Sunny 46

I've got a bit of an obsessive personality and it has been bugging the hell out of me that I have one more high peak than Sunny, so I decided we should try to do Sawteeth. We couldn't do it from AMR because of their draconian dog policies, so Garden was a good bet at 15 miles round trip. It would be a long day but promised beautiful views and an incredible challenge.  I looked at the maps and saw that the trail broke off from Gothics to Sawteeth and made an assumption that the worst parts of Gothics would be after the junction, but I was incredibly wrong about that. If I had read the AMC High Peaks Trails guide a little closer, I would have known this.  Phelps Trail We set off from Garden at around 5:45 with head lamp engaged. This time around, I had my running shoes on and my boots lashed to my pack. We made excellent time down the Phelps Trail. It was misty and the breeze was shaking drops from the trees, but the trail was mostly dry.  ...

Due to a series of unfortunate events, we weren't able to do our next hike on a weekday, so on Saturday August 19, 2022, when Sunny and I pulled up to the Adirondack Loj parking lot at 6am and the lot was almost full. Our plan was to hike Tabletop, but I'd heard that the summit wasn't all that great, so I wanted to add a detour to Avalanche Lake as a consolation prize, maybe for a swim. The helpful attendant at the Loj booth informed me that Avalanche Lake wasn't great for swimming. I was grateful for that information as I'd only ever been up there in the winter and I'd been making some assumptions about what the lake was like for swimming. The Approach The haul through Van Hoevenberg and Phelps Trails were dry and full of people. Sunny was really excited about how busy the trail to Marcy was because that meant he got  lots  of pets! This also meant that we were delayed but I can't really blame anyone; I tend to be a bit of a talker too and liked chatting wi...