the linq to the forum post if you want to read the comments.

BLM to McKinley Hollow: 5 Peak “Backpack” 11/20/2010

I’m a peakbagger, not a backpacker: there’s a difference.  On Saturday I combined the two – and made a bunch of mistakes.

The first one was not calling ahead to say that I’d be climbing Graham and Doubletop – which are on private land. Total n_o_O_b move.  I didn’t even remember it until I was halfway along Beaver Kill Road, and by then my cell phone had no service.

The second mistake (overall weekend planning-wise) was parking at the TH right next to Balsam Lake.  Sure, it made for an easy ascent to the lean-to on Friday night, but it also gave FatVegan and Katie an extra hour and a half in the car with my stinky ass on the way to get my car after climbing the Blackheads on Sunday.

In any case, the walk in was chilly – I wish I’d brought more than just Smartwool glove liners with me (and wish, and wish again the rest of the weekend), but I had decently warm gear for the rest of me besides my hands.  My 850-fill down codpiece is simplydivine.  I got to the LT around 11PM or so and set up my 15-degree bag.  The wind blew all night long and I can totally see how primitive man thought the gods might be angry with them.  Maybe for not calling ahead.  Watching me hang a bear bag for the first time ever was the eppy-tome of comedy, and a mouse named Smiley ate my midnight Clif bar snack while I was sleeping.  Caught the little focker, too, but he just snarled at me that he’d get his buddies if I didn’t roll back over and shut the ef up.  So I went with the whole better-part-of-valour thing, figuring I still had a nice weekend of hiking in front of me and how little fun that would be with broken legs.  Whatever, Smiley, I’ll be back with RedCloud and Molly and then you’ll be the one crying himself to sleep.

Saturday morning was cold, cold, cold and everything – I mean everything - was slate grey.  I had about a liter of water left in my bladder (the one in my pack, that is), so I decided to get my blood flowing and not pump from the spring beside the LT – I woke up at 9AM, so I was running later than expected anyway.  Mistakes #3 and 4, if you’re keeping count.  The mouse thing doesn’t count.

Summitted BLM pretty quickly, tapped the fire tower with one of my poles and smiled at the cabin on my way down the hill.  I passed two dudes on their way up the mountain who informed me that today (Saturday, that is) is (was?) the first day of shotgun season.  Blimey.  Then I took the easy way up Graham.

After Graham, I swung on down and up to Doubletop (Dear Graham/Doubletop col, I <3 you.  Sincerely, Ted), whereupon I considered eating lunch.  While at the can and looking hungrily at my map, in an effort to decide whether I was going to follow my original plan and head down Doubletop and ‘wack up Eagle from closer to Seager (mistake #5 – not the best route-planning: “it seemed like a good idea during the week” = famous last words) or take the land-bridge over to Big Indian, a hunter came upon me.  Luckily for me, he was hunting the summit at that point in the day, not NGTs.  The hunter’s name is Red and he was pretty much my angel for the day.  He’s also a 3500 Club member with a number in like the 300s.  Red confirmed that ‘wacking over to Big Indian would be quicker, told me that there’s a decent trail along the state line, and that I could feel free to backtrack him to the southern summit.  Thanks Red.

So, armed with this knowledge, I backtracked Red’s monster boot soles to the southern summit of Doubletop, took a bead on Big Indian, and headed downhill.  Passed by the plane wreckage.  Meh.  At least I know where it is now.  On the way down Doubletop, my inner wuss whispered tales of lonely death in my ear, but I ignored him because he’s stupid and hasn’t been right yet.

I hit the Pine Hill/West Branch Trail just east of the highway I mean herd path to the summit can.  I gave some serious thought to signing in at the can and officially bagging six peaks for the day – I mean seriously, what peakbagger gets that close to a summit and doesn’t stand on top of it? – but there was only a little light left in the day (it was around 4/4:30PM) and I climbed BI in November back in like aught-eight.  Peakbagging triage – gotta love it.

I pretty much hit my stride on the PH/WB bushwack I mean trail – “a mile eating lope”, if you will.  Up and over Eagle (it was dark at this point), Haynes (which doesn’t count for a single damned list), and down to the junction at the top of McKinley Hollow.  I dropped my pack there and jogged up to the top of Balsam (which I’d already done at night as well), sent a couple of texts, and swung on down to the LT in McKinley Hollow, wherein I set up my tent BECAUSE I WAS COLD AND DIDN’T GIVE A RAT’S ASS FOR THE RULES AT THAT POINT, and went to bed.  That was around 8 or 9PM – nobody else was in the LT and I was way in the corner anyway.  Mistake #6? Maybe, maybe not – I still slept cold, but not as cold as Friday night.  Just before I hit the LT, I pumped four liters of water and guzzled most of it while making dinner.  One liter of water is not enough for that hike.  My pee is still coming out like toothpaste.  Read a bit before bed.

Woke up on time and made it down to the TH at 8:30AM to meet FatVegan and Katie for our Sunday hike with Halia and Flammeus (and Iske, Lily & RedCloud).

Thank you, Monte Bell down jacket and pants: your downy goodness was perfectly glorious.  And thank you, Newports:  I smoked a pack of you and was truly alive with pleasure all day.  Most of the day was spent, btw, alternately humming Bach violin and cello concertos and singing Cake’s version of “I Will Survive” – Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” was in there as well (though I really only repeated two lines over and over again), because of the jingle-jangle of my microspikes against my pack when I wasn’t wearing them.  When not immersed in one of the foregoing, my thoughts often turned to scenarios in which I say to mudhook (irl) “yeah, but I make this look good“.  Thank you, FatVegan, for the birthday present of microspikes (I wore them almost all day long) and a new headlamp (I no longer have beam envy).

So, I’m not a backpacker, but I did this all with my “big” pack on – which isn’t quite as big as it used to be.  I’m going to guess it’s around 20/25 lbs (down from something like 40).  That’s a nice sense of accomplishment – getting the pack weight down, but also hiking strongly at around 11 or 12 miles with the heavy(ish) pack on and most of the steps behind me having been ‘wacked.   5 more for the grid on Saturday, plus 3 on Sunday puts me at 24/35 for November and only 304 to go. 

Here’s the tracklog over at my EveryTrail page.  The missing parts are where I teleported because I was bored and have a Garmin 60CSx, which allows for teleportation when one inputs the Konami Code.

Here’s the linq to the forum if you want to read the comments.

Rocky, Lone, Table, Peekamoose 11/13/2010

Ok, just so nobody thinks I’ve stopped hiking, I climbed those four mountains last Saturday with debmonster and Vladimir (a monster in his own right).  Here’s the tracklog over at my EveryTrail page.  Note the circuituous route between Rocky and Lone: we really didn’t have to deal with too much pine push-through (I know someone else was bemoaning the density of that particular section earlier this week on the forum).

The Denning PA wasn’t plowed, which was ok because there wasn’t any snow, and the Fisherman’s Path is much more evident than it was a couple of weeks ago after the flood.

We decided to get the boringness of the Fisherman’s Path out of the way first (rather than making it the way home), and I’m glad we did.  I think we only crossed tributaries of the Neversink while on the FP – we basically stayed to the right (southish) the whole time, which involved a little sidehilling and whatnot, but was probably better than six different crossings.

Just like in the title: up Rocky, over to Lone, then to Table, and a quick out & back to Peek before we headed back to Denning.  Found a BSA hiking stick by the can at Lone (and replaced the calling card of mine that mudhook stole from the next ex-Mrs. Wallace – the one that was in the canister).  As soon as life slows down, I’ll mail the hiking pole to the guy (sorry bro, I forgot your name).  We caught up on Monday on the 3500 Club Yahoo group.  Thanks, btw, for leaving the staff at the can: the laughter the three of us got on the way home that touched on (pun, and a good example of the forthcoming) all different scenarios involving “the boy scout’s pole” was priceless.

PS:  Molly, I know that DFH really means Dog From Heaven.  Can’t wait to meet you in the flesh, sweetheart.

On my hike last weekend I bumped into a bear.  I was moving pretty quickly and didn’t see him.  He turned around and shoved me.  ”Watch where you’re going, dickbag,” he said.  I thought it was a bit weird that a bear was talking to me, but I excused myself politely and, stepping aside, attempted to pass him on the trail.  He stood up, stepped in front of me and called me some unmentionable names, not letting me pass, despite my apologies.

Then he put his paws on my chest and shoved me again and I thought that this was just plain uncalled for, so I drew my knife.  The big one.  A couple of coyotes were cris-crossing behind the bear in a semi-circle, yapping encouragement to him.  ”Fuck ‘im up, the little tramp!”  ”Fucken ‘ikers, ai can’t stand ‘em.  Let’s eat ‘is bones.”  Strange that they’d be speaking Cockney – and a drunken version at that – I thought in the back of my mind, but kept my eyes on the bear and his overlong fingernails.  Claws, I guess.

I spread my legs a bit, with my right foot just a bit behind the left, and pointed my forehead – my third eye chakra – at the bear.  ”Let me pass,” I said steadily.  ”It was an honest mistake and I’ve no wish to fight you.”  My left hand was loose and my right gripped the handle of my knife, its point toward the ground.

Wrong thing to say to a bear – don’t ever be the first one to mention a fight.  Especially not –

“Fight!  We’ve got a fight!” shouted the referee off to my right.

Referee?  Seriously?

“Really?”  I said.  ”A referee?  In the woods?”

“Yup,” said the fucker, “it’s on like Donkey Kong; you just fucked with the wrong bear on the wrong trail, and I’m the one who’s going to make sure this is a fair fight,” continued the referee, “so drop the knife.”

Without taking my eyes off the bear, I turned my head toward the referee, then quickly flicked my eyes across its countenance.  A fucken panda bear.

Of course.

“I’ll do no such thing,” I said.  ”Look at the size of him.  And besides, I’ve admitted my wrong and already begged his pardon.  He’s been nothing but rude from the get-go and I just want to get by.”

At this point, the git coyotes jumped me from behind.  One grabbed my left shoulder with his mouth and the other my right wrist.  Instead of fighting it, I used their momentum, allowing the inertia to bring me down to my right knee (which landed sharply on my trekking pole – should’ve dropped those).  I crossed my right hand across my chest, aiming the point of my knife just above my shoulder, and let the weight of me and my pack fall as hard as possible on the ribs of the coyote latched onto my right wrist.

The point of my knife missed the coyote on my left shoulder, but it gave him enough of a fright that he let go of me, and so did the one on my right wrist.  I heard a couple of that one’s ribs snap as I landed atop him, the one on my left now standing on me.  I lunged at him and buried my knife in his bony chest, just to the left of his sternum.  He jumped back off the knife with a yelp and ran the fuck away.  I doubt he made it.  The other one sure didn’t, because I reversed my grip on the knife and probably stabbed him fifteen times before I got some blood in my eye and jerked back.

“Whoa,” said the bear with an astonished look.  ”You’re gonna fucken get it now, sissy-boy.”

And he came at me, while I was sitting on my ass, breathing hard and bleeding in two places.

I glanced over at the referree, but he was messing around with his iPad.

I scrambled back a bit and found my feet after untangling them from my trekking poles.  Really should have dropped those when this all started.  The bear lunged at me with his teeth and I just barely dodged to the left to avoid getting something bitten off.  He probably went another ten yards behind me before skidding to a halt, at which point, I was already high-tailing it down the trail, running as if my life depended upon it (which it did).

Then the goddamned panda referee came out of nowhere and shoulder blocked me into a big-ass pile of rocks along the trail.

At least, it seemed like a pile of rocks.

The pile shuddered and growled.  ”Watch what you’re doing, fuckhead!” it said in the deepest and gratey-est voice I’ve ever heard.  I looked up and yeah, it was a fucken dragon, pissed off with a forked tongue and smoke coming out of its nostrils and everything.

“Shit.”  I said.

Which was the wrong thing to say – dragons don’t like profanity, unless it’s them using it (they think they’ve got some sort of verbal monopoly on cuss words).

“What did you say?” the dragon rumbled.  I stammered something incoherent as the dragon’s eyes flicked over my shoulder at the two bears.  ”Yo!  Rufus!  James!  Que pasa, fuckheads?”

I turned around and the bears bowed politely.  ”Just taking care of some business, Nic,” they said.

***   ***   ****

So yeah, Saint Peter:  that’s how I got here.  Pretty fucked up, don’t ya think?  Anyway, I’ll just be on my way now – I’ve got to get to work on Monday and I’m supposed to hike with Heather and Tom tomorrow.  So yeah, the halo and wings are nice and all, but you can have them back:  I just bought these hiking boots and they’ve been doing me just fine so far.  No, I don’t think I’ll be back anytime soon – most of my friends have appointments downstairs anyway.  Peace out, bruvva.

A month or more ago, a friend of mine said to me “hey, I checked out your blog.”  Cool.  “But I don’t really think it’s for me – I mean, unless you’re a hardcore hiker, it seems kind of tough to relate to.”

 I was like, “wtf!  I don’t ONLY write about hiking, and I’m not even that hardcore!”  (My voice rose in pitch, stressing that last word in an expression of incredulity.)

There are hikers out there who are much more hardcore than me.  A lot of them.  And I write about all kinds of stuff here besides hiking – don’t I?

Well, maybe not tonight.  I know it’s been a while, dear reader; I’ve missed you too.  Work is crazy busy.  I think I’m over my puppy craze/fetish, though I’m still getting daily emails from petfinder with cute pics of pit bull puppies – nearly all of which I’d like to adopt immediately so that I can run around town and the woods with a cute fuzzy little pack.  Maybe next year.

Last weekend was a good weekend.  I hiked both Saturday and Sunday and called out of work sick on Monday.  I really was sick – it started on Sunday morning with a sore throat when I got out of bed at 5AM.  I’ve had an abundance of snot all week long.  It’s been glorious.  I think I’m just about over it, though.  I’m trying to figure out what to hike this weekend.  Monday is Columbus Day, but I don’t have the day off, so an extended trip is probably out of the question.  Still, I’m running out of degrees on the thermometer at night – pretty soon it’ll be too cold for this skinny honky to be doing much sleeping in the woods – so I should probably get out there for those full-weekend trips while I still can.

Saturday I hiked with SoloJoe Whalen and his buddy Patrick Monaghan.  [Apologies to Patrick if I just butchered his last name.]  We climbed Balsam Lake Mountain and then bushwacked over to Graham and Doubletop, finishing at the Seager parking area.  The whole hike was about 10 miles and a lot of fun.  I don’t think a whole lot of people take that route and string those three mountains together.  Here’s the tracklog over at EveryTrail. 

BLM, Graham, Doubletop 10-2-2010

We all had a pretty good time.  These three mountains made 6/39 for Patrick’s 3500 Club patch, and I think he’s definitely been bit by the hiking bug.  I posted the trip report from the forum before this post, so you can scroll down and skim through it if you like.  Here’s the linq to the forum post, if you want to read the comment thread.

Sunday morning Scott got to my house around 5:30 and we headed off to the Upper West Side to pick up Debbie Melita and Valerie Accardi and head up to the Cats to meet our furry friends Iske and Lily, who brough Heather Rolland and her husband Tom Moeller because they have opposable thumbs and can drive a car.  I dropped Scott and the girls off at the base of Friday Mountain on Moon Haw Road and drove over to Woodland Valley Campground to meet Heather and Tom, leave the SUV I rented there, and drive back to Moon Haw with them and the pups.

We headed up Friday (one of the tougher bushwacks in the Catskills), had lunch at the summit under wary eye of the cansiter and then bushwacked over the Dink and picked up the trail near the summit of Cornell Mountain.  Then it was up and over Cornell, up and over the Wittenberg and down to Woodland Valley.  We made it out just as dark was falling.  Here’s a linq to the tracklog over at EveryTrail.  And here’s a linq to Heather’s trip report over at the forum.

Friday Cornell Wittenberg 10-3-2010

Friday is always a tough bushwack:  there are all kinds of cliffs and ledges that must either be skirted or climbed.  We had to boost the dogs over a few of them, which was kind of scary for me at points.  Rather early on in the hike up Friday, Scott blew his shoulder out – like snap, crackle, pop, omg-did-you-hear-that kind of a blowout.  He soldiered on for the rest of the day, but is still in a lot of pain and probably out of the hiking game for this weekend.

The bushwack from Friday to Cornell is a route that most people don’t take.  Heather and I spent quite a bit of time planning it (which consisted of looking at the map and saying “yeah, it totally looks doable – if the pines are really thick, though, it’s gonna suck”), with Heather doing what internet research she could – she really didn’t find a whole lot.  Mostly people saying “yeah, it’s really thick in there.”  So making it through that section was a pretty cool accomplishment.  If you’re looking at the map above, you can see the red line at the bottom where we went up the lady of the mountain’s right leg, then banged a right to skirt across the area just above her vagina, went over three bumps, and then started going down.  Well, the section just after the right turn (north) was the tough part:  the next bump is the Dink (her belly button), the bump after that is Cornell (her left hip) and the third one is the Wittenberg (her left hand?).  I need to touch her boobies (Slide Mountain) this month for my October grid.

Anyway, it was a very fulfilling day.  As always, hiking with Heather and Tom and the pups was a treat, and it was great to meet and get friendly with Debbie and Valerie in the woods.  They’re both hardcore backpackers – Debbie has about 1,200 miles of the AT done and Valerie has about 900 done.  Debbie has a few articles in Backpacker magazine, so she’s relatively famous.  I didn’t find that out until about halfway up Friday. 

Overall, the Debbie and Valerie story is a feel-good one:  they were both in the same area of the Adirondacks that I was about a month ago – Debbie commented on one of my facebook pics.  We’d been fb-friends for a while (once upon a time (and back when facebook let you do this), I friended all the chicks who were fans of the NY/NJ Trail Conference), but didn’t really connect until about a month ago.  Debbie sent me a message last week inviting me to go on a hike of the Escarpment Trail, which I had to decline because I was already booked for the weekend.  We ended up exchanging emails for the rest of the week and I invited her to come on our Friday-Dink-Cornell-Wittenberg hike.  It couldn’t have worked out better.  I’m looking forward to the next opportunity to hike with Debbie and Valerie.

So anyway, that’s what I was up to this weekend.  It was a good one.

