Waaaaaaaay back in the day, when Steve and I were first discussing moving to Buffalo, I told him that if we were going to be New Yorkers again, I wanted to work on the goal of becoming Adirondack 46rs.  46rs are a particularly insane group of peakbaggers; you earn the title when you have summited (and then descended) all forty-six of the high peaks in the Adirondack Park.  The high peaks are defined as mountains with an elevation over 4,000 feet (although the measurements were taken over a century ago and aren’t completely accurate – there are a couple of peaks that are shy of the 4,000 mark, and at least one that wasn’t included on the list when it should have been; 46rs are a tradition-loving bunch and so they’ve stuck with the original list).

Well, as my longtime reader/friends may recall, Steve and I made a start at chipping away at the list back in 2014, when we climbed Cascade and Porter in the same day.  (Not the crazy endeavor it sounds; there are a few high peaks that can be strung together for the chance to knock off two in a day, and neighbors Cascade and Porter are on that list.)  We had a great time on those peaks, learned some helpful lessons, and descended ready to take on our next Adirondack adventure sooner than later.  Of course, you know what happened – I found out that I was pregnant (and in fact, I had been pregnant when we climbed the peaks; I just didn’t know it!).  Scaling mountains took a backseat to pregnancy and then parenting another newborn, and next thing we knew, we were moving back to Northern Virginia with only two of the 46 peaks done.

But we’re still in upstate NY fairly regularly to visit my parents – in fact, we probably make the trip from D.C. to Albany just as often as we made the trip from Buffalo.  So why not keep working on the list?  I figured the Fourth of July weekend was a good opportunity to knock another mountain off the list – after all, it had been Fourth of July weekend when we climbed Cascade and Porter three years ago.  So I asked my parents if they would watch the kids one day so Mom and Dad could escape to the ‘dacks for an adventure.  They said of course, and at 3:45 a.m. our alarms went off for the trip into the park.  We drove through the sunrise and some weird walls of fog, and by 6:30 a.m. Steve was signing us into the trail register for our chosen peak – Giant Mountain.

Ready to go!

Giant’s original name was Giant of the Valley – I love the poetry of that.  (In my head, that’s still its name.)  At 4,627 feet tall, it’s the twelfth highest peak in the park – quite a bit taller than Cascade and Porter, the 36th and 38th highest respectively.  It’s also the tallest peak in its immediate vicinity, and it looms over the entire Keene Valley.

The Trail

One of the things I always want to know when I am reading blog recaps to plan Adirondack hikes is – what’s the trail like?  Adirondack trails run the gamut from smooth and maintained to boulders all the way up.  But blogs never seem to share what I think is pretty pertinent information.  Perhaps you’re just supposed to assume that all high peaks hiking is going to be mostly scrambling over huge masses of granite.  (That would be a safe assumption.  But I like to know.)

So, there was a lot of bouldering and a lot of scrambling.  It’s the ‘dacks, after all – comes with the territory.  But one thing Steve and I kept discussing, all the way up Giant, was how much better the trail was than the trail up Cascade.  There were stretches of actual! maintained! trail!, and the bouldering sections were broken up with recovery stretches in between.  It was a completely different hiking experience from Cascade, and we agreed that we far-and-away preferred Giant.

I mean, sure, there was some of this.  That’s the trail?  Yeah, get used to it.

There were also a lot of switchbacks.  Giant is a popular mountain, but it’s definitely not everyone’s favorite.  One of the complaints I heard from multiple people about Giant is that there’s really no warm-up; you get out of the car and you start climbing, and you don’t stop climbing until you summit.  The reason Giant is popular is the relatively short distance of the trail – only about three miles to the summit.  But that short distance also means that it’s all climbing.  We knew that going in, which probably helped.

The Conditions

Remember how last week I told you that Grafton was muddy?  Well, that should have tipped us off that we were in for a wet time of it on Giant the next day.  (Of course it didn’t, because we are slow learners.)  And man alive, was that trail wet.

Had to climb up that thing!  Steeper than it looks!

So, I don’t mind getting dirty on a hike, and I certainly don’t care about a little thing like mud on my hiking boots.  I could happily slosh through puddles – and I did.  (Oh, and by the way, I was wearing my Oboz Bridgewater BDry boots, and they kept my feet completely dry through the entire soppy day.  They were also popular choices on the trail; I saw three other women wearing them – all in the red color, too!  We exchanged the secret handshake.)

