High Peaks Day 2 Cascade & Porter Mountains

We awoke early in the morning feeling rested and good. Looking out the window though we saw what I had feared the night before. The vista outside of our window was covered in a dense fog and looking down at the street I could see rain dropplets hitting the numerous puddles. We dressed and went down to the hotel restaurant for breakfast. I of course had the mountain man breakfast, how could one be in the mountains and not have a mountain man breakfast? By the time we got done eating, gathered our gear and got on the road it was around 11am. By that time the rain had subsided and the fog had lifted.

We took route 73 past the Adirondac Loj road and continued on down to the parking areas for our first climbs of the 46 High Peaks. We saw many cars parked on the turnoffs on the right and left hand side of the road and then I saw the sign for the trail-heads of Cascade and Pitchoff mountains. There were three parking areas, the first two were full but the last space allowed us to sneak in. From what I had read, besides Mt. Marcy, Cascade is one of the more popular climbs in the high peaks. It's also naturally one of the first climbs most people do because there is hardly any trail leading up to the climb. You basically start ascending the mountain as soon as you enter the trail from the road. Because of this, there are many on the trail who have very little experience hiking of which we saw first hand, but more on that later.

We started gathering all the gear we needed for our hike. Making sure we put on sun-screen, bug spray, had all necessary layers of clothes, PBJ sandwiches ( best hiker meal on the planet ), maps, compass, gps, water, granola bars etc. etc. Looking up at Cascade mountain from the vehicle we could see that the summit was completely covered in clouds. We hoped that we would have at least some sort of view at the top, but were prepared for celebrating the summit with no such view.

We made our way to the trailhead and I was very excited to make the ascent. We arrived at the trailhead and went down a wooden staircase. At the bottom of the staircase was the trail register. This was a Monday, yet there were many people making the climb on that day. It seemed like a very nice day for a hike, being slightly on the cool side and very little bug activity as a result.

The books I had read were correct, the trail starts going up as soon as you enter. The problem we ran into was the fact that because of all the rain, the trails were quite muddy. The trail almost seemed like a small stream at times because of the makeup of the trail, most water runoff will makes its way down the trail, rather than the sides of the trail. Heather and I usually keep a pretty good pace when we hike but we were really taking our time on this one. Heathers cold was really getting to her at times which made it difficult to keep a solid pace. We both needed to stop quite a few times though and just catch our breath and let the burn in our leg muscles subside. We passed the first group we had seen coming down the mountains. A family of four...
"Hows the view up there?"
"When we were up there it was quite cloudy, couldnt see anything, but it was worth the climb, it was beautiful up there." This couple had two smaller children with them. If they could do it, we could do it!

We arrived at the intersection of Porter and Cascade mountains. The summit of cascade from this point is another .7 miles with a rise of 292 feet. Not bad. The ground at this point started to become much rockier until we arrived at the treeline and the summit was within our view. It was absolutely fantastic to see and we noticed immediately that the cloud cover was starting to dissapate. The trail to the summit was marked with yellow paint marks in the rockface. Along this trail there were many small mounds of rocks. Its an old superstition that taking a rock from treeline to the summit area will prevent bad weather from occurring while on the summit. I had no idea why they were there in the first place so we didn't try this out. Even though there was no need for it.

At one point we saw a little girl dressed only in a tank top with shorts whose family was further up the rockface at the summit. She appeared to be freezing and we chatted with her a bit.
"Boy I wish I had a tissue I really need to blow my nose", the little girl said shivering. "Where is your family?...we have a tissue for you... here you go", I said. "They are further up.. boy it takes a long time to get up there and its soooo cold... its another 45 minutes to the top!". The mind of a child sometimes can't correctly measure time and distance. I knew it wasnt that far. This seemed to be a good example of how people with very little experience or knowledge can get in trouble in the high peaks. At that point, the temperature was a good 10-15 degrees colder with the wind, and the temperature can drop considerably. If a hiker is not prepared with extra layers of clothing they can really get into trouble. Hypothermia is probably the biggest concern and wouldnt take long to get with cold, wet conditions like that. Some of the people we saw on that climb were bolting past us with no water, no backpack, and sneakers on. The rule of thumb when climbing or hiking is to always be prepared to stay over night on the mountain. This means having rain gear, maybe some sort of space-blanket and a headlamp or flashlight. The old adage of an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Heather and I have not run into any such situations at this point, but I think we will be prepared and ready if such a situation should occur.