I’m kind of torn as to what to hike this weekend.  Maybe I’ll buy that 20 degree bag I’ve had my eye on and sleep in the woods this weekend – but which woods?  I have 20 mountains left to climb in the Cat35 in October for my grid, but I’d also really like to keep moving on my ADK46 list (30 to go).  We’ll see; I have all day tomorrow to figure it out. 

It’s bedtime for me soon.  Hopefully I can sleep away the rest of this cold and be fresh for the woods this weekend.

BLM, Graham, Doubletop 10/2/2010

We met at Seager at around 8:30, left my car and took Patrick’s car to the PA on Mill Brook Road and headed south on the red-blazed Dry Brook Ridge Trail, banging a right onto the (also red-blazed) BLM Trail.  We spent a few minutes up at the fire tower; Patrick and Joe went to the top, while I was content with taking a picture of the Blackhead Range (or is it the Black Dome range?) from between the treads about three levels up.  I’m afraid of heights.

We also spent a few minutes in the fire tower cabin, chatting with the day’s tender Doug, who also happens to be Laurie Rankin’s cousin.  He was extremely friendly and I commented to Joe and Patrick on the way back down the trail that when the zombie apocalypse hits, I definitely want Doug in my army.  Then I thought about how much food it would take to keep him happy and was nervous for a second, but figured that from the woodland camo he had poking out under his khaki shirt, Doug can probably feed himself in the woods.  And me too.  So (as long as it’s ok with you, Laurie), DIBS ON DOUG.

We found the turnoff for the old woods trail to Graham and took it (thx again, Doug, for the good directions).  I’d never been up Graham this way (always via Seager), and thought that the trail used to be a road, so I was expecting it to be wider.  Not that I’m complaining, because it was certainly a breeze getting to the summit of Graham.  Just shy of the summit, I found a .22 bullet with the nose-piece worn off, so I spent a few minutes at the summit banging it with a rock in an attempt to put a hole in the old radio tower while Joe and Patrick ate their lunch.  The bullet didn’t go off, so I figure it must have been a dud (which was probably why it’s previous owner discarded it).  It’s now suspended above the (lit) balsam-scented candle on my desk next to my laptop, but still han’t gone off.  =/  Weird.

When we headed off the summit of Graham, we followed the southwestern spur for a bit and ended up losing elevation a bit too far to the north (NB: when the dude with no sense of direction (yours truly) says “hey! I’ve been here before; let’s go this way,” check your compass first.  No big deal; we basically just worked our way around to the left and went across the flattish area around 3100-3200 feet and headed down Graham with Doubletop in view most of the way.  Patrick had never been bushwacking before, so we all had a good time messing around and finding routes down the little ledges of Graham.  I really dig coming up that side of the mountain.

We hit the notch between Graham and DT pretty much perfectly and followed whatever that line is that goes between the two summits and shows up on my gps.  Maybe it used to be a trail or something?  Joe and Patrick mentioned a couple of times that this particular bushwacking trip felt as though we were on a herd path for most of the way, and I had the humility not to mention what an excellent bushwacker I am.  A few hundred yards from the summit, we turned over the nav to Patrick and he took us like a hound dog right to the can.  That made 6/35 for Patrick.  Congrats, brother.

On the way down from the northern summit of Doubletop, we were all surprised at how far the herd path led – I’m going to guess around 300 yards or so.  We played a bit of hide-and-seek with it, mind you, but luckily the bushwacking on Doubletop isn’t the hide-and-go-f*ck-yourself kind.

Our plan was to basically follow that northern spur down to the intersection of the yellow-blazed Seager-Big Indian Trail and the woods road (by the bridge), but we ended up wandering off that spur to the right and hitting the woods road farther up (south) the Dry Brook.  We followed the woods road for a bit and were stopped by the height and speed of the water where the road crosses the Dry Brook at the junction of the Shandaken Brook.  We had to head back upstream and cross the Dry Brook first and then the Shandaken before we could get back onto the woods road.  It was an impressive piece of stream-crossing (with very little foot-wetting), if I do say so myself.

The other three water crossings along the trail back to Seager were relatively uneventful – for one of them, I think we used the same downed tree that I used back in March when SoloJoe took those chippendale pics of me. Yes, ladies, I’m single.

So that’s it.  Three more for the grid for Joe and I and Patrick is three more peaks closer to his 35R patch.  It was a beautiful day and hiking with these two gentlemen was a really great way to spend it.

35R #1819/733W
CHH: 41/102
Grid: 95/420 (15/35 for October)
ADK: 16/46

Scraped from College Humor.

Night Hike: The Black Dome Range

I received a text from FatVegan Friday morning that said “I feel a night hike coming on. I know you do too.”  I was like “no . . . I feel like working to pay for my hiking gear is bullsh*t and that I want to go back to bed.”  I said this in my head – not via text, because the place at which I work as satellites in the sky that track what I text, but not what I think – at least, not when I’m wearing my tin foil brain-wave dampener, which I never remove.  Not even during sex.

But, being the gracious hiking partner I am, I finally assented to a night hike – after effing with Scott’s head for as long as possible about whether I would or would not go.  Truth be told, the deciding factor for me was this trip report.

We left the jerz around 10PM and signed in at the register at the end of Big Hollow Road around midnight.  We then proceeded up the red-blazed Black Dome Range Trail for about fifty yards, turned back around to be sure we were going the right way because we really thought we should be on a yellow-blazed trail, realized that we’re idiots and do this every time we leave from Big Hollow Road, reset the GPS so that no one would know we’d backtracked because we’re held in such high regard as infallible expert hikers on this forum, and began our ascent a few minutes later.

I wanted to head south on the red BDR trail and bang a louie (that’s slang for ‘left’, no0bie lurkers) onto the yellow-blazed Batavia Kill Trail and climb Blackhead first so that (a) the tracklog would show the two (trailed) approaches to Blackhead from BHR and (b) so that we could see if there were any naked chicks at the lean-to.  But we didn’t end up doing that. We took note of the sign as we passed it, but didn’t take the turnoff and ended up heading up the red BDR trail between Black Dome and Blackhead.

So we climbed Black Dome first, headed over to Thomas Cole, then back over Black Dome and up to the summit of Blackhead. Scott’s dumbass did most of this hike with his headlamp off. It was a gorgeous night – the moon was just waning from full and the clouds were passing swiftly across it.  It was an on/off clear night – I think the little bit of cloud cover actually helped reflect some additional light onto the countryside.  We were able to pick out Acra Point, Burnt Knob and WHP, as well as the silhouette of the Devil’s Path in the distance.  We saw some UFOs and had a brief encounter with the Visitors, but I won’t bore you with recounting our time-travelling adventures and how we (yet again) saved the universe as we know it from certain destruction at the hands of evil energy-beings bent upon the destruction of freedom and the american way.

The air was still and warm at the lower elevations, but we caught a cool breeze around 3200′, which grew into a decent blow once we hit the summits.  I really love the sound of the wind at the top of a mountain.

We took the yellow-blazed Batavia Kill trail down Blackhead and linked up with the BDR trail after passing the lean-to.  Alas, there were no naked chicks in the lean-to, but we were sure to make bear noises as we passed it, just in case.  We were back to the car at around 5AM and back in the jerz around 7:30.

Here’s the trip over at EveryTrail.

So that’s it.  Three more for the grid.  I think that also makes 11 after dark for me, though I’ll have to check on that.

Listen to me, n0obie lurkers (you know who you are):  Don’t try this at home.  I know you don’t have the Black Dome Range at home, but you know what I mean.  Night hiking should only be attempted by dashing handsome gentlemen with more experience in the woods than you have.  It helps if you have a goonish vegan hiking partner, but if you’re not dashing, handsome and a gentleman with more woods and navigational experience than you currently have, DON’T DO IT.

Saturday was the Warrior Dash on the ski slopes of Windham.  I participated.  My apologies if you jumped to this site after reading the post over at the forum, but I haven’t had a chance to write much else since then.  If you’re not here from the forum, then you might not know that the ski slopes of Windham are actually on two mountains called Cave and West Cave – not Windham High Peak.  Here’s the post over at the forum, if you want to read the other members busting my chops in the comment thread.

Cave & W. Cave 9/18/2010

My heat/wave/whatever was at 1PM. I arrived around 10:30 or so, picked up my packet, wandered around for a bit and sat in the adirondack chairs next to some slightly toasted dude who didn’t shut up for the fifteen minutes I was there. M*sshole – go figure. The whole setup was as much a festival as it was a race. Actually, probably more so. There was a big stage with a band and a bungee jumping thingee and giant turkey legs and weirdos in costumes and all kinds of other cool stuff designed to make a drunk college kid wet himself in public.

So anyway, I watched a couple of waves go out ahead of me (on the half-hour from 8AM to 5PM) and decided that I definitely did NOT want to start in the middle of the pack (and people started lining up in the “chute” just after the last heat left). So at 12:15 I took a jog down to the bottom of the parking lot and back (because I wanted to be sweating at the starting line) and headed into the chute, threading myself up toward the front.

When the fireballs flew to send our wave off up the mountain, I hit it at a brisk pace – for the first 1/4 to 1/2 mile or so, I was probably the number 4 or 5 guy up there (there were chicks racing too, but they hadn’t started to pass me yet). The first mile and a half is up the ski slope. I think my jog only lasted for about 1/2 a mile (and yes, I might be embellishing right now, but I’m allowed to do this, as it’s MY TR ) before my chest simply couldn’t contain the awesome power of my lungs as they bellowed in and out in an effort to provide my meat suit with enough oxygen to not expire.

So yeah, I hiked the rest of the uphill part. BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT I DO (hike) AND I’M AWESOME AT IT. Maybe 15 or so people passed me on my hike. It was actually kind of nice, because I pretended (in my head) that I was old like mudhook and Halia & Flammeus and called everyone ‘whippersnappers’ (in my head) as they went by. Of course, because I’m such an awesome hiker (way awesomer than manofaltitude, btw), not that many people passed me, and I even passed one or two people who were ‘running’ up the hill.

The first obstacle was the tire run: maybe a dozen or fifteen tires by a dozen or fifteen tires (bungeed together). I ran over the top of them. I learned back in HS how bad that high-stepping crap sucks, so I wasn’t about to do it here. After that, it was a bit more uphill and we had to jump over a couple of wooden barriers that were about chest high (for me). Easy enough. Then we went uphill some more (shocker) before we had to crawl through these big plastic tubes. Nothing special.

Then began the downhill. I was pretty happy with the pair of trailrunners I bought for this occasion: they really held the ground well. And the ground was mainly wet grass, mud and wet rocks. I bought a pair of the Montrail Masochist model. I asked the girl at Campmor if they had the Sadist model too, but she just looked at me funny and asked for my number. We have a date at the goth club in Newark on Thursday night. I passed quite a few nervous-looking people on the downhill sections. I also credit the long hours I’ve spent in the Catskills, trying to keep up with FatVegan’s nutjob way of flying down the mountains like sticks and stones won’t break his bones. Passing those effers really felt good.

More running after that. Did I mention that running sucks? And then we had to wade through this 20-yard long pool of freezing cold water. My testicles STILL won’t talk to me. I think they’re going to be nestled among my small intestine for the rest of the winter. The water was waist-high, then chest-high, then I couldn’t touch the bottom. Freaky. I took a couple of breast-strokes (not that kind, pervert) and frog-kicked a few times, but swimming this thing really wasn’t an option. So I did that floaty-hop thing to the side, where the water was only as deep as a little bit over my waist. I did the rest of it that way. It was about 75/80 degrees outside that day and I was kind of down on myself for wearing the Under Armour cold weather spandex stuff (top and bottom), but when I got out of that water, I realized (once again) that I might possibly be the smartest human being in this miserable little solar system of yours.

After that it was more running (downhill, thankfully) and guess what – they gave us cups of water after that. Belie-dat-sh*t. I drank two. Parenthetically, and relating back to the earlier self-wetting remark, I remember thinking that either the water section or the part just after would be the perfect time to pee myself, but I didn’t really have to go and I don’t know that I could anyway, because I was running. Making it harder to pee yourself: yet another reason why running sucks.

So after that, there was a sh*tload of sidehilling (which ALSO sucks) and a couple of other obstacles not really worth mentioning – we ran over some planks across a ditch (easier than a log across a stream) and up and down some stuff. I took the short way up and down the cargo net thing because it’s a RACE, not recess. At the very end, we slid (face first) down this big slip ‘n slide, ran a couple more yards downhill, jumped over two rows of duraflames (this is where our pics got taken, so I hammed it up for the cameras I couldn’t see, per my drunk Bostonian friend’s suggestion), and then we crawled in the mud under barbed wire for 20 or so yards. There was definitely mud there, but I didn’t see any damned barbed wire – and there was no tracer fire over our heads or marines getting their heads blown off next to me, so I was nonplussed overall with this particular obstacle.

Anyway, at this point we were deemed muddy enough and only had to run another fifteen or so steps to the finish line where they handed out ‘finisher’ medals. I think I lost mine. It’s probably in my car somewhere. They gave us free water and bananas afterward, of which I partook.

My time was 36:26.10 (that’s an 11 minute mile, folks), and I placed #836 overall (out of 6,202), 139/753 in my age bracket (men 30-34), and 725/3677 of all the men competing.

Definitely not a stellar time, but I also hate running. Because it sucks. I’m happy with my performance, though. I did what I set out to do, which was burn it as hard as I could from beginning to end. I also think I managed the course pretty well, which was due in large part to my hiking experiences and the support of you good people here on the forum, without whom I never would have looked longingly at Cave and West Cave mountains and think how badass I would be if I were to climb those after having run this race.

Sadly, that was not to happen, as I got a wicked bad cramp in my left calf (which subsequently turned into a muscle pull) about 20 minutes after the whole thing was done. Still, I would have loved to have climbed those mountains on Saturday. Oh well, another time.

So yeah, running still sucks. You don’t have to go out and do the R&D – I’ve already done it for you.

Here’s the trip over at EveryTrail.

35R #1819/733W
CHH: 41/102
Grid: 86/420 (3/35 for September)
ADK: 16/46

Here’s my trip report from Saturday’s hike.   I don’t want you to think I haven’t been writing, dear reader.   I just haven’t been writing very much here.  Lots of email correspondence of late.  I normally write for an hour or two each night – yup, you guessed it:  right before I go to bed.  So sometimes you don’t get to see my words.  I’m sure you’re surviving without them.

Alien Landing & Anaconda Sighting on SW Hunter 9/11/2010

This weekend I decided to make my cat, Laila Jo Connolly, jealous and hang out with Iske & Lily in the Catskills. This naturally entailed spending some time with Halia & Flammeus. Flammeus was laid-up with a Level II Ankle Sprain, so FatVegan & I hiked with the eagle but not the owl.

We met at the Becker Hollow TH’s PA at 8:15AM. Parenthetically, I’d like to announce the FKT from Ridgewood NJ to said TH: 1:34:03.14159 – I’ve checked both VFTT and Wikipedia and have not been able to find a faster documented time. If any of you lurker n0obs belong to the NY State Police force, I am, of course, just kidding.

We signed in at the TH – Scott and I using our real names, as our trail names for one another tend to be somewhat vulgar – and headed up the blue-blazed Becker Hollow Trail, passing beneath the still-hanging widowmaker and giving it a good shove for luck and no rain. Instead of turning right onto the yellow-blazed Hunter Mountain Trail (which leads to the fire tower), we continued on to the west-facing ledge and to bag the view. It was glorious. Halia (hereinafter “Heather”) pointed out some of the viewable peaks – Peek and Table, Panther and Giant Ledge, Roundtop and KHP and Hurricane Ledge, the Burroughs Range, etc., and explained that three of the peaks form a constellation that looks exactly like a woman in repose: one being the side of her hip and the other two being her headlights. I found this to be a pretty exciting revelation and asked Heather and Scott to continue on while I “took some pictures” with my iPhone. They obliged and I now have the nagging sensation (not unlike that feeling of forgetting something) that I should be keeping my iPhone under my mattress. I’m sure it will pass.

I caught up to Scott and Heather as they headed south on the yellow-blazed Hunter Mountain Trail, and we all turned the corner onto the red-blazed Devil’s Path together. We made a right and stopped to put out the embers in the fire pit at Devil’s Acre lean-to (again – it seems that Scott and I are honorary sometime-weekend fire putter-outers at this particular LT. The LT is in sore need of a broom. Maybe the Catskill 4000 Club can donate one?

We continued on to make a left at the unblazed but very clearly defined (by cairn at the TH) and well-maintained Leavitt Mountain Trail along the old railbed. Scott and I were tired from the navigation-intense hike and, being ardent feminists, suggested that Heather lead us to the cansiter. She did a bang-up job of leading the bushwack and we all signed in to the canister a few minutes later.

We retraced our steps on the way out and had a nice conversation with a couple of fellow hikers back at the DALT, who were enjoying a couple of Coors tallboys in the shade of the LT. None of us said anything about their Timbos and Keds, because we’re Stewards of the Catskills and have to act the part. Besides, the dude was wearing a Yankee jacket and we’re damned Yankees too.

Realizing that Heather was going to be late for work, we kept the conversation short and boogied on up to the fire tower. On the way, with Scott and the dogs in the lead, we passed a massive anaconda that tried to bite my head off with its jaws of evil death. The dogs being oblivious and Scott being vegan, they walked right over it, but when Heather spotted it, she bravely (and properly, to her woods cred), yelled “Snake!” and shoved me into the underbrush before it was able to wrap its deadly coils around me. As I lay cowering in the dirt, she spoke Indian to it in a firm tone (like Native American Indian, not subcontinent Indian) and it slithered off the trail. At this point, Scott had rushed back and was able to place a vegan curse upon its back with his fingers. He says it will bond with the nearest tree and become completely non-violent within a fortnight.

When I finally stopped shaking and had managed to clean most of the poo from my Louis Vuitton hiking pants with my biodegradable trail money, Heather explained that it was, in fact, just a little garter snake. I thought it had markings more akin to a timber rattler, but Heather explained that garter snakes aren’t just black-and-yellow, but rather that god paints them in many colors, because Allah loves wondrous variety.

And so, with a strident cry of “To the trees!” we headed off to complete our journey to the fire tower.

