Stella, Nick's wonderful Husky, only needed four more mountains to catch up with him on his 42 High Peaks: Sawteeth, Gothics, Armstrong, and Upper Wolfjaw. We'd had an adventure planned for May before Memorial Day for some time and I was quite looking forward to it. Gothics is probably my favorite mountain. Then, Charissa messaged us saying she was keen to do a single-season 46er, so I invited her on our LGR day. Charissa had hiked both Sawteeth and Whiteface with me in the past and she'd been doing some training on the Catskills, but we figured this hike would be a great challenge and test...
I was looking forward to finally getting out to Indian Pass after my trail stward training trip a couple of weeks ago. As I said, I'd never actually been on that trail and it had a bit of notoriety for being unkempt and difficult to follow. I was quite eager to put in the work to turn that impression around.
I took off work on Friday to prep for Mother's Day and found myself with a free mid-day for a hike. After a quick swing by Wendy's work in Schenectady, Sunny and I searched the AllTrails app for nearby hikes. Plotter Kill Preserve was only a few minutes away and it looked quite promising.
A little over a month ago, Sunny and I hiked up Pilot Knob from the Buck Mt. trailhead. Although we'd enjoyed the exposed ridgeline quite a bit, we hadn't gone to bag the true summit or hunt for the airplane wreckage. With another short Monday hike coming up, I figured we'd have a go at it. However, this time I wanted to try out the trail in from the Inman Pond trailhead. The weather seemed more than acceptable, so after making coffee and breakfast, Sunny and I set out for Sly Pond Rd. -- not for the first time and not for the last time.
I've been thinking I'll start volunteering either through the Adirondack Mountain Club (ADK) or the 46ers. The ADK has a trail stewardship program which is kind of like adopt-a-highway except it's adopt-a-trail. That seemed like a cool program, so I signed up. They sent the list of available trails, then I filled out a form with my top 3 choices. We got my #3 choice, Indian Pass. More on that later in the article. After a few months of Email correspondence and filling out paperwork, we were offered three dates for trail maintenance training and I chose the one in late April. The ADK offered...