 My friend Mike was in town for the summer for a
few months. Sitting around one night, we decided we needed
to do a trip to the Adirondacks. I got the time off and we
went.
Our goal was to see parts of the High Peaks we hadn't seen and kind
of stay off the beaten path since we'd be hiking with our
dogs. Of course the route we planned on our drive up wasn't exactly the route we took.
Here's how it went down:
- Day One Park at the Adirondak Loj
- Take the Mr. Van Ski
Trail(80) to the Klondike Brook trail(12) to Johns Brook
Lodge
- From Johns Brook Lodge take the Woodsfall Trail to
the Wolf Jaws lean to
- Total mileage day one 7.8 miles. Took four hours or so.
- Day Two from the Wolf Jaws lean to take the ADK Range trail(4) to the State Range Trail(9) over Upper Wolf Jaw, Armstrong, Gothics, Saddleback, Basin and Little Haystack
- From Little Haystack go over Mt. Haystack(10) to the campsites in Panther Gorge
- Total milage day two 10.1 miles. Took twelve or fourteen hours.
- Day Three From the Panther Gorge campsite we took the Elk-Lake Marcy trail(118) over Mt. Marcy to the Van Hoevenberg Trail(61) and back to the Adirondak Loj?
- Total milage for day three was 9.2 miles. Took seven hours maybe? We started early, summited Marcy shortly after 7am and made it to the car around 2pm or so.
Now that I look at the stats and think about our original plan (perimeter hike of the High Peaks) I realize we would have needed at least another day and me at least a new set of legs and feet.
The above picture is somewhere near the beginning of the Mr. Van Ski Trail. It was described as un-maintained and nearly impassable during the summer. It's a ski connector trail in winter, so it's clear and marked that time of year. In the summer it's overgrown and flooded by beaver activity. The beginning as you can see wasn't so bad.
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 It didn't take too long for the conditions detiorate. This was one of many stream/bog crossings. | |
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 Where's the trail? We asked ourselves this question many times. Usually we'd have a marker from where we came, but no markers to tell us where to go.
We'd have to fan out across the woods/swamps in front of us looking for what appeared to be a trail, follow it a ways hoping to find a marker or turn back and try again. | |
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 Some of our attempts at finding the trail got a little precarious, and if that attempt was wrong the precariousness was repeated - in reverse. | |
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 The Mr. Van Ski trail was only a few miles. Slowly it got better and eventually joined with the Klondike Brook trail. | |
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 Which was a breeze. It had some elevation to ascend and descend, but overall a nice woodsy trail. | |
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 A little over halfway there was a stream and lean to on the Klondike Brook trail, so we stopped for lunch. | |
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 Gretchen is leary of the bridges. | |
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 This was the Woodsfall Trail. It basically went straight up (like you see) from Johns Brook Lodge to the Wolf Jaws lean-to. | |
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 Gretchen was a little tired after carrying her pack nearly eight miles. | |
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