There were a handful of people there when we arrived and Scott and I got busy opening the windows and such in the cabin, while Heather opened the fire tower itself and did her interpreter-thing. We spent the next several hours at the summit. Scott and I deputized ourselves deputy tenders, which basically entailed telling people that it was ok to walk into the cabin (when they were tentatively poking their heads in), as long as they don’t try to make soup. We brandished also brandished our big knives when unnecessary or when someone asked a question that wasn’t answered in either Heather’s training or in the interpreter’s handbook. Nobody reported seeing any fires, so we figure we did a pretty good job.

I only heard one person say “OMG! YOU’RE Heather Rolland – like, the author! I thought you’d be taller.” (and they literally said ‘OMG’, not ‘oh my god’ – I have no idea how they got the hyperlink into the statement), but my bionic hearing was on the fritz that day, so it’s possible that it happened more than just that one time.

At this point, I’d like to take the time to publicly thank the Catskill 400 Club for donating the toilet seat in the privy at the summit of Hunter Mountain. It was incredibly warm and clean when I availed myself of it. No reading material, but that’s ok because I’m a fast pooper.

Scott took a nice long nap and Heather and I pored over the VO map hanging on the wall of the cabin, trying to come up with hikes that would be painful enough to cause us to find another pastime. We think we have a few good ones for the winter, so don’t quit the forum yet.

On the summit, I also spent some time flipping through the menu items on my brand-new Garmin 60CSX, trying to figure out how on god’s green and beautiful earth the data fields were reading an average speed of 500-something mph and that we had traveled well over 3,000 miles so far. I have come to the tentative conclusion that Iske and Lily were sent by an ancient alien race to study humans, and that at some point during the hike they used their alien magic on us to put us to sleep and transport us to another dimension – about 2,994 miles away – where they would be better able to observe us. Putting together the facts from the movie “Earth Girls Are Easy” and the prodigious amount of time Iske spent making out with me on the summit (don’t hate), I am confident enough in my hypothesis to announce it publicly and willing enough to back it up in a duel with laser swords.

We headed back down around 4:30 or so and met Flammeus (who we simply call “Tom”) and Maya and Caitlin at Brio’s in Phoenicia for dinner. We noticed Snickers’ car in the parking lot and were delighted to see Cindy and Brian in the restaurant – freshly showered, as always – so we plunked our stinky asses into chairs at their table (well, we’re pretty sure Tom’s, Maya’s and Caitlin’s weren’t stinky as they appeared to be recently showered as well). We all had a lovely dinner together, at which Cindy extolled the virtues of the BLM fire tower and suggested that Scott and I might like to volunteer to become fire tower tenders as well. We responded that we’re still researching the topic (Red Hill and Tremper have already made very generous offers and Overlook as been courting us for some time now, but we will, of course give preferential treatment to forum members and 3500 Club compatriots).

So yeah, that was our day. Two more for the grid and a wonderful time spent with other 3500 Club members and random visitors to the fire tower. Scott didn’t get to consecrate the fire tower in the name of Lord Shiva the Destroyer, but that’s only because I forgot to bring the salt and entrails. =/

Oh, and Laila Jo wasn’t the least bit jealous when I got home. Here’s the trip over at EveryTrail, btw.

Marcy, Haystack, Basin, Saddleback, Yard, Big Slide

Linqs: Thursday, Friday.

I can’t believe it’s Thursday night and I’m just now sitting down to write a TR about hikes from last Thursday and Friday. I’ll keep this short – not because I can’t remember back that far (accident with some chemicals in college), but because I’m tired and want to go to bed (where I can dream of my pretty, pretty lists).

I took last W-F off from work and headed up to the Adirondacks to get some fresh air and clear my head and find some peace in the world via silence and maybe some physical pain. And mountains. I love those.

Drove up from NNJ on Wednesday, parked at Garden, and hiked in about 3.4 or so miles to the Wm. G. Howard lean-to, arriving around 5:30PM. I knew I was in the right place when I saw this:

I mean this:

I packed about three days of food, as I was not sure when I’d be coming out of the closet I mean woods. There were already two bedrolls in the lean-to when I arrived, so I shoved them into a corner and claimed the rest of the lean-to for myself by peeing out a big rectangle around my territory. At about 9PM, I saw some headlamps coming down the trail – I figured they were either my bunkies or that Yellow-Yellow et al. had finally figured out the flashlight thing. I put on my camo greasepaint, pulled out my flat black KA-BAR and lay in wait for them while smoking a cigarette where the fire pit used to be.

They turned out not to be bears, so I had to talk English for a while, which was a bummer because I’d been practicing my Canadian all week long. The two who came up the trail were none other than Wally and Annette, whom I’d never met before and who are also not members of this forum, so they don’t have cool handles like the rest of us. They were pretty cool people, though, and we stayed up for a while and told bear and hiking stories (I stayed silent for the bear part because I don’t yet have any of those and I don’t like to tell fibs to strangers – ok, that’s a lie).

Thursday morning I hit the trail around 7AM and was on the summit of Marcy by 10:30. I had the summit all to myself, so I took a few pictures and vids. I didn’t think to strip down naked and run around the summit with a rubber glove on my head yelling “I’m a squid! I’m a squid!” until I was about halfway back down the mountain, but I did call my sister Katie to say hi. I was somewhat disappointed that I didn’t meet a summit steward =( as I really wanted to ask how to get to Roostercomb and Hegehog.

On the way up Marcy, I took care of some much needed trail maintenance by removing all of the spiderwebs with my face. No, there’s no need to thank me, that’s just what I do. I see it as my contribution to the hiking community.

I went back down the way I came up Marcy and headed up the trail to Haystack (via Little Haystack), stopping briefly to put some moleskin on a hotspot on one of my feet. Again, I had the summit to myself, and again, I stayed clothed. I also descended this mountain via the way I ascended, prompting me to think that everyone who’s ever said they did a “Great Range Traverse” wasn’t really traversing at all, but rather doing a series of out&backs.

Yes, my goal for that day was a full “traverse” and, no, I did not complete it – opting instead simply for a tough hike and some friendly conversation along the way (as well as the general relaxing feeling of having nowhere to go and all day to get there). Betwen Haystack and Basin, I stopped at the Haystack Brook to refill my water receptacles. Aside from the Johns Brook, that was really the only water worth pumping I saw all day – and if I hadn’t bumped into this guy named Dan from Brooklyn-via-DC, I probably would have passed right by it: the brook was barely ankle deep and maybe a foot or two across at the most. I hear we’ve been having a dry summer.

I chatted with Dan for a bit and headed up Basin with him. This was his first time in the ‘dacks and he was hiking with a full pack. I thought he did admirably well on his ascent of Basin. At the summit, we met a guy named Dennis, who was staying at JBL, and whom I had passed that morning on the veranda of said L on my way to Marcy. I chatted with Dennis for a bit at the summit of Basin and headed off to Saddleback.

There’s one section of Saddleback just before the summit that entails some hands-and-feet climbing that really scared the crap out of me. It was well marked and I didn’t see another way up the rocks, but I felt like I was in some twisted game of Twister, trying to figure out where to put my hands and feet. I was sorely tempted to go back and tell Dan not to attempt it with his big pack.

After Saddleback, I headed down the trail between that and Gothics, passing Ore Bed LT on the way, and then to my LT. I was sore and tired; it was a good day. I must have sweated out all the caffeine in my system, because I had a very strange headache for the last couple of miles that was only cured by a cup of coffee at the LT. Addiction can be rough sometimes.

I talked into the night with Wally and Annette – Wally’s been hiking in the ‘dacks for well over 20 years and we traded lots of stories. He told me that our talk made him feel like old times – that something’s different about the LTs without the fire pits; people don’t seem to be as friendly or ready to converse – and that made me feel all warm and fuzzy on the inside.

I slept in on Friday morning and made my way up Yard and Big Slide, starting around 10:30AM – still sore from the day before. On the way up Yard, I met a nice threesome of long distance runners, so I of course felt pressured to display my woods cred and stay ahead of them. I arrived at the summit of Big Slide about half an hour before they did (we all snuck off the trail to tag the true summit of Yard), so everyone here in the forum can be proud of me for showing their n00bie *sses how real hikers do it. Hard, fast and uphill in the woods. At the summit, I pointed out several of the visible peaks that I recognized and made up the rest. They were very impressed and I told them all about the wealth of knowledge on this forum. =) I also said it was ok for them to just lurk and not actually post – I hope that’s cool with everyone here. We all walked down Big Slide together; I turned off at my LT to pack up my big pack and head out, and they went straight for Garden.

On the way out, I met a cute forest ranger named Grace and we chatted for a bit. Thankfully, she was too slow with the bow saw to actually bring the large branch she was cutting down on my head, and I even managed to slip her my number while she wasn’t looking (I’m also a ninja, btw). I dropped all the names of forest rangers that Wally had mentioned to me in our previous conversations, so that I could be sure that Grace would be duly impressed with my impressive woods cred. She hasn’t called yet, but I figure she’s just being coy – which I find to be wicked sexy. Had we but world enough and time, I’d continue this TR and regale you with my adventures on the hike back to the PA, but I don’t want to scare anyone away from hiking in the Adirondacks.

So, to end on an up-note: I’m still single and all you ladies reading this can tell your girlfriends that I’m rich too.

35R #1819/733W
CHH: 41/102
Grid: 84/420 (?/35 for September)
ADK: 17/46

I have so much to tell you, dear reader, and what seems like so little time.  So much writing to do.

So (for now) I’ll just give you the short version.  Inasmuch as that’s possible for this blogger with a penchant for verbosity.

Excellent weekend.  Long one.  I took last Wednesday through Friday off from work so that I could get some hiking done in the Adirondacks.  Peakbagging, really.  I left NJ Wednesday morning, drove up to the ‘dacks and hiked in to the lean-to by 5:30PM.  The lean-to is about 3.5 miles from the parking area (Garden).  On Thursday I climbed Mount Marcy, Mount Haystack (via Little Haystack), Basin and Saddleback.  The hike was about 14 miles long and kicked my ass.  I think the overall elevation gain was about 6,000′.  Here’s the map over at my EveryTrail page.

Friday I woke up a bit late and hit the trail around 10:30AM, still sore from Thursday.  I climbed Yard and Big Slide, then packed up my stuff and hiked out.  I was planning to meet SoloJoe on Saturday morning for his 46er finish, but that got canceled, so I grabbed a burger at the Noonmark Diner in Keene Valley and headed home.  Here’s Friday’s hike on EveryTrail.

I showered most of the muck off of me from W-F that night and woke up on Saturday morning to climb Table Mountain in the Catskills with Scott.  Here’s that hike over at EveryTrail.

I slept in a bit on Sunday, did some chores and headed over to Whole Foods for lunch, where I serendipitously met my cousin Julia.  We had a nice conversation back at my place for a bit and I loaned her World War Z and Wicked.  Both are excellent books.  I ended up getting to my parents’ house a bit late for my sister’s bbq, but that’s ok because I ended up being early (relative to the other guests).  We all had a great time; I left around 1:30AM.

I don’t think I did sh*t on Monday but have lunch with Scott and pick up my laundry after the laundromat had closed.

Last night Katie, Scott and I went to see The Rockin’ Denny & Brad at the Village Lantern in . . . um . . . the village.  I didn’t get to bed until about 2:30, so I’m kinda shot right now.

So that’s it for now – more later, I’m sure.  I still have a handful of emails to send out and a couple of trip reports to put together for the hiking forum – but not tonight.  Tonight is for sleeping.

So I’ve been writing all night, but not here.  If you’re interested in reading my trip reports for this weekend, you can follow these linqs:

Hunter & SW Hunter (Catskills) on Saturday

Tabletop & Phelps (Adirondacks) on Sunday

Maybe I’ll post the full text for tomorrow night or something, but I don’t feel like doing the copy/paste thing right now.

Last night included quite a bit of writing for me as well – but it was email correspondence that you’re not privy to, dear reader.  My apologies for that – you know you’re my favorite person to whom to write – but these emails needed to be sent, as they were to people I care about (just like you).

Anyway, things are still wicked icky at work.  Rumors abound, and peace, love and brotherhood are nowhere to be found.  I’m re-reading Sun Tzu’s Art of War and keeping my head down because I’m currently an indian in a tribe of chiefs.

I’ve not been sleeping all that well, but whatever.  I think the ghost in my apartment is picking up on my anxieties and f*cking with me for fun.  That’s fine; I’ll get it back when I’m feeling a bit more in control.  We have that kind of relationship.

I didn’t wake up until like 9AM today – didn’t get in to work until around 10:30 or so.  Today still being Monday for me, even though I’m technically 26 minutes into Tuesday.  The #2 guy in my department quit today.  Two weeks ago, the #1 guy from the other big department on the floor quit, and last week his #2 guy quit.  It’s kind of weird at work right now and I should probably be catching some Zs so that I can be (relatively) on time for work tomorrow (today):  I don’t know what time, but the owner will be making an appearance to (theoretically) talk to us about what’s going on.  Our department had a non-top-management meeting to discuss things and air our gripes.  I mostly kept my mouth shut (with the exception of a few unavoidable snide comments) and said that I’m really only interested in more money when they asked me what I thought about the situation.  The next few days/weeks should be interesting, to say the least.

It’s still the summer as far as I’m concerned, which means leisurely working on summer research projects and enjoying the fact that work isn’t busy as sh*t right now.  Things will pick back up in September, and I’d much rather get stressed when things get stressful.  A lot of people are pretty stressed out and worried right now, but for whatever reason, I’m not.  I kind of feel lazy – that I should be freaking out and doing something to secure my future, but it’s just not happening.  Oh well, we’ll see what tomorrow brings.

I spent most of my free evenings last week shopping for a seersucker suit (or a linen suit) for Saturday’s wedding, but returned each night empty-handed.  Too bad.  I ended up wearing my light khaki suit to the wedding, which worked out fine.  I looked relatively sharp and was happy with that.  It was a lovely wedding and I had quite a bit of fun.

Sunday morning, Scott made it to my house by 5:45 so that we could be on the road at 6 to meet a group from the forum at 8AM in the Catskills.  This was particularly impressive, as Scott and I had both been up until around 1:30 that morning (separately).  Scott was partying with Brian and a few chicks and I was reading.

We made it to Woodland Valley Campground on time (which was impressive because my car’s GPS wasn’t working), shuttled over to the Slide Mountain Parking Area, and headed up Slide Mountain (the highest in the Catskills) via the Step Trail.  Slide is a pretty popular destination and taking this route up meant we didn’t see anyone else until it intersected with the main trail.  I’ve been up Slide a few times, and this was by far the most beautiful route so far.  We then went over Cornell and Wittenberg mountains and ended back at Woodland Valley (and were shuttled back to my car at Slide PA).  Afterward, several of us went to dinner at a restaurant called Peekamoose on Route 28.  I thoroughly enjoyed my $13 hamburger and $8 brownie.

There were about 8 of us in the group and we moved much slower than Scott and I usually do, but it was an extremely pleasurable hike.  We bagged lots and lots of views and hung out with some really cool and knowledgeable people.  I was pretty psyched to hang out with Heather Rolland and her husband Tom – Heather and I have become buddies via facebook, but haven’t had a chance to hike together yet.  Because the pace was so relaxed and good conversation abounded, I hardly even noticed that we were climbing mountains.  Sure, I was sweating, but I wasn’t breathing particularly hard, nor was I wicked exhausted when we finished.  My legs were a bit tired today, but no big deal – it was a 9 mile hike, after all.

Tack three more mountains onto my grid list and I’m now 81/420 (8 for July).  Holy shiznit – I’ve done 81 climbs of the 35 highest mountains in the Catskills!  And that doesn’t count the 5 or more mountains I’ve climbed twice in the same month (the grid is each of the 35 peaks in each of the 12 months – 35×12=420).

So yeah:  busy weekend.  I’ll talk to you more during the week, dear reader; it’s off to catch those Zs for me now.

On the ride up to RI at the beginning of my MINIs on Top trip, I popped into my CD player a series of CDs my friend Jason loaned to me two or three years ago:  it was a talk by Eckhart Tolle called The Flowering of Human Consciousness.  It was pretty good – both for the content and because it took my mind away from the traffic of the drive.

For my trip this past weekend, I bought Tolle’s first book The Power of Now on CD to listen to on the longer sections of the drive.  I got through about half of it and am looking forward to another long drive as an opportunity to finish it.

I’m not really one for books-on-tape (I prefer paper), but I don’t think I’d read Tolle’s book even if I bought it – or I’d probably put it down halfway through.  But Tolle has an interesting enough voice (he speaks the Queen’s English with a German accent), and I find this kind of material to be better transmitted through the spoken word than in print.

Tolle’s main thesis isn’t all that different (and, to his credit, he admits as much) from what various spiritual teachers have been saying for pretty much millennia:  that all we have is this moment – there is no past and no future, and thus no point in spending time living in either.  That we must be completely present in the now in order to live a complete and fulfilling life.

He talks about transcendence and enlightenment as well, but these are relatively foreign concepts to me and while they seem nice to think about as ideals, they’re not part of my everyday life.  I dig the fact that he brings an element of everyday life to his spiritual teachings.

I’m not going to go all starry-eyed for the guy, but I can get with many parts of what he says.  I think I most identify when he relates things to zen and yogic teachings.

Anyway, listening to this was an excellent set-up for my vacation:  it reminded me to stay in the moment.  I did so as much as possible and doing so played an integral role in the fulfillment I received while I was in the woods.

I have plenty more to say on this topic, but I think that’s enough for now.

The last five days passed like a dream.  I was really hoping for some kind of spiritual experience or battery recharge or something when I headed off to the woods last Wednesday.  And I got it.  Well, I got something.  Not entirely what I thought it would be, but something nonetheless.

I’ve been looking forward to spending a few days in the woods, hiking and camping, for the last few months (ever since just before the busy season started).  The last couple of weeks have been melancholy and frantic – in that rushing-to-do-everything-and-not-getting-anything-done kind of way.  I was hoping to walk out of the woods with a life-plan for the next few months laid out in my head.  What happened instead was that I waked out of the woods with a calmer and more peaceful mind, which is therefore more able to put together a life-plan for the next few months . . . maybe sometime this week – I’m really not all that worried about it right now.

