Ten years later...back in the Adirondacks

Sunday, September 11, 2011

It’s hard not to think about where you were and what you were doing on this day ten years ago. For the first time in several years, I found myself again in the Adirondacks. Ten years ago, I’d been hiking and kayaking on Cranberry Lake with John and Henry throughout that day and having seen no one, hadn’t known of the attack. Only when I kayaked into the hamlet of Wanakana to pick up some supplies at the general store and heard a report on NPR did I begin to understand. The clerk at the counter looked at my three day growth of beard and said, “You don’t know what happened this morning, do you?” I admitted I didn’t and as he told me, struggled to comprehend what I was hearing. When I returned to our camp site an hour later and relayed what I had been told, neither of my camping partners could believe what I said upon the first telling…it was just too unbelievable. Since we had no access to any form of mass media to give us any details, we sat around our campfire that night and speculated how and why the deed had happened and what it would mean to the rest of our lives. All these things…and the efforts of the police, fire and civilians that went into saving lives throughout that day coursed my mind as I sat on rock outside my tent waiting for the girls to stir.

By eight o’clock I quit waiting and got them up because I knew it would be a long day and we were burning daylight. I made some peaches and cream oatmeal for them and ate my usual breakfast of Kashi cereal. The milk I’d brought along had begun to freeze overnight and was the consistency of yogurt, which disturbed me with each bite…but I finished it because I knew I’d need the calories. We packed a lunch, raingear, and other essentials of a day hike to a peak and were on the trail by 9:30 a.m.

The floods and storm damage had done little to the trail we followed, which was reasonably step over the first mile and had left the girls breathing heavily and bemoaning their own lack of training. “I really should have done a little more to get ready for this,” Savannah said at one of our breaks. “Hey…we’ll get there. Take your time and enjoy the journey,” I said, but knew it was lost. When you’re suffering, you only want it to be over…and that was a long way off at this point.

We hit the junction for the final half mile to Wright Mt. after 4 miles of hiking, but this would prove to be the steepest and most difficult. Savannah is not particularly thrilled when traveling on open peaks above the tree line, but proceeded stoically. There were numerous spots where we were forced to use hands and feet to make the ascent and Heidi worked with Savannah over these difficult points while I scouted ahead to find the easiest route. We arrived at the summit after three hours of hiking to winds of forty mph, but spectacular views. After pictures, we hunkered down behind a rock outcropping to eat a meal of beef stick, cheese, apples, and Kashi bars. Savannah was uninterested in food, mostly because she was dreading the descent which she found much more terrifying than the trip up. We tried to get her to eat…she would need the fuel for the return trip, but she resisted and ate little and after 45 minutes on top, began our return trip.

Fatigued and sore, the girls both stumbled and struggled with the descent. We took our time though, and arrived safely at the trail head at the Adirondack Loj in a little over three hours and in the late afternoon. I hiked the final mile to the van and drove back to them so we could take hot showers in the Loj bathhouse…a heavenly experience after sweating for 7 hours on the trail.

We drove to Keene for a dinner at the famous Noon Mark Café and then back to Lake Placid for a night consisting of sitting in a Starbucks and discussing the travails of the day. We returned to our camp site and quickly climbed into our sleeping bags. I was awakened only once to the sound of a lone coyote calling to a mate.

Hike/climb duration: 7 hours.
Training Heart Rate: 70 to 150 bpm.
Calories burned during workout: 3,000.