We made our way to the summit and on cue as we were standing there, the clouds started to part and we were delighted to see an open mountain vista around us. The view was absolutely breathtaking. We could see Algonquin and Sawtooth and many other mountains of the range. We enjoyed some rather smashed PBJ sandwiches and celebrated our very first high peak with a high-five and a big hug. We then looked to the west and saw our next goal for the day, Porter Mountain.

Moving back down the rock face to the fork in the trail between Porter and Cascade we saw a bunch of kids and adults sitting there. "Hope you like mud" the leader said... "that trail is extremely wet and muddy". The guy was not exaggerating. We followed the trail down what seemed like an old creek-bed. There was water running down the bed all around us. We had to descend for quite a ways and at some points it was slightly tricky. Then we started climbing again and the trail was just filled with mud. This made for very slow going as we tried to balance on the rocks and logs placed by other hikers along the trail. The trail dropped 90 feet in elevation and eventually rose another 330 feet in elevation making our way to the summit. There was a very small side trail to the summit and we were treated to a great view of Cascade Mt. to the west and pretty much the same view we saw from Cascade. The difference was that there was absolutely no-one up there with us.

We had the summit to ourselves and it was very pleasant. In fact on the way from Cascade to Porter we only saw 2 other hikers. We spent a few minutes at the summit and I looked to the west and saw what seemed like a stormfront barreling towards us. Could actually see the rain falling in sheets. We quickly got our rain gear out again and starting descending back down the trail. If a storm comes in the mountains the most important thing you can do is get down to treeline and beyond if possible. Lightning strikes are very dangerous on mountain-tops. We tried moving as fast as we could but still staying as safe as possible. The rain hit and it wasnt quite as bad as it looked and didnt last for very long. It certainly didnt help the trail conditions though. We took a slight break before heading down at the summit trail for Cascade and had a snack. At this point it was probably around 5:00. We still had 2.1 miles of descending to go, and given the trail conditions, 2.1 miles could take a while.

The descent became tough, and at one point I jumped down a 5 foot rock face and twisted my knee. I felt a shooting pain but I was still able to walk, albeit not very well. Heather and I were using some walking sticks, her's was a nice sized walking staff that we found last year on our very first hike on black bear mountain near Old Forge. Mine was one that I bought many years ago at a festival in Baldwinsville. It has seen countless hikes and has really saved my joints and muscles from undue stress and fatigue. With my knee slightly damaged the walking stick became mandatory. Going down a mountain is so much different than going up. You dont sweat half as much, but there is just so much more stress on your joints from going down, plus you are usually beat from the ascent. We were going rather slow coming down and at that point in the day didnt see anyone else, which was quite the contrast from going up. The forest was quite dense and when you are tired your eyes can play tricks on you. When I was really tired and hungry I could actually see shadows moving in the forest. During this time I would start talking louder to make sure any creatures know of our presence. The shadows were simply my mind playing tricks on me and low blood sugar as a result of no food. Eating a granola bar did the trick and brought me back to reality. We made it back to the register for the trailhead, signed out and had a quick laugh at ourselves for all of the mud all over our clothes and boots.

We were tired, hungry, and filthy yet we both had a great feeling of accomplishment. We arrived back at the hotel by 7:30, took showers and hit an italian restaurant down the street ( I think it was called Jimmy's ). After the days events and the feeling I had I started thinking about our last night in the mountains and the plans for the next day. We were supposed to take a canoe on Saranac lake, find an island and camp over night. I re-thought this idea though and talked to Heather about a change of plans. The plan would be to stay another night at the hotel and head to the Adirondack Loj and do another high-peak. She was delighted with the idea because we arent comfortable as canoeists at this point and staying in a nice bed after a big hike was more appealing to her. We agreed on this game plan and then tried to enjoy our dinners. The meal was expensive and not so great, I had probably an entire clove of garlic in my meal, which I simply cant stand. After a rather tough day of hiking, being dirty and all of that, just give me a burger and some fries or a pizza. I think we learned our lesson and I had it in my head to
make sure that on day 3 we would have pizza and beer.