So here’s a quick run-down before I head off to bed:

I left my house Wednesday morning and met my buddy SoloJoe Whalen at the Sloatsburg rest stop on 87N (about fifteen minutes or so from my house).  We then caravanned up to The Mountaineer in Keene Valley NY, so that Joe could pick up an air mattress and some other supplies.  We stopped briefly at a cabin called Random Scoots in Keene NY to visit with a couple of friends from the ADKHP forum.  Then we boogied back to the Northway, south one exit, and over to the Upper Works parking area.  The sun was just going down as we got there and we had decent light for the first mile or two.  Around 4.5 miles in (it was dark by this time), we bumped into the monument to the man for which the river we were following (Calamity Brook) got its name (his death was a calamity).  The monument was, however, a side trail, so after snapping a few photos, we booked it back onto the trail, happy in the knowledge that we only had to carry our heavy packs another .4 miles before we started passing lean-tos at which we might sleep.

Well, about two miles later, we hit a sign that read “High Water Bridge” – one which we found familiar.  We put our packs down, wiped the sweat off our faces and looked at each other in perplexity.  I pulled out my iPhone (upon which I was tracking our progress via my GPS app) and pronounced us to have backtracked.  We then said the F word a lot.  And then some more.  I laughed quite a bit at our predicament, as it meant we still had at least another three miles to walk that night and we were already exhausted from carrying those heavy packs.

By the way, when I say “it was dark”, I don’t mean the kind of dark you’re probably used to.  I mean the kind of dark wherein there is no visible light ANYWHERE.  If we switched off our headlamps, we could not see each other standing only a few feet away.  Starlight, yes.  Moonlight, not this evening.

Anyway, we finally made it into a lean-to close to 1AM, scaring the couple within it half to death.  Joe’s got great people skills, though, so he smoothed everything over pretty quickly.  I told them that we were bears, but they didn’t believe me.  Probably Joe with the whole talking-thing.  Joe and I decided not to eat, as that would prolong the already lengthy time we’d be keeping the nice couple awake.  Night comes early in the Adirondacks – about 9PM this season – so even if they had plenty of steamy sex in the lean-to before we arrived, they still must have been asleep for a couple of hours.  As we lay our heads down to rest, I could not, however, resist muttering to Joe “don’t make any moves on that guy, ok?  We just met and you hardly know him.”  I’m sure that was good for an extra couple of minutes of awake-time for the dude.

lolz

We woke up around 6AM on Thursday, had breakfast and were on the trail by 8:30AM.  The lean-to we stayed at was the third one we poked our heads into, and the only one not full.  As such, it was also .4 miles farther away from the trail upon which we would start our march.  It was kind of a long day.  Not in a bad way, but in terms of hours.  We hiked for around 10 hours, returning to the lean-to just before 7PM and covering probably between 12 and 15 miles.  We climbed Gray Peak and Mount Redfield (both “bushwhacks”), putting me at 9/46 for the Adirondack High Peaks and Joe at some ridiculous number beyond my meager 9.  I put ‘bushwhacks’ in quotes back there because the trailless peaks of the Adirondacks have very clear trails on them, but they’re just not marked with blazes or signage.  The bushwhacks in the Catskills are much tougher in a navigational sense, though I can’t imagine trying to get through the growth on the sides of the mountains in the Adirondacks – it’s wicked thick.

On the hike, Joe and I discussed literature, relationships, philosophy and other things sublime.  Come to think of it, I don’t think I said ‘boobs’ more than once or twice.

When we got back to the lean-to, we had something to eat while Joe packed his pack and got ready for the five-mile hump out of the woods.  I have no idea how that sonofabitch made it – I was completely exhausted.  But he did.  And then he drove 5.5 hours back to NJ, packed his stuff and was on a plane from Philly to Colorado by 8:30PM on Friday night.  Joe’s out there now, bagging 14,000 foot peaks.

I had the evening and the lean-to to myself, and I made good use of my time.  By which I mean, I walked down to the beach of the Flowed Lands reservoir (or whatever kind of body of water it is) and rinsed myself off in the cold mountain water.  I also rinsed out my shirt and socks and pumped some more drinking water from the spring.  I didn’t have a computer, so I couldn’t blog, but I made some notes in a notebook and read some of Haruki Murakami‘s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (thanks, Sara, for loaning it to me – it only got a little wet on the hump out of the woods and none of the pages are currently sticking together), which I am currently enjoying immensely.

I went to bed early Thursday night – maybe 10:30 or so – both out of pure exhaustion and lack of stuff to do when it’s black as pitch outside of the lean-to door (which is really the whole front of the place).

I woke up early on Friday morning, said “fuck-it” and dozed for a few hours.  I finally got moving around 10 or 10:30AM, just as the first raindrops began to patter on the lean-to roof.  I made and ate breakfast and arranged my gear so as to minimize the possibility of anything getting wet besides my raingear and my pack’s rain cover.  Then I humped the 5 miles back out of the woods to my car.  In the rain.  And when I say “rain”, I’m talking mountain lions and timber wolves.  It was effin pouring.  The trail wasn’t so much a trail as it was a series of rock-tops upon which to step, and small streams in which one might step without fear of the water coming above the tops of one’s boots.

Not that it mattered in any case; my boots were soaked by the time I got to the car.  I had on these goretex waterproof socks, though, which kept my feet and socks dry, despite the fact that my boots were soaked through.  I couldn’t believe how heavy my boots were when I took them off.  Nor could I believe that the next thing on my plate was to get down to the Cats to meet Scott and hump around all night and day in the woods in those heavy wet boots.

By the way, the hump out of the Adirondacks was simply splendid.  Even though it was raining, I had a great time.  The weather was warm enough that it really didn’t matter if I got all wet (not that I did – I was wearing raingear).  I kept a steady pace and it seemed by that point that my backpacking muscles had figured out what they were doing and gotten stretched out – they were not nearly as sore and painful as they were on Wednesday night.  On that hike, I thought about various hiking-related things, but mostly just enjoyed myself and my vacation.

I got to the car and headed down to the Cats to meet Scott.  Well, actually, I headed back north to Keene to get gas (should have done that Wednesday afternoon), and then south to the Catskills.  I toweled out my boots as best I could and put them in the passenger side footwell, under a blast of hot air.  My wet socks and shirt went on the dashboard, to be warmed and dried by the defogger.  Which created some fog, but not too much.

Believe it or not, by the time I got to the Cats, my socks and shirt were dry, and my boots were barely damp.  It took quite a bit of maneuvering on the drive to achieve this, but I’m glad I did.

I met Scott at the Alder Lake parking area at around 9:50PM on Friday night and we humped the 2.25 miles in to the Beaver Meadow Lean-to.  This night hike also involved some backtracking, though probably only about .5 miles-worth.  I wonder if there’s a patch for night-hike backtracking miles.

We hit the lean-to around midnight and ate, then slept in on Saturday morning and hiked a rather lazy six miles or so along Mill Brook Ridge, bagging the high point and the high point of Woodpecker Ridge (a quick bushwhack), while talking of recent events and things sublime.  That puts us at 47/102 for the Catskill Hundred Highest.

We then stopped back at the lean-to, gathered our heavy stuff and humped back out to our cars.

When we got home, I took a nice long hot shower and went to Steve’s Sizzlin’ for a big steak, then swung by Scott’s house to hang out for a bit.

Today was a lazy day, but I got all my errands run.  It was an excellent weekend and I’m currently walking the earth with a deep sense of peace in the background.  I’m pretty ok with going back to work in the morning, which means it was a successful vacation.

=)

Ok, I’m gone until Sunday.  I’m headed up to the Adirondacks Wednesday morning; I should get there early afternoon.  The plan is to park at Upper Works (a smidge to the east of Henderson Lake) and hike the 5-ish miles in to a lean-to at Flowed Lands (between Lake Colden and Livingston Pond.  If I arrive early enough on Wednesday, I’ll run up and down Mount Marshall (4360′ – maybe 4 or so miles round trip).

On Thursday, I hope to wake up early and climb Cliff Mountain (3944′), Mt. Redfield (4606′), Gray Peak (4840′), possibly Mt. Marcy (5344′ and the highest peak in the ‘dacks), and Mt. Skylight (4926′).  I may end up skipping Marcy and saving that for a traverse of the Great Range, similar to SoloJoe’s Mammoth Traverse from back in May.

Allen Mountain (4347′) is in that neighborhood, but it’s a long, long bushwhack away; I may try for that on Friday, or just bag Mount Colden (4715′) and boogie on back to the car.  It’s supposed to rain on Friday anyway.

I hope to be either back to the car or heading out from the lean-to between 4 and 6PM on Friday so that I can make it to the Catskills before dark.  I’ll hike into a lean-to (I’ll figure out which one sometime on Friday) and get my ass to sleep.  Scott will meet me on Saturday morning and we’ll bag a couple of CHH and/or grid peaks during the day on Saturday and head home.

Here’s the general area where I’ll be in the Adirondacks:

View Larger Map

I’m taking a couple of vacation days – Wednesday to Friday.  I’ll be up in the Adirondacks, bagging peaks.  I leave Wednesday morning and will hopefully be able to climb a mountain that afternoon.  I’ll be staying at the lean-tos at Flowed Lands.  Feel free to send me a fax.

Thursday and Friday will be big peakbagging days for me – hopefully I’ll get four or five mountains climbed on Thursday and two or three on Friday.  Then it’s hike back out of the woods (about 5 miles or so) and into my car for a quick drive down to the Catskills, where I’ll crash at a lean-to until Scott wakes me up Saturday morning and we’ll bag a couple of CHH peaks.

More detailed itinerary to follow, once Scott & I figure out where we’re meeting.  I hope.

In case this is my last post until Sunday night (which will inevitably be a LONG one), take care, dear reader.  Enjoy your week and don’t stress too much.

Heather Rolland, if you’re reading this and haven’t already done so, please check out the blogs of my friends Lauren Flax and Jennifer Wesner.  They’re relatively dissimilar and make for wonderful daily (more-or-less) reading for me.

Jen, I still owe you an email; I will provide that tomorrow during the day or in the evening.  Lauren, I think I’ve done a decent enough job of avoiding lascivious and inappropriate comments on your facebook statuses for the last week or so; likewise, I will provide those tomorrow during the day or in the evening.

Please do not be fooled, dear reader:  linqs do not love make (though it sure is fun to shout-out one’s friends via one’s own cozy little corner of the interwebz).

Adieu.  For now.

So I’m still in a funk.  At least, I think I am.  Maybe I’m just exhausted from the weekend and today’s heat.  I got into my car at 17:30 today and the temperature gauge said 109.  The car was, however, sitting in full sun in the parking lot all day, and it quickly cooled to a balmy 104 as I drove home.  What a crappy day to be a smoker.  50-60 degrees in the office, 100-something outside.  Making the trips between the two temperatures was, to say the least, unpleasant.

I much prefer to blog when I’m in a happy mood and have fun things to talk about – how life is a bowl of cherries and all that shiz.  But someone (read:  sister Katie) has been giving me crap on facebook about not posting as often and/or posting infographics, so that’s why I’m writing now.

I can’t really say I don’t like it, but I just don’t have much to talk about.

This was, however, a good weekend:  Scott and I climbed Fir Mountain on Saturday and then Rocky and Lone Mountains on Monday.  Those were Scott’s last three mountains for the Catskill 3500 Club.  Congratulations, brother!

All three mountains were bushwhacks, and the last two were a 10-mile hike.  I’m pretty proud of Scott’s accomplishment.

Sunday was an off-day for hiking, so I just lazed about and got the usual errands done.  I finished Heather Rolland’s first novel Finders, Seekers, Losers, Keepers and started on her second one Honey Melon Fudge.  Book review(s) to follow shortly.  It’s been really cool to be able to correspond (via facebook) with the author of the book I’m currently reading.  =)

That’s it for now.  Work is slow as sh*t and I have pretty much ZERO motivation.  Maybe it’s the heat.  Maybe it’s dehydration.  Tomorrow will be a better day (not that today wasn’t a good day).  See you then.

Dear reader, below please find the full trip report from Saturday’s night-hike of Eagle & Balsam Mountains.  It was fun.  <3 Ted

Eagle & Balsam 6/12/2010

My apologies, dear reader, if you’re arriving at this page via the ADK High Peaks Forum:  I was pressed for time this evening and can only write so much; this is the same TR from which you just jumped.  Feel free to peruse the rest of the site – you may find something you like.  At the very least, you’ll leave smarter:  that’s a guarantee.

If you’re a regular here, dear reader, feel free to jump over to this post on the forum – the comments (if any) are generally pretty entertaining and informative.

KHP Sunrise Hike 5/31/2010

So it’s half past midnight and I’m still up.  I really should be in bed by now.  This has been a short, hard week.  Not hard like “oh my god, I don’t think I can do this” – there’s just been a lot of work involved.  I haven’t done much outside of waking up and going into the office, coming home and working for a couple of hours, and then going to bed.

The work is getting done, but I have this lingering sense of guilt whenever I’m not working.  For example, I’ve been emailing with clients in Taiwan until around midnight or 1 every night and getting in to the office until around 10:30AM.  I’ve been leaving the office between 6:30 and 10 every night.  My week started with an 8:30PM conference call on Sunday night (Monday morning in Taiwan).  And still when I hit the snooze bar at 8:30AM, a little niggler in the back of my mind says “you’re supposed to be in the office now” (8:30 is my normal start time – not that I get in before 9).

I know there’s no real sense in paying attention to this itchy thought process – that if I scratch it or in any way start to pay attention to it, it will simply become more inflamed and demand more of my attention.  So I’ve mainly been ignoring it.  The other move is to go down the road of rationalization/justification:  “I was in the office until a ridiculous hour last night,” “I need at least a couple of hours to myself every day – there’s no reason I need to be working now,” etc.

That line of thought can be dangerous for me, because it leads to “they’re not paying me enough for the sh*t I put up with,” and eventually “don’t they realize who I AM?!?”  Bad thought, that.

In addition to ignoring the itchy, niggly, guilty thoughts and forging ahead, I’ve also been catching the hours of downtime as best I can.  Tonight I left work at 6:30, planning to get to Campmor and Radio Shack before I met Anthony for sushi at 8:30.  I got home around 7 and realized that if I cut the Campmor trip out, I’d have a whole hour to decompress and read my book before Anthony arrived.  So I did just that.  And it was wonderful.

Scott, Anthony and I left from my house at 8:30 and had sushi – well, Scott the Fat Vegan had edamame and something else (because fish-brothers have faces).  I more or less gorged myself and it was wonderful.  The three of us chilled at my place for a bit afterward and then Anthony bounced and Scott and I talked hiking gear and relationships until just about now.

Tomorrow I’m going to leave work early – hopefully around noon – and meet my buddy SoloJoe up in the ‘dacks for to go on the hiking escapade.  [If you didn't pick up the Hungarian accent there, you probably need to watch some more porn.]  Tentatively, we’ll bag four peaks over nineteen miles on Saturday (or just two in about 2/3 of that) and then bag another two easy ones on Sunday.  I have a conference call at 4AM on Monday, so I need all the head-clearing, sweat-creating, relaxation time I can get between now and then.  Sorry Christine, I won’t be at your party tomorrow night.  =(

I’m certain I’ll either forget or never get around to posting it, so here’s the quote from Wednesday’s zen-a-day calendar:

When you do something, you should burn yourself completely, like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself.

-Shunryu Suzuki

I’m a big fan of Suzuki’s discussions.  As far as I can tell, he’s really the Eastern dude who made Zen available and graspable (that’s probably an oxymoron) for Western dudes like me.  Alan Watts is the Western dude who’s credited with bringing Zen to this continent.  I think.  Anyway, I dig Suzuki.

This quote put me in mind of a Lauren Flax post from way back – when she was doing the Spark thing.  Her piece is called Burning and you can get to it by clicking the link and scrolling through that post until just after the pictures.  Though why in hell you’d want to skip a word of what Lauren Flax has to say is beyond me.  Sheesh, effin’ disposable society.

THERE IS NOTHING *BUT* INSTANT GRATIFICATION.  THERE IS NOT ANOTHER KIND.*

Suck on some of THAT zen, em-effers.

*Because we only have this instant, silly:  nothing “lasts”.

Ok, so work is wicked busy and I’m exhausted.  I need to take my ass to bed.  I’ve been meaning to put together a post about SoloJoe’s traverse of the Great Range in the Adirondacks this past Thursday, but just haven’t done so.  Joe called me before he headed out, but I didn’t get a chance to talk to him; we spoke for a while this weekend about this massive hike.  I’m at once jealous and incredibly proud to know him:  this was way more than just a stroll in the woods.  So I’m scraping it from the ADKHighPeaks forum – here’s the link to the original.

Today I spent a little bit of time checking on my ego.  My head can get blown up pretty quickly if I’m not careful.  Egomania has caused me a lot of problems in the past (in retrospect – it’s not something I really noticed at the time), and I’ve expended a lot of effort trying to gain in humility.  Without necessarily going in the ‘humiliation’ direction, if you know what I mean.

If you don’t, that means that I don’t find it to be a very productive ego-deflation exercise to tell myself I’m a piece of sh*t.  That’s a crappy way to try to get to a state of balance.

Rather, I prefer more positive ego-deflation:  asking the opinions of others (ideally, before I act) – people I trust, mind you.  Then weighing their opinions against my initial impulse and trying to plot the course of least spiritual/moral/interpersonal-relationship-related resistance.  I try to do this especially in times when I think I know exactly what I’m doing or what the next step is.  It’s when I don’t want to ask someone else what they think I should do that I need to do so the most.

For the most part, my eventual decision isn’t necessarily all that much different from my initial impulse.  However, taking the time to consider my options and the possible outcomes is incredibly valuable.  Receiving and considering the opinions of others with regard to my future actions also gives me additional considerations I’d not thought about before.