The thing with a wet day in the high peaks region is that because a lot of the hiking involves walking and scrambling over bald granite, if the rock is wet it can get slippery and treacherous fast.  I’m adventurous and generally up for pretty much anything, but I’m actually terrified of falling on ADK granite and tumbling down a long rock slide.  Hikers have died in the high peaks and it’s not something to play with.  So I was taking my time and going verrrrrry slowly over the exposed rock.  Steve said he thought I probably could have trusted my footing more, and I’m sure he was right.  But I’d rather take it slow than take a potentially devastating fall.

Here’s some extra-slick granite to climb!  Enjoy!

So, I’m selling this whole peakbagging thing really well, right?  I’ll bet you’re thinking – this sounds terrible.  Why would anyone do this?  Well – that picture, above, is why I do it.  First views, less than a third of the way up the mountain.  The magic of this park is this – it makes you feel so small, and yet wraps you up in something so big.

The Washbowl

After a little less than an hour of climbing, we came to a landmark that I’d been waiting impatiently to see for months – ever since we started planning the hike.  Giant’s Washbowl is a small but stunning pond that is perched right around the 2,300 foot mark on the slopes of Giant.

As we approached the pond, I literally gasped out loud.  It was more beautiful than anything I could have possibly imagined.

There was a super rustic bridge over the narrowest part of the pond – you could see the axe-marks in the logs.  Steve remarked, “That’s the most Adirondack bridge that was ever built.”

Just on the other side of the bridge was the perfect peaceful little rocky beach.  I rushed over and snapped a few dozen pictures.  I was in awe of the beauty all around me.

This was when Steve announced that he was going to hike “Ron Swanson-style” for the rest of the climb.  I asked him what that meant, and he said he was going to conserve energy by not smiling.  For the rest of the hike, we assumed our tired-hiker personas – he became more taciturn and grouchy and I matched him by being as annoyingly upbeat and positive as he was grumpy.  And in case you’re wondering, yes, I did call him “Ron” all day, and yes, he absolutely called me “Leslie.”

I reluctantly tore myself away from Giant’s Washbowl – heart burning with envy toward the lucky people who camp there – and we continued on with our climb.

The Views

One of the things I’d heard about Giant was that while it can be a bit of a beastly climb (although I didn’t find it all that bad on the way up – down was another story, though) the mountain more than makes up for your hard work by really delivering in the view department.  That turned out to be totally true.  There were multiple opportunities to stop and take it all in, and Steve/Ron was constantly hurrying me along because I/Leslie kept pausing to gape at the majesty around me.  The view above was my favorite – Giant’s Washbowl, from the vantage point of another 90 minutes or so of hiking.  I couldn’t believe that we had climbed all that way (and still had more to go – oof).

The Summit

After a little less than four hours of hiking, we found ourselves making the final push to the summit and our third Adirondack high peak.

Working hard, looking forward to celebrating on top of the world!

We came around a corner, felt the wind biting, and there it was:

The views were absolutely unreal.

I stood on the bare rock of the summit and felt like I wanted to say something to mark the moment, but there were no words.

We took off our packs and dug into our trail snacks – we were both feeling pretty hungry by this point.  We probably spent about an hour on the summit, soaking in the view, refueling, and celebrating our achievement.

Three peaks down!  And speaking of down…

The Descent

I’m weird.  I much prefer climbing to descending.  I never want to leave a summit because I know what’s ahead of me – a few hours of treacherous picking my way over exposed rock and rooty, bouldery trails – even on a good day, and as already established, the trail was muddy and slick.  I spent the next several hours nervously skidding down the mountain.  I did a lot of butt-sliding (the Adirondack butt slide, you guys – no shame) and a fair amount of whimpering.  No pictures, because I didn’t want my phone in my hand as I tried to survive the descent.  Eventually we made it back to the trailhead and our car.  I was elated and excited on top of the mountain, and totally spent on the bottom.

The Reward

Noon Mark Diner.  Blueberry pie.  (Oh, and dinner too – but look at that PIE!)  I kept expecting Luke Danes to come around the corner in his flannel shirt and backwards baseball cap and judge me for ordering a coffee at 4:00 p.m.  The waitress did seem a bit surprised by my order.  But I’m sure she could tell by the fact that I was covered in mud and looked a bit unhinged that I’d just come off some mountain or another.  And the fact was I had a bit of a dehydration headache – the coffee was necessary.

The Next One?

I studiously avoided mentioning more peaks to Steve for a few days after the hike, but I’m already whittling down a list of the next likely targets.  It probably won’t be until 2018, because I don’t think we have any plans to be in New York during the prime autumn hiking season, what with all of the other travel we have coming up.  But I can say for sure that there will be more peaks bagged – I think Phelps might be next, but we’ll have to wait and see.

Three peaks down!  What’s the toughest hike you’ve done recently?