A short trip to the Adirondacks

Whiteface looming on a cool, crisp day
Headed down to Lake Placid to do a bit of skiing. I usually wait until closer to the end of the season to make the trek down but the last few years I waited too long and the snow melted before I could skii. This year I resolved to go in January to be sure of good conditions. While I wouldn’t exactly call the snow “mid winter” it was still very good. Even with last week’s rain Van Hovenburg had gotten a little fresh snow on top of a hard icy base. I drove down Sunday morning and found the trails in good shape. They clearly suffered similar damage as Gatineau Park after December’s ice storm. Lots of signs of freshly cut brush dumped along the sides of the tracks. The fresh snow on a hard icy base made for some excellent skiing though and – in spite of a lot of twigs on the tracks brought down from strong winds – the skiing was great. The trails – like most Olympic sites – have a lot of transitional skiing. Steep ups straight into steep downs with not a lot of flats in between. Still they have a nice rhythm to them so it makes for fun skiing. I spent a good part of the day on site and covered most everything they had to offer. Lots of people on a Sunday afternoon in spite of cool temperatures (~12F).

Time to climb the Russian Hill

After spending the night in town I awoke to much colder weather on Monday. A strong wind was blowing and the thermometer now read 2F. I hadn’t brought any skis waxed with a cold weather wax and the idea of climbing the hills on skis that glided like sandpaper didn’t appeal too much. Instead I looked to the snowshoes I had in the car. I also had a bit of new winter hiking gear that I wanted to test out so I opted for a hike up Cascade and Porter. It’s a good trail that’s not too long and was guaranteed to be well broken out so I could test my gear with confidence that if things went wrong I could “escape” back to the car without problem. A few meters up the trail it became clear that crampons and not snowshoes would have been the right choice for the day as the well packed trail had only a couple of inches of fresh snow on it. Still my snowshoes worked like a charm biting into the hard pack surface and giving me perfect traction all day. I tried to limit my effort so as not to get too sweaty but climbing takes effort so the layers started to get damp. Kept plenty warm though as long as I kept a reasonable pace. Once up to the junction to Porter I opted to hike over there first and made the short walk with the sounds of strong winds in the treetops above me. My thought was to make the hike to Porter and back before stripping off my wet layers and putting on some dry ones. For the most part it worked well but I lingered at Porters summit taking pictures and my outer layer started to ice up pretty quickly. It became obvious it was time to go as my shirt flexed with ice but a fast hike back to Cascade and I was soon warm again. The weather was also showing signs of changing as well with beautiful bluebird skies being replaced with dark stormy clouds as I made the short trek along the ridgeline.

It was a beautiful, sunny day up until this point

Before climbing the exposed summit block of Cascade I peeled off the wet layers and put on some dry ones including my new down vest and lots of face protection. Several other groups arrived, looked at the windswept rocks above and opted to turn back as I suited up. “Not for us today” they said. Left my pack and snowshoes at the base and scrambled up the rocks to the summit. The wind was pretty violent (dropping the temperature well below 0F) but not quite “blow you off the mountain” strong so I reached the summit unscathed and grabbed a few pics. Major props to my new vest which kept me toasty warm the whole time I was up there. Back at my pack I layered down and had a bite to eat before trotting down the hill to the car. In the trees the day was quite pleasant (maybe 15F?) so I was glad I had headed out when I did. As an added bonus I was met at the trailhead by a girl from S.U.N.Y. who was conducting a park user survey. For a few minutes of my time answering questions (where did I come from?, how often did I visit the park?, etc.) I was rewarded with a steaming cup of hot chocolate! Sweet!! Would that I could find her after all my hikes in the peaks. So a good couple of days in spite of not skiing both of them. I got one good skiing day in and then tested out my winter hiking gear in some pretty arctic conditions. A few more pictures can be found here

One last view before it was time to head down