For example, a hiking analogy:

If I’m bushwhacking (hiking somewhere through the woods where there isn’t a marked trail), and I pass another hiker along the way, I’ll say “I’m going to get to the top of the mountain via such-and-such a route”.  And they’ll say “I’ve been that way before; it’s a lot shorter, but watch out for the stinging nettles”.  Or they’ll say “nobody goes that way; everybody approaches from the north – it might be longer, but there’s a herd path about halfway up that you can’t miss – I’ve also heard that the climbing gets pretty technical just before the summit”.  Some will imply that I’m an idiot for choosing that route, but I usually ignore them.

In the first two cases, however, I received additional information I hadn’t had before:  the nettles might make the going slower, and not necessarily worth it if I’m in a hurry or really don’t feel like getting all scratched up that day.  Or I might be looking for more of a mindless workout than an exercise in daytime land navigation, which makes the prospect of a herd path much more ideal.

A herd path, by the way, is basically an unmarked and unmaintained trail – enough people use that route (hence the “herd”) that it’s pretty easy to follow.  Herd paths grow up to be trails.

If it’s the winter time and there’s fresh snow on the mountain, anything is better than breaking trail – following other snowshoe prints is always easier and faster – no matter how convoluted the trail.

Even if I choose not to take the advice of those who have gone before me, at least I know what to expect:  nettles and/or some (possibly frightening and dangerous) hands-and-feet climbing.

I spent quite a bit of time yesterday and today asking the opinions of others before taking action.  That means I wrote draft emails and sent them to people with a prefix of “what do you think?”  For the most part, I made the changes they suggested, while still getting across the point I wanted to.  In a couple of cases, I found that the readers misinterpreted what I was trying to say, so I had to re-word a few sections to properly make my point.

For one such email, I basically told the client that no, we’re not going to drop our fee, especially when you’re (now also) asking us to do additional work.  I sent the draft to the owner of my company and he said “go for it – you’re free to make the decisions.”  Which was pretty scary, because the client could very well read my email and decide to part company with us on this project.  I received the owner’s email while I was driving home and was like “oh shit”.  I turned the radio in my car off and checked my ego:

Things have been going pretty smoothly for me at work lately – by which I mean, things have been going my way.  People have been taking my suggestions and implement my plans.  That feels good, but my tendency is toward egomania, which means that after a couple of successful meetings, I figure I’m the man and should be running shiz from here to Timbuktu.  Not a good way for Ted to think.

So I spent some time this evening driving home with the radio off and looking at my actions and decisions over the past couple of weeks (while things have been going well and people have been taking my advice).  And do you know what I found?

I skimmed right over everything and basically said “yeah, I’m good – I’ve been making the right decisions”.

Which, in theory, doesn’t sound like such a bad thing.  Later on this evening, I realized that I was kind of scared to really look at my decisions and actions – afraid that I’d find selfish motives and other ego-based stuff.  Whether these things are actually present or not, I don’t know – the point is that that fear is not a good thing for me to have.  The fear of finding bad motives behind my actions, that is.

As far as fear goes, I really don’t have any right now – in a prospective sense.  My fear is all retrospective.  Did I fuck up?  Did I act from a poor motive and possibly hurt someone’s feelings or make a wrong choice somewhere along the line?

Again, whether I did fuck up or make bad decisions isn’t the problem here:  it’s my fear of looking at the past.  There’s nothing I can do about finding those things – they’re either there or they’re not.

I need to spend a bit of time in retrospective meditation in order to conquer this fear.  Otherwise, I might continue to fuck up and make poor decisions, while glossing them over with what I believe to be acceptable results.

I don’t really think I’ve fucked up or made bad decisions, but I still need to take some inventory and keep an eye out for the crappy items I have in stock so that I can trash them, instead of carrying them around with me.

NB:  I don’t think that spending some time in retrospective meditation is inconsistent with staying in the moment – as long as I’m in the moment when I do so.

If you’ve jumped to this page from my recent trip report at the ADK High Peaks Forum, I’m sorry to say that this post doesn’t contain anything you haven’t read before (except what you’re reading right now).  Swing your eyes to the right, though, and you’ll see “Recent Posts” – maybe you’ll find something in there worth reading.

If you’re not viewing this post via the forum, then don’t click this link – it’ll take you to basically what’s below, only in forum format.

Here’s the map-version of the trip over on EveryTrail – you can see where my iPhone died near the end – it’s a straight line back to camp.

By the way, I’m now 7/46 and Joe is 10/46 for the Adirondack 46ers.

Wright, Algonquin, Iroquois 4/24/2010

After SoloJoe’s detailed (and timely) TR of the days before I joined him, I almost wish I hadn’t volunteered to put together this TR.  Ah, well: promises to keep.  So here we go:

I left work around 4:30 on Friday and met Joe at the South Meadows Road semi-PA around 10PM.  We left his car there and took mine to the Loj parking lot, then headlamped the 2.3 miles in to one of the lean-tos at Marcy Dam.   (We crashed at the one just across the dam.)

Friday night was COLD.  For me.   I’m 133.5 lbs of skin, bone and sinew.  It was 22-24 degrees that night.  We ate breakfast and hit the trail around 10 or so – it might have been earlier or later, but I wasn’t paying attention:  we had all day and a headlamp; someplace to go and all day to get there.

We crossed back over the dam and headed up the Whales Tail Notch Ski Trail, then banged a louie onto the Algonquin Peak trail and later another louie to ascend the .4 miles to the summit of Wright.  We didn’t see much snow until around the 3200′ mark; we switched to microspikes for Joe and crampons for me once we hit the ‘monorail’ of the packed-but-withering snowshoe trail.

[The snow and ice had all melted from the basically rock-only last sections of the ascent on all three peaks.]

Rather than carry them or strap them up, I left my cramps near one of the cairns before we summited (and donned them again on the way back down).  Three hundred sixty degree view from the summit, and it was a relatively clear day.  Great way to start.  Joe and I hung out with a couple of dudes at the summit for a bit, took some pics (video for me), ate a bit and faked some French (I was belching in English, so they didn’t get that bit), and headed back down to tackle Algonquin.

Same deal on the way up Algonquin:   rotting snowshoe trail.  No big deal.  Definitely more snow than on the way up Wright; not as much of a monorail situation; some ice still left on the rocks.  We stepped aside to let a family of three in jeans and sneakers butt-slide past us and chastised each other for being gear-nazis after giving them disapproving looks (which quickly morphed to smiles because they were having so much fun).  We inquired (enquired?) with a couple of dudes in full expedition packs, mountaineering boots and glacier crampons about the conditions on the way to Iroquois – they said it was easy and that we could drop our packs at Marcy (??) before swinging up there.  Grain of salt.  They hadn’t been to Iroquois that day and “already bagged it”.

At this point, Joe and I were pretty tired:  Joe because he’d been in the woods racking up the miles bagging peaks for the past three days, and me because my wind was a month old.  We were considering heading back after Algonquin.

Summitting Algonquin changed that.  The view over Boundary to Iroquois promised a quick up-and-down and we had tha feva anyway.   Peak fever, that is.  Yes, I just made that up.  I’m sure it’s not original.

Anyway, here’s the video from the summit of Algonquin (I think I point out Whiteface and call it Marcy, but whatever, it must have been the altitude ).

The monorail to Iroquois was narrow and a couple of the dudes who were out there just before us lost the trail (so they explained), so we faithfully followed their tracks and lost it for a minute too.  Solidarity, brother.  Here’s the video from Iroquois.

Somewhere between Algonquin and Iroquois we passed Ben, Josh and Zach (as Joe mentioned in his TR) – they weren’t the guys who got lost.

We then began our trek home.  Down the col to Lake Colden was off-again, on-again snow (and cramps/micros) until around 3000′.  The trail was rugged, but the stream wasn’t flowing too high, so our feet stayed dry.  We met three French-Canadians in club clothes on their way up and didn’t have the strength to poo-poo their lack of gear/prep (Sketchers just weren’t appropriate that day); one of their number decided to head back down with us, but thankfully struck out ahead – we didn’t find a body or any evidence of him leaving the trail, so we’re pretty sure he made it back to circle up with his buddies.  This was pretty late in the afternoon, too.

We were pretty beat at this point, and we were kind of surprised that the trail stayed wicked rugged for the next several miles, but such is life: we traded expletives and generally whined for a bit until we found our stride again.  Past Lake Colden, over the hitch-up Matildas (sp?) along Avalanche Lake, and through Avalanche Pass.  That was wicked cool.  No snow or anything at this point.  We sat down with Ben, Josh and Zach near Avalance Camps and traded hiking stories while they ate their couscous.  Then we donned our headlamps and added a few more miles in the dark to our hiking-partner tally.

We got back to the lean-to and cooked dinner while talking to Skip, a sex- or septuagenarian who hiked the AT a few years ago and was buddies with Kurt Vonnegut and his wife.  Between Skip and Joe, I think they’ve read just about every piece of modern ‘literature’ that’s been written.  I was deeply troubled to find out that Katz was simply a ‘literary device’ of Bryson’s and probably wouldn’t have slept well that night if we didn’t have about 13 miles under our boots.

The morning found us packing up and heading out.  We had a nice conversation with one of the park rangers who (inevitably) asked “so, the real question is: “how did you store your food?”".  Joe proudly displayed our heavy-ass Garcia bear canisters while Skip made himself scarce.

So, if this isn’t the longest TR ever (and I’m sure it’s not, you bunch of one-uppers ), I’d still like to add a little post-script commentary about this hike and whatnot:

1. A word on maps: the National Geographic ADK map I was using, though relatively waterproof and good-looking, is incorrect with some of the mileages.  I posted a question a while back regarding maps, and got some great answers.  This map worked just fine, but don’t rely overmuch on the mileages when planning a trip (for all you ADK n o_O bs like me).  Mileages are marked pretty well on the trails, btw.
2. I didn’t want to muck up the TR with too many references to it, but I re-opened the scratch to the cornea of my right eye sometime while I was sleeping on Friday night.  It wasn’t painful, but what it portended was pretty irksome for most of Saturday’s hike.  By Sunday morning, it took me two hours to get the eye open and I was back to the opthamologist for a compression patch on Monday.  Sunday night through Tuesday afternoon were a nightmare.
3. I’m currently navigating the old-fashioned way (map and compass), but I use an app for my iPhone to track my progress for posterity.  I’m currently exploring other options for keeping the iPhone juiced up, as I can only get about 6 or so hours out of a full battery and maybe another three on top of that with my current portable charger.    Here’s the .gpsx version of the trip over on EveryTrail – you can see where my iPhone died for the last time: the line gets REAL straight.  I brought a second AA battery-powered charger, but had some trouble with it.  Any suggestions would be appreciated (besides the obvious “get a gps”, of course).
4. SoloJoe is an awesome hiking partner.  He planned the whole trip down to the last detail and didn’t mind letting me follow him for pretty much the whole time (and avoid any slippery, pointy or movey rocks he stepped on).  We’re both solo hikers anyway, so maybe that’s why we get along.  And excellent conversationalists.   I think the daylight hours of last Saturday may have added up to surpass the number of hours we’ve hiked together by headlamp (though I’m sure we’ll rectify that situation soon).

And that’s about all I have to say.  I’m sure I missed some things, but whatever – if I go on much longer, I might not be the only one with sore eyes from this trip.  Good times, Joe.  Thanks again.

They’re all good times.  Life is good, dear reader – even when things ain’t what I’d like them to be.  My scratched cornea from that hike a couple of months ago somehow got re-opened this past weekend.  I took the day off from work on Monday and went in around 4PM on Tuesday.  It was wicked painful Sunday night and most of Monday, but it’s been bearable today.  I was supposed to have a date on Tuesday night (tonight), but had to cancel because I can’t drive all that well and I don’t really think an eyepatch is proper first-date garb.  I have another appointment with the opthamologist on Wednesday; hopefully he’ll take the pressure patch off.

Whatever, it’s just a bump in the road.  Another bump in the road was the dude backing into my car at the rest area on the Thruway while I was driving home from the ‘dacks with one eye.  He was driving a Toyota Rav4 and all that plastic his car is made of didn’t fare too well.  I have some scratches on my bumper and a dent in my trunk.  Hopefully the dent will pop right out, but I kind of doubt it.  No biggie; I’ll see what his insurance can do for me.

Bumps in the road – that’s all they are.  Once upon a time, any of these things might have been enough to send me into a tailspin, but they really haven’t bothered me overmuch.  I’m still cruising along.

So:  to the hike trip report:

I left work around 4:30 on Friday and drove up to the Adirondacks.  I met my buddy Joe at the South Meadows parking area (at around 10PM) and we drove my car the .9 miles to Adirondack Loj.  We then hiked in to one of the lean-tos at Marcy Dam and camped.  It was around 22 or 24 degrees on Friday night and I was pretty cold, despite all my precautions.  It was closer to 28/30 on Saturday night and I was fine, so I think that’s probably my temperature floor for camping.

We got up Saturday morning and set out on our hike:  Wright and Algonquin, and possibly Iroquois.  We hiked like backpackers all day – which is to say that we took our time and talked to just about everyone we met on the trail.  Normally, we hike like peakbaggers:  almost in a rush; the whole point being to get up and down the mountain so that we can check it off our list.

We ended up bagging all three mountains, returning through Avalanche Pass.  It was a great day.  Around 12 or 13 miles altogether.  The conditions were pretty rugged; we were mostly walking on exposed rock or a ‘monorail’ of packed snow and ice (what was left of the snowshoe trails from this winter).

I took a few videos – here’s the one from the summit of Wright:

And here’s the one from Algonquin:

In this one, I think I point out the mountain just to the right of Lake Placid as Mount Marcy.  This is incorrect, it’s actually Whiteface.

And finally, Iroquois:

It was a gorgeous day – we had pretty decent 360-degree views from the summits of all three mountains.

I’m pretty beat right now; this has been a long week so far, so I’m going to stick with the “1000 words” thing (though I don’t know how many words a video is worth) and call this a post.

Again, life is good.  I have no idea how I managed to re-open my scratched cornea, but I’m grateful it didn’t interfere (much) with the hike on Saturday or the drive home on Sunday.  And my date has been re-scheduled for this Friday, so all is right with the world.

I need to put together a trip report for the ADK High Peaks Forum anyway, but that’ll have to wait until later on in the week.

Peace out, yo.

Well, this is the last you’ll hear from me for a few days, dear reader.  I’m headed up to the Adirondacks this weekend for some peakbagging with my buddy SoloJoe.  He’s actually been up there since Wednesday; I think he’s bagged four peaks so far.  The plan is for us to bag six peaks total – three on Saturday and three on Sunday.

My pack is packed – bear can is full of food; extra socks and thermals; summit pack with raingear; sleeping bag, crampons, snowshoes, tent and some other stuff is strapped to it.  I’ll probably get up to Adirondack Loj around 10PM or so and the plan is to hike in to one of the lean-tos by Marcy Dam.  Which is kind of a pain in the ass because I just realized that my headlamp is in my summit pack, which is inside of the big expedition pack.  Frig.

I’m probably bringing too much stuff; my pack is heavy as sh*t.  I’m not particularly looking forward to those few miles between the car and Marcy Dam, but whatever:  better to have more gear than I need than get there and freeze my ass off.  The biggest pain in the ass right now is my effin sleeping bag – it comes in three pieces.  The goretex shell folds up pretty neatly and the patrol bag (the thinner one) compresses down to just about nothing.  It’s the wintery bag that’s thick and doesn’t compress well.  But again, whatever, it’s going to be like 35 degrees at night up there:  I’m sure I’ll need the warm bag, given that I weigh 133.5 lbs and most of that is bone, sinew and internal organs.

Once I get this weekend out of the way I’ll have a better idea of what I’ll need to camp.  This will really be my first time camping – not counting the time Scott and I got hailed on that time we were hiking the Long Path.  I brought too much stuff that time, too.  Though I wasn’t a Boy Scout, I dig their motto.

I’d kind of like to say that I’m nervous about this weekend, but that’s not really the right turn of phrase.  I don’t really get nervous anymore.  In all reality, I’m as prepared as I can be.  If it’s cold and/or rains, I should be able to stay (or get) warm and dry; I’m pretty sure I have enough food and stuff with which to cook it.  And I didn’t forget coffee.  I’ve got extra juice for my iPhone and maps and an altimeter and compass.  I sort of know what to expect, but not really.  I probably do, but I’m just dissembling right now.  Minus the trudge to the lean-to carrying my heavy-ass pack, I should be good to go.

So anyway, I’ll update you when I get back on how things went.  Here’s (approximately) where I’ll be:

View Larger Map

Ok, so now I’m not going to the ‘dacks this weekend.  I probably should have texted Scott (he wanted to hang out), but he reads this blog every day anyway so, Scott:  I’ll be around this weekend.  Give me a shout.

Yes, dear reader, this here’s one-a them multi-purpose websites.  I wish it were a Lilu Dallas multi-purpose website, but then I’d be Milla Jovovich and I sure as hell wouldn’t spend my time writing to YOU – I’d pretty much just be having sex with myself all the time.  Mmmm . . . Milla Jovovich.

Actually, if I were Milla Jovovich, I’d probably spend some time having steamy animal sex with Rachelle Leah (when not otherwise engaged with myself of course – though now that I’m thinking about it, that threesome sounds like what heaven is probably like).

Anyway, I went to Campmor yesterday to pick up the Gregory Palisade 80 pack I had my eye on, but when I put it on, I couldn’t get the straps to fit right.  The only one they had left was a large (strap system), and I’m a medium.  So I’ll probably order it online tonight or tomorrow.  I’m going to research the Deuter AirContact 75+10 as well, because my winter pack is a Deuter and I’ve been very happy with it so far.

So rather than scramble to get my ass up into the ‘dacks to sleep in the rain (33 degrees at night) with my second-choice pack, I think I’ll hold off until next weekend when I have the gear I need.  Which means I’ll need to find something to do with myself this weekend.

I spoke to my buddy SoloJoe (the one I was planning on meeting up with Saturday morning) earlier this evening:  he’s done with the ‘dacks for this week.  He bagged Mount Marcy and Mount Skylight yesterday, but got caught in some pretty gnarly conditions.  Maybe I can get him to put a trip report together and guest-post here (he says he probably won’t post the report on the forum).  It was a pretty good adventure.

*  *  *

On another note, I was talking with Brian this evening about the radio station to which I listen some evenings (when I’m not blasting Bach) – WBGO Jazz 88.  I leave it on during the day for Laila Jo – she’s a total jazz kitten (my kind of girl).

