I think it was 4 a.m. when I heard the ruffled grouse beating his wings for the first time. It’s such an unusual sound, like the prop of an airplane building speed until it’s finally at full throttle and not something I mind hearing, but it was damned early. Yet, in less than an hour, it was light enough to hike. Still…it was cold and I hung in m sleeping bag until six.
I had a breakfast of Kashi cereal and began the process of loading the backpack with the supplies I thought I’d be using over the next three days. One of the disadvantages of traveling alone is that there is no one to share the load of the essentials…tent, cooking gear, food, and water. I took extra shoes because I knew the bridges were out and I’d be wading through water and probably had a pack weighing in around fifty pounds by the time I was ready to hike. I registered at the trailhead and from this could see that only one other person was headed for Allen Mt. Since it was a trail less peak (an unmaintained, unmarked trail) and a weekday, it was unlikely I would see anyone on the mountain.
I was on the trail two minutes when I found myself plunging into the mountain-cold waters of the Opalescent River. The water was moving swiftly and strong, but was only knee deep and not an issue to cross…unless you consider soggy shoes an issue. I really don’t.
I dealt with two more water crossings…one over Lake Jimmy on a plank walkway that was partially submerged. The submerged planks were bobbing and the water was over six feet deep meaning that slipping with a fifty-pound pack and falling in the lake would be decidedly foolish. I was shifting and moving so much that I decided it would be safer to get on my hands and knees over one particularly mobile section. The water lapped over my legs as I crawled along and although it was cold, I’d been sweating from the effort of carrying the pack in the sunny, 80-degree heat, so it felt pretty good.
My plan was to hike the five miles to the trailhead for Allen Mt. where I would leave my main pack and take a day pack with the supplies I’d need just for the climb. It took me two and a half hours to make this portion of the trek. I stopped and placed my pack off the trail and prepared for my ascent. The trail book said to allow four hours for the trip since there was a lot of blow down requiring bushwhacking and slow going. Since it was 10 a.m., I figured to have plenty of time to summit and return and then hiking the final four miles to my campsite at Livingston Point.
I’d made one little, interpretive error though. The ‘four hours’ mentioned in the trail book was for reaching the summit and did not include the time it would take to return…something I think could have been mentioned as it is kind of important. As advertised, the trail was difficult and rugged and my progress was extremely slow. Since so few people use the trail, it was hard to find at times and I lost further time to locating it. Though I had a compass and map, I really didn’t want to use them to find the peak.
After two hours on the trail up, I met the other hiker climbing Allen that day. He was Canadian and spoke French…one of the languages of the world I don’t speak (I’m close to mastering English, though) and described what was to come in broken English as ‘slippery and steep’. He wasn’t bullshitting. I found myself trying to climb over moss-covered rocks through a diminishing mountain stream, struggling to find solid footholds. I reached a point where I could no longer see any signs of people passing before me and only a steep, water-covered smooth rock face rising towards the peak for the next 100 yards. I moved off to the bushes and shrub trees that bordered this ‘slide’ and tried to forge ahead in search of the trail. After fighting and clawing my way through brush that was shredding my legs and arms and seeing no sign of a trail, I concluded I’d missed it. I could descend for 30 minutes and try to find it, or continue my bushwhack to the peak and then hope I could find my way back down the route I’d just taken. I elected to do the latter.
It was at this time that it occurred to me that if I didn’t start down soon, I’d be hiking in the dark on a trail less peak…without a headlamp. It was also about then that I discovered I’d lost my trail map somewhere in the dense underbrush and would now be traveling blindly unless I could find the trail I’d lost on the way up. Descending through the creek on the slippery rock face was slower than ascending had been and I didn’t make it back to the base of the mountain until 4:30 p.m. I was bleeding from over fifty cuts, inundated with mosquitoes and black flies, and completely exhausted. Because I had failed to do any conditioning with a pack in preparation for the trip, my hips were fatigued and sore. I’d made the decision on my descent to hike the five miles back to my car instead of the three further in to a campsite because I was now without a trail map, something I would have needed for tomorrow’s climb. I swung the full pack on my aching shoulders and began the two hour death march back to the car.
In all, I was on the trail hiking and climbing for over 11 hours. I’d only stopped to eat a sandwich and energy bar and to take some pictures along the trail and from the peak. I’d covered close to 20 miles on some of the roughest trails I’d ever experienced and been bitten more times than I would ever be able to count. I was thinking how I liked to say ‘a bad day in the Adirondacks beats a good day at the office’ and wondering if it applied to today. I shed my pack quickly upon reaching the car, grabbed my towel and a change of clothes and staggered back to the Opalescent River…five minutes from the car…for a much needed clean-up. I sat in water somewhere in the high 40-degree range and tried to scrub the blood, mud, and salty sweat-grime from my body. There were so many black flies attached to me as I stood, that I thought they’d carry me back to the river bank. They didn’t.
Any notion of cooking was out. I drove to Keene Valley and had a dinner at the Noonmark Café wondering if I’d be able to walk the next day. My hips and left knee were very sore and my feet, probably injured from running in the minimalist shoes, were throbbing. I’d gone and bit off a little more than I could chew…again.
Hike/climb duration:11.5 hours
Training Heart Rate: 80 to 140 bpm.Calories burned during workout: 6,500.
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