The evening program (Evening Jazz – No, I have no idea where they get these names) is hosted by Awilda Rivera, and her manner of speaking really pisses me off.  She’s English-Spanish bilingual, which is convenient because her program is mainly Latin Jazz, but when she pronounces Spanish names and words, it’s like she overdoes it.  Which makes it sound like an affectation to me.  I don’t get on well with affected people – I think they’re fake.

Anyway, my apologies, but I don’t have much of a rant in me.  I like Latin Jazz, but there are times when I just can’t stand to hear the woman talk.

Check out WBGO if you have a chance – it’s a great radio station (88.3 FM, if you’re anywhere near Newark NJ – or listen to it online).  They even have an iPhone app.  I’d recommend avoiding the seasonal membership drives, though:  they can be pretty annoying.  Jazz 88 is entirely member-supported (well, I think they get grants as well), so there are no commercials.  And the jazz is pretty darned swingin’.  I’m a fan.

So yeah, that’s it for me (for now).  Peace out, I’m going to surf the net for packs.

So I was wrong in yesterday’s post: Katie’s birthday party isn’t until NEXT weekend.  Which means that I very well may spend this entire weekend in the woods.  This evening I priced out some of the bigger pieces of gear I’ll need.  I bought a little pack for the summer – a 20L Osprey Manta – and looked again at a couple of the larger, expedition-type packs.  There’s a 70L Osprey Aether at Ramsey Outdoor Store on sale for $179 and an 80L Gregory Palisade on sale at Campmor for $279.  I’m not all that psyched about spending $300, but I think I’m going to go with the Gregory.

I should be able to get a one-person tent for about $50 – a Eureka – and though I’ve heard pretty crappy things about Eureka tents, they’re what’s available right now.  John (or Jon, I’m not sure – it might be a silent ‘h’), a.k.a. “Drama” on the ADKHighPeaks forum told me on the way down Lone that he has a Black Diamond tent he’s very happy with, so maybe I’ll surf the net a bit at work tomorrow and see what’s what.  Hell, maybe I’ll even swing into the city after work and check out Tents & Trails – I can look at both packs and tents there.  (Though they’ll probably be overpriced, given that Manhattan is both a city AND an island.)  Whatever, it’ll be nice to browse – I know they’ve got a pretty decent selection.  If, of course, I can get there before they close (which I think is around 7PM).  Doubtful.

Anyway, as I was headed into work today, I checked the weather for Lake Placid and it’s raining.  And that state is supposed to continue straight on through the weekend, so I’ll definitely need a tent.  And extra socks.  I mentioned it to Joe when I spoke with him today, but he was already up there.  We’re leaving our plans up in the air.  I wouldn’t be surprised if he called it a trip by Friday afternoon.

I’m going to head up Friday after work anyway.  Hopefully I’ll hear from Joe at some point on Friday with better info, but it ain’t Friday yet.  Our tentative plans are for me to meet him at the Avalanche lean-to site at 8AM on Saturday morning.  I was thinking about staying the night at the Adirondack Loj, but almost $50 is too expensive for a bed for me.  Again, I’ve got to learn to camp sometime.  Avalanche lean-to is three or four miles into the woods; miles which I’ll be covering with my headlamp on Saturday night.  Hopefully not in the rain.

So in the two evenings left to me – Wednesday and Thursday nights – I’ll get my gear together, pack it up, and get ready to head out after work on Friday.  Here’s what I’ve got on my list so far:

• Packs (big & little)
• Sleeping bag
• Tent
• Warm layer for sleeping
• Rain gear
• Food
• Coffee
• Juice for the iPhone
• Extra socks (and for that matter, probably a whole change of clothes)
• Regular hiking gear (gaiters, poles, snowshoes, crampons, maps, compass, altimeter, etc.)

It’s time to put new batteries in my altimeter and headlamp.  And I need to switch my Murphy kit from my winter pack to my (new) summer pack.  And sew my patches onto my summer pack.  I think that’s about it.  Let me know if you think I missed anything.

I haven’t done it yet, but I’ve always wanted to be the guy who walks into the woods on Friday afternoon and comes out on Sunday afternoon.  We’ll see how this weekend goes, but either way, I’m getting closer to being that guy.  Hell, I’m going to HAVE to be that guy if I want to bag those 46 peaks.  I’m currently 4/46.

I’m not sure if this is good or not:  it’s Monday evening and my weekend is booking out pretty quickly.  I think I’m going to make an appointment with myself on Sunday to do “not a damned thing.”  Better pencil that in to the ole Outlook.  Or MobileMe.  Or whatever.  Just try not to forget, asshole.

No, not you dear reader, I’m the asshole I was talking to.  It’s cool though:  I’m not nuts.  Crazy people have conversations with one another – dialogues, if you will.  Me, I don’t do any such thing.  They’re more discussions – very one-sided – like when my dad and I had (have) a “talk” about something.  Except now I usually just get up and walk away if it starts going on too long.  Either way – if it’s me or my dad starting to lecture me, I’m outta there.

Goddamn!  I love me some J. S . Bach.  I really don’t know dick about classical music, but I know I dig some Bach.  There’s this thing called a Badinerie – about a minute and a half of some hardcore badass flute-playing at the end of Orchestral Suite No. 2 in B Minor (BVW 1067) (yes, I know that’s exactly what the Wikipedia article says, but that’s also what I’m listening to) that totally gets me hard.  Maybe not literally, but I’m sure I’d have a tough time staying calm if you combined pretty much any part of BVW 1067 with naked breasts.  Srsly, bro:  it rocks.

So yeah, I don’t necessarily know that I dig Badineries and Bourrees unless they’re Bach’s.  Anyone have any suggestions as to whom I should check out and give a listen to?

This past New Year’s Eve I spent at my aunt and uncle’s house in Montclair.  Attending dinner were Maestro Delta David Grier and his wife – frig, I can’t remember her first name, and she was such a sweetheart.  I had to do some hardcore Googling to get David’s last name, anyway.

I picked up the Alastair Reynolds novels on David’s suggestion – he was “reading” the first novel on tape for a book club, I believe.

So, yeah:  the point of this long-ass digression is an anecdote that my aunt passed along to me yesterday (I’m pretty sure it was about David).  They were engaged in a discussion about various composers (and I’m going to simplify and paraphrase this to get straight to the point).  David said that Bach composed by looking at the notes on the page and finding patterns and balance, while Mozart was continually scribbling on every piece of paper at hand, writing and re-writing, and Beethoven, well, Beethoven took dictation directly from God.

At least, I think that’s how it went.  I may have mixed up Mozart and Beethoven.  Which is fine, because I’m a Bach guy.  I can just about see the balance and patterns of the notes on the page as I listen to Bach.  It’s pretty fly.

487 words worth of a digression, how do you like that, dear reader?

The point to the title and first sentence of this post (and I very rarely write the title first) is that I need to get my ass in gear this week (literally and figuratively) during the hours when I’m not working:  I just spoke with SoloJoe an hour or two ago and I’m going to be meeting him Friday night at one of the lean-tos up in the Adirondacks, for to go hiking on Saturday.  Peakbagging, actually.  In order to meet him at said lean-to on Friday night, I’m going to have to find myself a nice big pack that will hold my sleeping bag, day pack, food and probably something warm to wear at night.  I’ve been eyeballing and pricing out bigger packs for the past few days, but now it’s go-time:  I need to pick one up and figure my shiz out lickety-split.  No more time for dissembling.

Luckily, I’m pretty sure I know which pack I’m going to get – if it’s still on sale at Ramsey Outdoor Store when I get there tomorrow evening.

Oh, and did I mention that I need to be off Table Top and Phelps mountains and in my car by the early afternoon on Saturday so that I can be at my sister’s birthday party in Astoria in the evening?  Yeah, this weekend is going to be a pretty fine one.  Katie, try to line up a couple of hot chicks for me.  At your birthday party.  =D

And there’s a mystery package waiting for me at the post office.  So I need to get my ass in bed and try (again) to wake up early so that I can get there before work.

Check out BVW 1067 if you get a chance and imagine playing the flute solo yourself – I swear it’ll melt your face.

I’m off to bed.  Should have done so an hour ago.  I’m exhausted – this weekend wasn’t necessarily long, but I didn’t get the relaxation/decompression time I usually do, so I was a worthless sack of sh*t at work today and hope not to be tomorrow.  I burned a lot of calories this weekend and haven’t had a chance to replenish yet.  Plus, rain in the morning is meant for sleeping in – the goddess told me so – and I didn’t get to do that this morning (nor did I get enough sleep last night).

So, as such, there will be, er, that is to say, no post today.  At least nothing ridiculously interesting.  If you’re bored at work and want something to read, below is the trip report I posted on the ADK High Peaks forum.  My apologies to any of you friggers who jumped from said post to this here web-site, only to see the same words all over again.

My advice:  flip around a bit – you may see something you like.  Or not.  I’m not that worried about it.  But welcome all the same (you friggers from the forum, and anybody else who’s new here).  [Brian, Scott, you're not new here.]

Anyway, there’s thunder and lightning and some heavy rain blowing through around my little bungalow right now and I intend to take full advantage of the sleep inducing qualities thereof.

Eagle 3/21/2010 – 35/35W

I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I’ve had to explain to people on facebook what “x/35W” means. Yesterday I got to post “35/35W”.

I hiked Eagle last year on 3/22 and the conditions weren’t much different from yesterday’s: wet. If I’d have realized sooner that I still needed Eagle to finish my winter 35, I certainly would have hiked it in another month. Besides the stream crossings, heavy snow and all the water on the trail, I can’t even count yesterday’s hike for my 420 grid. Oh well, as Drama once said to me “there’s worse things than having to hike another day.”

So yeah, it was wet yesterday. All over the place. Most of the stream crossings were relatively easy, with the exception of the Flat Iron Brook and one other crossing maybe 1/4 mile downhill from the lean-to. As SoloJoe mentioned in his trip report, I used a tree trunk to shimmy across the Flat Iron Brook. It’s about 100 yards upstream from where the trail crosses. If you’re into wading and/or getting your boots wet, great; if not, I suggest the tree trunk. I used the same one last year and it’s pretty solid, so I think it’ll be there for at least another year or two – though if you’re reading this in 2012, I’d suggest you find a more recent trip report than this one, just to be sure.

SoloJoe and I met up at Seager and split off about a mile in, near the bridge. He headed off to Doubletop (nice double-finish, Joe), and I to Eagle. The hike to Eagle was relatively uneventful; I had my snowshoes on the whole time. There was a party of three ahead of me who postholed it up to the lean-to and then spent an hour drying their boots out by the fire before donning their snowshoes and heading to the summit. I caught up to them about 200 yards from the summit – Catskill 3500 Club members, all. There are still a good two or so feet of snow on the summit, though what’s left on the trail on the way up is melting fast.

As I was shimmying across the aforementioned tree trunk on the way up the mountain, it occurred to me that that was one of the times where it would be nice to have a hiking partner – so that we could snap photos of one another crossing the rushing brook via a big log while wearing snowshoes. I debated pulling out my iPhone and taking a pic, but figured Murphy’s Law applies in the woods as much as (if not more than) anywhere else, and settled for making sure my pockets were all zipped up. Halfway across, mind you.

It took me about 2.5 hours to get to the summit (I was tired from yesterday’s hike) and about 1 hour to get back down to the crossing. As I was almost across the second time, Joe passed right by. I called out to him and he laughed and asked if he could take a few photos, and he did. He just informed me via PM that, while he would certainly email them to me, the photos are too explicit to post on the internet – with or without my permission – and that I “look like a dog humping a tree”. I’m looking forward to my new avatar. =) (If only to see what my sunburn and upper-body scratches look like from hiking two days in a row without a shirt on.)

So that’s it: winter finish. 35/35W. All solo hikes with the exception of the few miles down Lone late that night with SoloJoe and Drama, and the couple of miles in and out yesterday with SoloJoe. See you at the dinner; I’ll probably be fully clothed.

I finished my peaks today for my Catskill 3500 Club winter patch.  A total of 28 mountains climbed this winter.  I met three guys as I was just about to the summit of Eagle and we shot the shit for a bit before I headed out ahead of them.  After I hit the summit and saw them again on the way down, they all congratulated me (complete with fist bumps – or “daps” as they say in Britain).

Thing is, today was just another day on the mountain for me.  I didn’t have any kind of crazy feeling of elation when I hit the summit of Eagle, and frankly didn’t even realize that I had completed my goal until these guys reminded me.  Kinda weird.  I really hope I don’t get into one of those “I just don’t know what to do with myself” funks in the next week or two.  I need to find myself a new goal and start planning for that soon, I think.

I’m tired from hiking yesterday and today (7.2 and 8 miles, respectively), and I just barely got my laundry done, cake baked, dinner made and tally sheet ready to be mailed, so I’m off to bed shortly.  I’ll talk more about this weekend’s hikes and the completion of my winter peakbagging extravaganza tomorrow.  I’ll also figure out how to post my pics, vids and maps sometime this week.

One thing that occurred to me this evening:

Once upon a time, I worked really hard to feel “full” – I took and took and took and held everything that was “mine” close, not wanting to let anyone else have it.  I just noticed it, but I’ve been grooving on the “he who says does not know; he who knows does not say” (Lao Tsu) vibe for quite a while now.  Which is to say that I’ve been keeping my mouth shut and listening to other people (whether or not they’re just talking a bunch of bull), rather than trying to tell everyone all about what I’m doing or what I think.

I’m finding that I feel more “full” the more I continue to empty myself out.  I get more fulfillment out of being a channel than being a vessel – I’m constantly being emptied and filled at the same time.  It’s almost like being at one with the Universe.

I was looking on YouTube for the scene in Spider Man 2 where Dr. Octavius (at that point newly Dr. Octopus) says “I couldn’t have miscalculated,” but I suppose that line had more of an impression on me than it did on other people.

I regularly work with spreadsheets that contain equations in various cells, often interdependent upon one another, so this line pops into my head often enough.  Well, it did again today as I was filling out my winter peaks tally sheet for the Catskill 3500 Club.  My plan was to have the tally sheet filled out and in a stamped envelope so I could drop it in the mail when I got off Kaaterskill High Peak tomorrow afternoon.  As I was filling out my tally sheet, using my climb list on Peakbagger.com, I wrote “3/22/2009″ next to Eagle Mountain and immediately realized that 3/22 is one day after 3/21 – the cutoff date for winter peaks.  Yeah, I’m in Mensa, you know.

So I’m not 34/35, and I will not be climbing 27 mountains this winter, I’m 33/35 and I’ll be climbing 28.  Oh well, there are worse things than having to hike twice this weekend.  I’ll climb Eagle on Sunday.  It should be pretty easy – 6 or 7 miles, on a trail and everything.  Good thing I’ve got raingear, though.

And in an interesting twist of fate, I’ll probably be seeing my buddy SoloJoe both days.  Joe will be hiking Indian Head, Twin, Sugarloaf and Plateau on Saturday, so I’ll meet him as he’s coming off of Plateau and shuttle him back to his car on Prediger Road (thus saving him a 2 or so mile streetwalk).  Joe will also be leaving from the Seager parking area on Sunday to hike Doubletop, which is the same place I’ll be parking to hike Eagle.  Depending on how Joe’s feeling after his ambitious hike tomorrow (and how early I get up on Sunday), we might hike Eagle and Doubletop together.  What the hell, I don’t think I’ve done Doubletop in the month of March, so it’ll at least count towards my 420 grid.

I mentioned the 420 grid a couple of months ago – that’s hiking each of the 35 Catskill high peaks in every month of the year (12 x 35 = 420).  I can’t say that’s necessarily my next hiking goal, but it’s on my long-term list.

Anyway, I had an interesting dream last night.  I’ll tell you about it another time; it was vivid, but I’m kind of iffy on the details.  Suffice to say that my current totem is the dragon.

Two hikers got lost on Blackhead Mountain last weekend.  One of them died.

When I talk to people about my hiking adventures, they are of one or two mindsets:

a.  They think it’s all just a walk in the woods and that nothing could be easier, or

b.  They think I’m some kind of sick idiot with a deathwish.

Needless to say, these are two extreme thoughts, and reality is somewhere in the middle.  Most people are of the ‘b’ type.  Others (the ‘a’ type) don’t believe that it’s dangerous at all.  Then they read articles like the one in the link above and become ‘b’ converts.

It’s a shame what happened to those two hikers last weekend; I’ve climbed Blackhead probably four or five times in the past couple of years.  It’s not particularly difficult and has some spectacular views – arguablysome of my favorites in all of the Catskills.

I was talking to a buddy of mine on the ADKHighPeaks forum today (yes, there are other hiking geeks out there besides me – I’ve found my people), and he offered to hike with me this weekend if I was planning on doing Kaaterskill High Peak (the final mountain in my winter peakbagging extravaganza) alone.  He offered to skip the mountains on his list for this weekend and partner up if I didn’t have anyone to go with.  I was like “fuck yeah, I’d be happy to have you along,” but “fuck no, you can’t come if you’re going to miss out on your goals.”  Well, more or less; that’s a paraphrase.  Theoretically, Scott will be bagging this last peak with me (which will also be 30/35 for his regular 3500 Club patch, I believe), but I probably just jinxed the whole fucking thing by not only saying that out loud, but saying it out loud ON THE INTERNET.

Anyway, it’s getting late, so I’m just going to scrape the PM I sent to my buddy and use it as my blog post.  It pretty much covers (in a broad sense) my feelings on hiking solo.  People ask me about that all the time (e.g. “isn’t that DANEgerous?”), and I may as well tell you about it too, dear reader.  So here we go:

I feel ya on the spooked thing as far as that dude dying on Blackhead goes.  I read the posts in WoolyBear’s thread – though I missed out on the ones that were deleted – the forum had a lot more detail than the couple of news articles I read.  The articles called those guys “experienced hikers”, but from what I read, they weren’t wearing snowshoes.  I feel pretty bad about the whole situation and I don’t want to start recounting all the things they “should have” done, but from what I read there are some pretty simple precautions that I take for every hike that those two didn’t.

Honestly bro, I think about dying on the mountain all the time.  Especially because I hike solo.  And that’s probably the thing that gets me safe & sound back to the car every time.  I’m well aware of the fact that one little mistake could lead to a broken ankle or something, so I’m much more careful than I would be if I were playing in the back yard.  I know it only takes one little thing to turn a situation bad – a rolled/broken ankle turns a 5 hour walk in the woods into a 10 hour struggle to just get back to the car.

I carry the basic emergency gear with me – bivy and whatnot – and I ALWAYS know where I am.  I have no sense of direction, so I keep an eye on my map, compass and altimeter regularly.  I carry raingear, an extra layer and a headlamp; I’ve always got more water than I need and/or a filter.  There’s a bunch of other things that I do “just in case” – I wasn’t a boy scout, but I think they’ve got a great motto.  The point is, while I can’t predict what’s going to happen on a particular day on any given mountain, I can hedge my bets to keep me safe.  And I respect Mother Nature.  She’s a sweetheart, but can be a cruel mistress if I don’t keep an eye out for myself.  Huh.  A lot like my ex-wife, that way.

Above all, I don’t panic.  That’s what happened to those two hikers last weekend:  they panicked.  It sucks to say, but I’m sure that’s what got them so hung up.  It’s a shitty way to go, and not the way I plan on going.  I’m knocking wood as I write this.  If Mother Nature wants to hold me against my will in the bosom of some mountain forevermore, she’s welcome to try, but I plan on staying slippery so I can get my hands on her tits another day and tell good stories.

No matter what happens, I don’t panic.  In scary situations, I lean heavily on the things that I know:  I’m prepared for most eventualities and I have a good idea of where I am and the most direct route to a road or civilization or something.  I climbed Doubletop and Graham back on 2/13 and got popped in the eye by a branch about 100 yards off the summit of Graham.  It took me several hours longer than it should have to get back to the car – what should have been an easy and fun bushwhack turned into a friggin nightmare of pain and uncertainty – then I had to drive 8 miles just to get to 28 where I could flag down a cop and get a ride to the emergency room.  I had my parents come pick me up that night, after driving another 30 or 40 miles or so to get back to 87 and realizing I’d never make it down the Thruway like that.  I was out of work for a week.  My cornea was scratched real bad and it was still a little blurry now.  Scary shit at the time, but I didn’t freak out.

Anyway, enough of the effin rant.  Hang on to that ambition:  it’ll get you up and down those last 5 mountains in time.  Just be prepared and weigh out your game-time decisions carefully (and, btw, they’re all game-time decisions:  we plan, god laughs), you’re a sharp guy and you know your limitations.

I’m not getting any mixed messages from you; we’re cool.  I appreciate the offer, but either way I’d want you to shoot to finish your lists.  Good luck and if you need a shuttle, let me know.

…

So yeah, talk to you soon and kick some ass this weekend.

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

-Benjamin Franklin

I’m not exactly sure where I am as far as this quote goes, but I suppose that’s ok.  As far as I’m concerned, I’ve been doing things worth writing about.  I’m still riding high on the sense of accomplishment from climbing those four mountains last Saturday.  I’ve climbed 25 mountains this winter and have 2 left to go.  Of the 27 I set out to climb this winter, those four from Saturday were the ones I was most trepidatious about.  Not scared; just not particularly looking forward to them.

The part of my brain that likes to beat me up has been trying to figure out how I didn’t really “do it all the way” – how there must be some way that I cut corners or copped out and somehow didn’t really climb those mountains.  But there’s a canister at the summit of each of those mountains with my name and 3/6/10 next to it written in the logbook within.  I really wish my iPhone’s charger hadn’t crapped out and that I have the gps data for the whole trip.  But what the hell, I’ve climbed plenty of mountains besides those well before I even had the capability of recording the trip.  A map and a compass, dear reader:  that’s all I had to go by when navigating from peak to peak.  Well, there were some tracks in the snow for the portion along the river and between the last two mountains, but she-yit, that was about it.

The last two mountains should be relatively easy.  I’m looking forward to a break afterward, though.  My left leg is bone-sore below the knee.  It feels mostly like it’s a tendon thing, but it goes deeper too.  No worries, though:  I could climb those last two mountains on crutches if I had to.  Of course, I’d rather not.

I’m trying to figure out what’s next.  I was considering joining the local rock climbing gym, but I think I’ll save that for next winter.  Right now, it looks like it might be backpacking.  Oh, I’ll still be peakbagging, but instead of only doing day trips and returning home to a nice hot shower and a warm bed, I’ll be returning to my tent or lean-to for some ramen or other cardboardish fare.  I’m starting to research backpacks, tents and other gear.

Probably the Adirondacks.  Even with camping out, the five-hour drive is still a bit daunting.  We’ll see.

I have no idea if I’ve been writing anything worth reading lately.  I kind of don’t think so.  Most of my blog posts have been pretty sporadic and unfocused.  Too many ‘general update’ style posts for my tastes, but hell, it’s what I’ve been writing.  I kind of miss working on things for Weekly Writing Assignment, but whatever.  I belong to a couple of writing groups on LinkedIn, and one of them does a monthly writing contest.  I should probably just get my ass in gear and write something for one of those.

I keep up with a lot of blogs.  I’m sure you’re familiar with The Naked Redhead at this point, but there are plenty of other blogs I read on a regular basis as well.  At this point, I’m not even sure how many RSS feeds are coming into my Outlook at work.  Trust me, though, it’s A LOT.  I keep up with corporate governance and investor relations stuff for work, as well as other regulatory and finance industry blogs, and I read a lot of stuff for fun too.  As Matt Vallerini has said “Ted’s on Mashable HARD.”

One of my favorites now (and for a while before now) is Lauren Flax’s blog.  I don’t know that I can recommend it highly enough.  Lauren’s a yoga instructor in Baltimore and she just got accepted to a writing program at Johns Hopkins.  She’s pretty effin prolific, and it’s all pretty good stuff.  I enjoy her fiction as well as her thoughts/general update posts.  I often find myself comparing my writing to hers and falling short, but we’ve relatively divergent styles and subject matters, so a comparison probably isn’t the best of ideas.

Lauren practices the art of writing.  In every sense of the word ‘art’.  I can’t really describe it any better than that.  She has fully-formed and well-worked pieces, as well as fragments and bits that may never see the potter’s wheel again.  By contrast, writing for me has very much been a craft of late:  website copywriting and lots of editing non-creative pieces at work.  I used to just highlight things and add a note like “unclear” or something and tell the person to rewrite the sentence/paragraph, but of late I’ve been doing the rewriting myself.  There’s really no use in criticism without a suggestion as to how to improve something.  I really enjoy editing. . . which makes me think that I should probably finish plugging my edits into Franco’s novel and send them off to her (at this point, it’s been just over a year since she sent me her last draft).  Frig.

I’ve been meaning to give a shout out to Lauren’s blog for a while now, but couldn’t really find the words.  Hell, I still don’t have them; I don’t think the one’s I’ve written so far suffice, either.  “Check it out” is all I can really say; you won’t be disappointed.  Lauren does things worth writing when she’s not writing things worth reading.

I’m still enamored with her story Stanley that earned her a finalist spot at Weekly Writing Assignment back in August.  I can’t find the link to the story on her blog, so you’ll have to make do with the one to WWA.  I still think of it and wonder every time I’m scratching Laila Jo behind the ears.

Well, I did it:  I climbed Friday, Balsam Cap, Rocky and Lone in one day.  In the snow.  It was a long day.  I hit the trail around 10:30 and got back to the car around 9:30.  Yes, in the Post Meridian.  That’s 11 hours of hiking, dear reader:  pretty much all of which (except for maybe the first and last 1.5 miles) was bushwhacking.

I parked at the Denning Road trailhead and headed along the Neversink about 5 miles to the summit of Friday, then looped back around, summitting Balsam Cap, Rocky and Lone.  It was pitch black when I found the canister on Lone.

View Larger Map

Yes, all four of these mountains were bushwhacks, but there’s no way I would have been able to physically handle that hike (probably between 12 and 14 miles) in the snow without other people cutting at least part of the trail for me.  Mad props go out to Drama and SoloJoe (aka John and Joe) for cutting the trail along the Neversink up to Rocky, as well as the trail from Rocky to Lone.  I wouldn’t have bagged that fourth peak if someone hadn’t been out ahead of me.

The Catskill 3500 Club had an outing to climb Rocky and Lone this past Saturday – 11 hikers total, from what I heard.  They followed John’s and Joe’s tracks along the Neversink and up Rocky.  I was well behind the club outing (they started a couple of hours before me), so I followed their tracks to the turnoff for Rocky and broke my own trail another mile to the summit of Friday.  Summitting Friday was a nightmare.  Thick pine trees all the way up, so I got wet, dirty and scratched.

I was kind of counting on someone having cut a trail between Friday and Balsam Cap, but no one had been there since February 22d, so I had to cut that trail myself.  Through more thick pine trees pretty much the whole way down & up.  Because it’s rare (I think) that the four mountains are climbed together, I wasn’t expecting a trail between Balsam Cap and Rocky.  And there wasn’t one.  I was, however, planning on being able to follow the 3500 Club’s tracks from Rocky to Lone, but they pussied out and followed their tracks back down after summitting Rocky.

By the time I signed in at the canister at the summit of Rocky, I was spent.  The charge on my iPhone was out, and, even though I charged it the night before, there wasn’t any juice in my portable charger, so I don’t have the whole hike plotted out, which is a major bummer because it’s probably the most badass one I’ve done to date.  You can view the first 7.3 miles of it on my EveryTrail page.

With no trail to follow, I just didn’t have the energy to get over to Lone, so I resigned myself to bagging it another day.  On the way down, however, I noticed two sets of snowshoe tracks that led off toward Lone, instead of back to the Neversink, so I followed them.  I figured they’d either be headed back to the trailhead via a shorter route or to the summit of Lone.  It was the latter.

I ran out of water and sunlight on the way up Lone.  As the tracks started going downhill, I turned back around, figuring I missed the canister turnoff.  Which I did.  What I found was a warren of showshoe tracks where John and Joe walked all around the summit looking for the canister.  At this point it was pitch black out and I could only see as far as the light from my headlamp.  The sky was clear and the stars were gorgeous.

Just after I started trying to figure out which of the myriad sets of tracks led back to the trailhead, I bumped into the cansiter, which was a real blessing.  I signed in and spent another fifteen minutes or so trying to locate the homebound tracks (on top of the fifteen or so I had already spent looking for the canister).  I’m guessing it was around 7:30 or 8 at this time.

As I was following the tracks back down the mountain, I saw a couple of lights ahead of me.  Then a couple of dudes voices were calling out to me, asking me where I was going.  I figured it was the park rangers and that they’d be pretty pissed they had to come this far to find my skinny ass.  (This was a few hundred yards off the summit.)  It turns out that it was John and Joe and that I was following their tracks down.  It was fortuitous that I met up with them at that point, because I had just come into a clearing where the night wind had blown snow over their trail.  Joe asked me if I was getting worried (it being pitch black outside and that we were in the middle of the woods with no trail to follow back home) and I said hell no in a tone of voice that kind of suggested it was a dumb question to ask.  What I meant was that I wasn’t worried because I had tracks to follow that could only lead back to the trailhead (snowshoeing – or hiking in general, for that matter – really doesn’t get any easier than that.  Joe later thanked me for putting his mind at ease, because he was getting a little worried at that point.

They asked if I wanted to roll with them back to the trailhead and I said hell yes.

So I spent the next three miles or so getting to know John and Joe on the way down the mountain.  We took turns breaking the trail and telling hiking stories.  Comradeship is fun.

I have some relatively philosophical things to say about the hike as a whole, but I think I’ll save them for another time.

After reaching the trailhead and warming up our cars and shooting the shit for another hour or so, we made our goodbyes.  As we were doing so, Joe said to me “hey man, nice traverse.”  I can’t tell you how good that made me feel.  I guess it ended up being repayment for my not-worried comment/attitude.

So that’s it for now.  Maybe more later, but I have to get to work tomorrow.  I only have Bearpen and Kaaterskill High Peak left to go in my winter peakbagging extravaganza.

My dreams have been haunted of late, dear reader.  As I’m sure I’ve mentioned in the past, I don’t dream so much in colors and shapes and things said as I do in feelings, emotions and events.  I suppose the overriding feeling that has pervaded my dreams in the past week or so has been that of being (unwillingly) on the defensive.  Defending me and mine, but in a futile-gesture sense – as though whatever I’m defending against is inexorable.

Last night I dreamt of things biting my hands – I think they were smallish dogs, but I’m not sure.  Whatever they might have been, it would have been easy enough for me to kill them, but I didn’t.  My non-desire to kill things in my dreams (despite my eminent ability) is not unusual.  I can only conclude that I’m a pacifist at heart, and that any violence in my life is necessarily calculated and comes from my mind.  The violence itself (and I’m speaking more-or-less metaphorically here) isn’t any source of pleasure for me, but the sense of accomplishment resulting from setting my mind to something and completing it is.

A couple of nights ago I dreamt of zombies.  Nothing particularly creative:  the usual doomsday we’re-outnumbered-and-dwindling-whilst-they’re-only-growing-in-number-with-no-end-in-sight scenario.  I remember thinking that it was pointless to be fighting the zombies – not that they would undoubtedly win, but rather that there wasn’t any reason why they should be coming for us.  We were holed up in some sort of mountainside river enclosure, which is to say that the mountainside and river were enclosed by some larger structure.  As I think back, the best way to describe it would be that gravity acted differently there:  the pieces of the river flowed around mountain outcroppings at a steep angle, but though they should by all rights have been waterfalls, they were just deep, slow moving bits of water.  Zombies spread like a virus, and that virus kept breaking out within our theoretically sealed and secure holdfast, for no apparent reason.  I think I remember triage decisions to euthanize – to put it kindly – friends and whatnot who had been recently infected.

The night before that was more of the same, though it wasn’t dogs or zombies.

I’m kind of at a loss as to where these dreams are coming from.  They seem to speak of an underlying source of anxiety in my life – a feeling of being hunted or chased.  But when I examine these feelings in the light of day, they seem to be naught but dreams.  Because my dreams are generally so pedestrian and easily recognizable as my brain rehashing recent events, I rarely have cause to remember them.  So when I have dreams like these, it’s reason for me to pause and consider.  I don’t believe in discounting them.

Maybe I’ll get some clarity from the hike tomorrow.  I’m going to attempt the Friday/Balsam Cap/Rocky/Lone range traverse.  It looks to be around 12 miles.  Twelve miles isn’t unmanageable, but the peaks of these four mountains are covered with near-impassable pine trees, so the going will be slow.  I’m going to leave early in the hope that I’ll have enough daylight to bag all four peaks.  If the snow is too wet, deep and heavy, I’ll turn off the trail (which is a misnomer, because almost the entire 12 miles will be bushwhack) sooner rather than later and just climb Rocky and Lone.

It’s supposed to be in the high 30s in the Catskills tomorrow, and I’m not sure what that will mean for the snow cover.   If it melts evenly and I can stride atop it cleanly, all will be well.  If it’s heavy and deep, the hike will be a real pain in the ass.  We’ll see what happens.  I have six mountains left to climb in the next three weekends.  If I can bag all four in the range tomorrow, I’ll take Sunday off.  If not, I’ll go back and finish off Bearpen on Sunday.

Fuck me, but I’m tired.  Saturday’s hike was a fucking nightmare.  Fucking.  Night.  Mare.  It took me almost 7 hours to go 5.95 miles.  I had to fight for every step.  There were about four or five feet of snow on the mountain.  Even with my snowshoes, I was sinking in up to my knees.  And the snow was heavy, to boot.

Imagine doing one of those tire-runs – you know, the ones where there’s a field of tires and you have to get from one end to another by stepping in the center of the tires.  Now imagine that they’re BIG tires:  not quite monster-truck-big, but like the fat tires that they put on Jeeps to do some major four-wheeling or mud-running.  Now imagine that you’ve got five pound weights strapped to your ankles while you’re doing it.  Then put the tire field on the side of a mountain and you’re pretty close to what my day was like on Saturday.

The five pound weights stand for the snow that was on the tops of my snowshoes every time I lifted my foot out of the hole my last step made.  I can’t tell you how many times I thought – seriously thought – about turning around.  As it was, I was only able to climb Vly mountain.  Bearpen will have to wait for another day.

Last weekend, on my way up Windham High Peak, I met an old hiker (I forget his name) who was “training” for the Appalachian Trail this spring.  He told me that he’s planning on giving it a shot, that only about one in five people complete the AT.  I told him there’s no reason he shouldn’t be one of the five.  Later in our story-swapping session, he told me about a few hikes during which he wasn’t able to find the canister at various mountains.  (Canisters are located at the summits of trail-less mountains, for which a bushwhack is required.  They’re for sign-in purposes.)  With the exception of the very first bushwhack Scott and I did, I’ve never failed to find the canister on any one of the peaks I’ve climbed.  Come to think about it, I don’t think I’ve ever climbed a mountain and not reached the summit.

There are many kinds of people in this world, two of which are those who find the canister and those who don’t.  The guy I talked to on Windham is one of the latter.  I’m not.

Bearpen and Vly are right next to one another, and the hike to climb both is not a hard one.  I now have three weekends in which to climb six mountains (Bearpen, Kaaterskill High Peak, Rocky, Lone, Balsam Cap, and Friday).  Notwithstanding my desire to climb the latter four in a single hike, that means I’ve got four trips left for those three weekends.  I’m technically behind schedule.

I’ve entertained the thought that I might not be able to complete my goal for this winter’s peakbagging extravaganza.  But not for very long.  I’ll finish what I started.

When I parked my car on Saturday, it was about a mile short of the snowplow turnaround at the base of the mountains.  I had to walk that mile up the road in about a foot or so of snow.  The snow was much deeper after the snowplow turnaround.

On the way back, that last mile had been plowed.  At that point, my legs were jelly, so I was pretty psyched to be walking on a flat surface.  That last mile is probably the only one that I’ve put on the actual soles of my boots this winter (the rest of the time, I’d been wearing either snowshoes or crampons).  It occurred to me in that last mile that the snowplow may have inadvertently plowed me in.  I figured I’d count myself lucky if my mirror wasn’t accidentally ripped off, or if the whole driver’s side of my car wasn’t FUBAR.

The snowplow did not, in fact, inadvertently plow me in.  It plowed me in on purpose.  The rest of the road was clear, with the exception of a couple of pretty big piles of snow right in front of and behind my car.  My rear wheels were off the ground.  There was no snow along the side of my car and my mirror and door were intact; I count myself lucky.  I’m actually impressed at the skill of whomever was driving the snowplow – there was no damage to either end of my car.  This wouldn’t have been some dude in a pickup truck with a plow on it, either:  I’m talking about a heavy duty truck with a plow on the front and a plow on the side.  The snow on the sides of the road was piled up about ten feet high.

Luckily as well, the lady who lived across the street from where I parked just got home as I was getting back to my car.  She let me borrow her shovel and it only took me about ten minutes to get my car loose.  I count myself lucky that I have all my teeth and that they’re clean.

In the past couple of weeks, at least two people have told me directly that they’re “living vicariously through” me – specifically with respect to the photos posted on facebook of my winter peakbagging extravaganza.  I can’t tell you how cool that is; how good that makes me feel.

Well, I’m considering dialing that vicarious experience up a notch, dear reader.  I have four trips left, comprising 7 mountains; I’ve climbed 20 mountains since December 26th.  Tomorrow (today) I’ll be climbing Bearpen and Vly mountains.  They’re outside of the Catskill “Blue Line” (meaning they’re not technically in Catskill State Park), so these mountains aren’t accounted for in my Catskills map set.  Which means that not only do I need to find my own way to the tops of these mountains (there aren’t any trails to the summits), I also need to make my own maps.

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It’s not really as hard as it sounds.  I have the National Geographic Topo! software, so I can isolate these two mountains and print out a topographical map on a regular sheet of paper.  It won’t be a very good map, but what the hell, that’s what experience is for.  I’ve climbed these mountains before, and I think I could probably climb them without even bringing a map, but I’m going to print one out anyway just to be on the safe side.

This hike shouldn’t be ridiculously long – maybe 7 miles round-trip – so I’m considering climbing Kaaterskill High Peak on Sunday.  What with all the snow we’ve had here in NNJ in the past week, I’m not sure how bad the Catskills got hit.  If there are three feet of fresh snow on those mountains and no tracks to follow, any of the trips I have left will be a total bitch.  So I’ll check it out tomorrow (today) to see what the conditions are like.  If I can climb Bearpen and Vly without being totally exhausted tomorrow, I’ll bag Kaaterskill on Sunday and be a week ahead of schedule.

That will leave two trips:  Friday/Balsam Cap and Lone/Rocky.  Those four are, in my opinion, the hardest mountains to climb in the Catskills.  The peaks are all covered with extremely dense pine forest – imagine wall-to-wall Christmas trees, then make the Christmas trees a little taller and closer together and you’ll be getting close to what it’s like inside of that obstacle course.  Almost the whole hike is spent ducking under, going around, going through, or getting scraped up by stiff branches poking horizontally out of the trunks of the conifers.

On top of that, the hike just to get to Rocky (passing the base of Lone on the way) is almost five miles in and of itself.  Which means almost five miles of hike on the way out as well (not counting actually climbing those two fir-topped mountains).

Friday, Balsam Cap, Rocky and Lone basically form a northeast/southwest ridgeline.

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I’m considering bagging all four peaks in one day.  Considering – it’s not a plan just yet.  But if the Catskills don’t get too much more snow over the course of next week, and if I can get my lazy ass up early enough next Saturday, I think I might just be able to do it.  That would mean I’d be finished two weeks early.

We’ll see.  It’s just a thought right now, and I have a lot of those that end up growing up into not-so-good ideas.

The opthamologist said that my eye is healing well.  I have a final appointment with him next Friday.  My vision is still a bit blurry, though today I finished the novel I started on Wednesday.  Driving is ok, but not great – I’m still a bit apprehensive.  I think the hardest part of this hike will be the getting there and back.

Windham High Peak is one of the easiest hikes I can remember – a gently ascending 7 mile round-trip.  I’ll be parking at the end of Peck Road off of Big Hollow Road (Route 50).  The 3500 Club is hiking Bearpen & Vly on Sunday, so maybe I’ll even join them for that.

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Yes, I know it’s been nearly a week since my last post, but I have a good excuse:

I’ve only had the use of my left eye since Saturday, and until yesterday, my right eye was in quite a lot of pain.

(Skip to around 1:23, please.)

Saturday’s hike was Doubletop and Graham mountains – both bushwhacks, though I started out for a short bit from the trail at the base of these two mountains.  I summited Doubletop and struck off for Graham.  Graham was truly a mountain-climbing experience:  there was a lot of snow on the ground and the climb was steep.  Lots of hands-and-feet work – in the sport, I suppose we’d call it “technical” (though not to the point where I really needed ropes and ice axes).  My snowshoes stood me in good stead for the whole trip.

About a hundred yards or so from the summit of Graham (on the way back to the trailhead), I got popped in the eye by a tree branch, and the day’s fun ended.  I spent the last mile and a half or two miles of the bushwhack with my right eye closed and in quite a lot of pain (see above), stopping every hundred yards or so to wait for the latest wave of acid-burn pain to wash over my eye, and/or attempting to flush out whatever debris might have still been stuck in there with water from my near-frozen water bottle.

At the end of the day, the flushing process didn’t really do more than take up extra time and possibly numb my eye – the NP at the emergency room later told me that there wasn’t anything in my eye:  that an abraded cornea feels like there’s something there, though.  I prefer to think that my body responded to my vocal request to “just digest the fucking thing, if you’re not going to flush it out (I’m sure there’s some protein in there somewhere).”

In the spirit of gratitude, this was also running through my mind.

The nice thing about the whole experience was that I was able to stay in the moment (though they were not exactly the moments in which I preferred to be) and not panic.  I stayed off the near-frozen river, as much as the land wanted to push me in that direction, and I didn’t freak out when it started to get dark (that’s exactly why I carry a headlamp).  My legs carried me the last couple of miles back to the car, and I checked my map and compass regularly, in deference to my underdeveloped sense of direction.  And at no point during the whole ordeal did I wonder why god or the universe or the mountain was doing this to me.  I just accepted the state of affairs as it was and made lemonade.  Not too bad for a one-time vice president of the pessimist society.  There’s no anti-Ted conspiracy; sometimes things just suck a little more than other times.

The 8 (or so) mile drive from the trailhead back to a main road where I could flag down a cop was pretty nerve-racking, but not nearly as bad as the 40 miles from the hospital to the Thruway.  Once I got just about to the Thruway, I called my parents and asked them to come rescue me – there was no way I was going to be able to make the 2 hour drive back home with only one eye not in excruciating pain and only able to see about 40 yards anyway.  It was exactly like the worst times I’ve ever driven drunk.  I am SO glad that’s no longer part of my repertoire.

Mad props to Ed and Betsy Wallace for effecting the rescue.

Sunday and Monday were spent in and out of consciousness.  Mercifully, I don’t remember much of those days.  I do, however, remember my mother bringing me coffee and food.  Thanks Mom.  <3  =D

I saw the opthamologist on Tuesday and again on Wednesday.  He put a bunch of drops in my eyes and a patch over my injured right one both days – the patch comes off Thursday and I’ll be responsible for the application of the drops and cremes after that.  My next appointment is Friday and the doctor said I can go back to work on Monday.  Work has been pretty cool about the whole thing – I’ve never missed this much time before (though I’ve been working a bit via blackberry and cell anyway).

I now have 8 mountains to climb in my winter peakbagging extravaganza (over 5 trips), and five weekends in which to do so before March 22d.  My plan was to get a bit ahead of schedule by hiking on Monday as well, but, well, that’s fucked.

So now I’m looking at Thursday and Friday off.  I’m sorely (no pun) tempted to hike one of those days, but I don’t know that I want to be off the air blackberry-wise for that long.  I’ll be out there this Saturday, though.

I drove a bit during the day today, but that wasn’t as much fun as it usually is.  I should be good once this damned pirate-patch is off.

So now I’m looking at two days of unrequested down-time.  I really should clean my desk.

I’ve been feeling a bit strange all weekend, dear reader.  And I’m not exactly sure from what it stems.  But more on that later.  Maybe.

I’ve some interesting things I’d like to relate first:

I climbed Big Indian and Fir mountains this Saturday.  Got to the trailhead around 11, which is WAY late for me, even though I’ve tended to sleep a bit past the alarm lately (and the alarm is no longer set for 5:30AM, the way it used to be).  As I was finishing lacing my boots and strapping on my gaiters, an FJ Cruiser pulled up and two middle-aged dudes hopped out, remarking at how late “we all” were getting to the trail.  Then they asked if I knew “this area really well,” or at least, if there was a gas station around.  I said I didn’t know; that I’d taken a different route than they and certainly hadn’t seen any gas stations for quite a while.  Then I asked if they had a gps in their car and suggested I might use mine to find the nearest gas station.  The dude gave me a sour look which I interpreted as a negative for one or more of my queries.

As I was heading off, I heard them debating about whether to bring their snowshoes (there wasn’t much snow on the ground at the trailhead).  I told them that even if they might not need them on the trail itself, postholing the last half mile bushwack to the canister at the summit wasn’t going to be a whole lot of fun.  I think they brought their ‘shoes, but I never saw them again.

I suppose I got about a fifteen or twenty minute head start on them.  The first three or so miles of the trail to Big Indian are pretty flat and I was making good time (about 2 miles per hour).  As I was doing so, I wondered vaguely if I’d be able to hike both my mountains (they weren’t going to Fir) before they got back down from Big Indian.

When I was just about to the turnoff to begin bushwacking to the summit, I passed a little old lady coming back down.  We stopped and talked for a minute, in the manner in which hikers do when passing one another on the trail.  She was fucking ancient.  I’m going to guess that she was 75 or 80 – maybe subtract a decade if she’s a heavy smoker, but being that I met her coming down one of the highest peaks in the Catskills at a pretty good clip, I kind of doubt that’s the case.  She was wearing MSR Lightning Ascents – the same uber-badass snowshoes I was wearing – and had a smokin-hot French accent.  And she had more patches on her pack than anybody I’ve seen on the trail yet – Catskill 3500 Club, Adirondack 46ers, winter patches for both, one that said “something 400″ (I may have missed a zero and the patch refers to the 4000 footers in the White Mountains in New Hampshire), and a couple that I didn’t recognize at all.  None of these were rainbow unicorns or care bears patches.  This woman was seriously badass.

When we parted, she mentioned that she had to get back to the road because she didn’t have a car and had to hitchhike.

Last week I was talking to my friend Ed Pirone and I mentioned that I only had 12 mountains left to go in my winter peakbagging extravaganza, in response to his question of “what else has been up?”  He then said something like “wow, and you’re doing those all solo?  That’s pretty hardcore.”

Yeah, so hardcore a little old lady can do it.

So, needless to say I’m in love.  I have a vague idea that her name is Merguerite (something)-Webster (I think) “known as IHY” (whatever tf that means).  Her handwriting on the sign-in at the canister was pretty old-ladyish.  When I got back to the trailhead, I snatched her digits from the logbook.  Maybe I’ll give her a call this week and see if she’ll be hiking on Saturday.

Bagging Fir after Big Indian wasn’t all that hard – there was a trail broken by at least three people in snowshoes in the past week or so (I think one person was out there on Friday – or at least, that’s what the log indicated).  I made it back down pretty quickly.  So quickly, in fact, that by the time I was ready to leave – after re-heating my coffee and taking off my boots and such – the two dudes in the FJ Cruiser still hadn’t made it back.  So I gps-ed the nearest gas station (13.3 miles away) and left a note on their car with the location and phone number.  Not that there’s any cell service around there.

Meeting Merguerite was one of the coolest experiences of my hiking career.  I hope I’m still bagging peaks when I’m her age – whatever that may be.

Well, my apartment’s just received a good cleaning – sans any assistance, thankyouverymuch.  One more thing to take care of…

And it’s not blogging.

I sent out my first invoice today as a freelance copywriter – or rather, I sent out my first invoice today to my client: not someone else’s.  Yay?  The day job is still busy as sh*t, but not so bad that I’m getting out of the office at 11PM.  As far as I can tell, I succeeded in what my firm was hired to do, which is increase the voting response from the foreign shareholders for a Taiwanese company’s shareholder meeting.  Last year’s meeting received about 80% response; this one’s at 88%.  The owner of my company is very happy.  He told me today that if the client isn’t happy they can pretty much go fuck themselves.  I’m not sure if the client is happy or not – I’ve hardly heard from them in the last couple of days.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad the owner of my company is happy, but it’d be nice to know that the client is pleased as well.

Whatever.  Not much else is going on.  I’m going to sort-of take it easy for a bit.  I have 12 mountains left to climb in my winter peakbagging extravaganza – and seven weekends left to go.  I think there’s a holiday in there somewhere too – President’s Day?  Is the market closed for President’s day?  Is there an apostrophe in Presidents Day?

Most of the mountains I have left to go are going to be pretty tough.  I can rattle them right off the top of my head:

Friday & Balsam Cap: About 5 miles of tough bushwack through extremely dense pine trees.  I’m talking face-scratching, can’t see more than 10 feet bushwack.  While going uphill the whole time (except the col between the mountains – that’s down for a bit).

Lone & Rocky: About 9 or 10 miles, also tough bushwack through dense pines at the summits.  With Friday & Balsam Cap, these almost combine to form a range.  Doing the four together is nigh impossible; definitely so in the winter.

Bearpen & Vly: Um, I don’t know, maybe 6 or 7 miles?  These two are outside of the blue line (not in Catskill State Park), and they’re not on any maps, so I have to make one myself.  Both are bushwacks.

Graham & Doubletop: About a 15 mile bushwack.  I think I’m going to give these two some serious re-thinking.  I did them easy enough in the summer, but add snowshoes and no trail and 15 miles is wicked long.  I’ll probably have to split them up.

Big Indian & Fir: Probably about 8 miles.  There’s a trail almost to the summit of Big Indian; the last bit is a bushwack.  Fir is entirely trailless.  There’s a brook – Buttermilk Brook, I think – at the base of the trail that’s tough to ford if the water’s high.  Definitely not a hike to leave until the spring thaw.  Though if the groundhog was right this year, I won’t really have to worry about that before 3/22.

Kaaterskill High Peak: A relatively tough bushwack; maybe 7 miles, depending on my starting point.  I’ve hiked this mountain twice so far and neither route was particularly easy.  It’s not near any other of the 3500s, so it’s got to be done by itself.

Windham High Peak: The last of the easy mountains:  a smooth incline over 3.5 miles (7 round trip).  With a trail and everything.  The northernmost of the Catskill High Peaks.

Seven weeks and (notwithstanding the Graham/Doubletop issue) seven trips.  Piece of cake.

Today I’ll be hiking Cornell and Wittenberg mountains.  They’ll be numbers 18 and 19 of my 35 Catskill winter peaks.  I have 10 trips left and 10 weekends before March 22d.

I’m off on Monday for MLK Day, so I’ll be able to get a bit ahead of schedule, I hope.

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Yup. Canceled I say.  I got to about 2 miles from the trailhead for Plateau & Sugarloaf and the road was snowed under.  I guess Mink Hollow Road is a seasonal road, because there was a big bank of snow plowed to block the road off.

The snow was coming down pretty steadily – there was already an inch or more on the road when I got there.  The plows were out, but the roads were pretty nasty overall.  Besides the extra three miles I would have had to add to the hike, I was more worried about the Mini getting plowed in or enough snow falling that I wouldn’t be able to get out.  I didn’t bring a shovel and haven’t ordered chains for the car yet.

So today’s hike was a bust.  No ego-boosting 9 mountains this vacation for me, but whatever.  Seven is fine, and at least now I know what Mink Hollow Road looks like.  Plateau and Sugarloaf won’t be as easy as I thought – I might even have to hike them separately.

I’m currently at 15/35, with 12 weekends to go.

Today I’ll be hiking Plateau and Sugarloaf Mountains.  I really hope I have the energy to do so.  I’ve taken the last two days off and feel pretty well rested.  I’ve been eating about as much as I normally do, which is to say not a whole lot.  But I’ve been sucking down water like crazy.  Which reminds me, I should probably have a pinch of salt or two right now and take my vitamins.  My legs aren’t all that sore, so I think I should be ok.  Sushi for dinner – does rice have carbohydrates, or did I just consume a pound of protein, fat, starch and green tea?

The hike today should be short (about 6 miles) but relatively strenuous.  I’ve got to bushwack about a mile from Mink Hollow Road – which hopefully won’t be snowed under – to get to the trail (Devil’s Path).  Then it’s make a right to head about a mile west to the peak of Plateau, back down, and continue east for another mile to the summit of Sugarloaf (then back down and back to the car).  Each peak will be about a 1400′ vertical from the col.

This will be somewhat of an ego-fueled hike for me:  I’d really like to end this vacation having bagged 9 peaks in 5 trips over the course of a week and a day.

I have other options:  I took a hard look at Cornell and Wittenberg or Peekamoose and Table, but the verticals on both of those hikes would be over 2000′ and the hikes themselves are around 7 or 8 miles apiece.  Being that I’m staring the whole Monday-morning-back-to-work thing in the eye, I think I’ll opt for the lesser of three evils.  I’ll be tired no matter what, but whatever.

It’s supposed to snow all day today and the temperature will be around 12 degrees.  Not necessarily ideal conditions, but at least I’ll be on a marked trail for most of the hike.  You can call me a pussy for hoping that other hikers have left a nice packed showshoe trail for me, but if you’re going to do that, then you should probably put your quadriceps where your mouth is and spend a day climbing mountains in the snow with me.  =)

Here’s the map:

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Today we’ll be hiking Halcott Mountain.  It’s a short hike, just a little over two miles up and back.  Brian Haydinger will be joining me as guest hike leader.  This will be #15 of 35 winter peaks for me, and Brian’s very first.

After this, I’ll have 20 peaks (in approximately 14 trips) over the next 12 weekends.  I hope I have the energy to bag a couple more peaks this coming weekend.

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