Sunny 46

The high temperature in Keene Valley that day was supposed to be 90 degrees with 93% humidity. I did not want to be caught ridge walking in that weather, so I wanted to get a very early start. Fortunately, my in-laws have a seasonal campsite between our home and the high peaks region, so we stayed there overnight, cutting our travel time by an hour.

There was plenty of parking at Garden when we arrived. We paid our $10 for parking, hoisted up our 7.5L of water, marked the register, and got moving. Sunny was very motivated, but Sunny is always motivated, from beginning to end. He pulls me as hard at the end as he does in the beginning. I'm not sure where he gets the energy from, but if I could bottle and sell it, I'd be a millionaire.

As usual, Sunny did a poo in the first half mile and I had to take off my pack to get my shovel out. I think I need to ditch the camp shovel; it's way too heavy. In general, I want a better solution for the stuff I need access to most often, so I'd like to find a lightweight belt with a pouch for my phone and slots for tools like a small spade and knife.

The hike up First Brother was tough. Sunny did a great job scrambling and rock hopping. I talked to our vet and they said if he's hiking, trimming his nails probably won't be necessary unless they actually get very long. 

First Brother was the toughest ascent of the four peaks because it takes care of most of your elevation gain. It's easy to look at the views of the other two summits and feel they are insurmountable, but they move pretty quickly.

There were a lot of great views throughout the hike and I had a really tough time maintaining the discipline to keep my phone in my pocket. These views had another interesting side-effect: Sunny kept veering to them and I had to keep correcting his path on the trail. I assume this is because the human scent goes in both directions.

We made it to the summit by 9:30am. I felt like this left us with plenty of time to do Yard before the sun started baking everything. I also really didn't want to navigate down the way we came up.

Sunny made lots of friends on the hike. On this leg, we were hiking a bit ahead of  a Dad and Son team from Oneonta. Sunny got lots of pets at the summit and it made all the hard work worth it.

Yard Mountain was muddy, and Sunny was flank-deep at one point. Still, the peak was definitely not a huge effort to climb. The views are not great, but getting a 3990' summit is its own reward. The descent was a lot of work. It's all downhill to the Johns Brook Lodge, but the first half mile or so is pretty steep and I had to let Sunny go on his own on these parts for safety reasons. I am considering getting a longer leash for descents.

Still, there were a lot of cool rock features coming down Yard. There are broken boulders in all sorts of sizes and configurations, all covered in moss and lichen. This is peak Adirondacks and I love seeing these cyclopean formations.

Coming down from Yard, the tree with the blaze (arrow) on it had fallen down. When I opened my phone to look at my map, it immediately shut down. I looked around for a clear trail and there really wasn't one, but we started walking along what looked like the trail. We were soon wandering off-trail.  Even Sunny was confused and couldn't find a clear direction. We tried several directions that seemed like trails but never came across a marker in any direction.

Eventually, another hiker named Alex came by and he had his phone on Airplane mode like a smart person (I am not a smart person) and we tried following the trail again.

We found ourselves off-trail once again. 

We kind of stumbled in the same direction I'd gone on my own for a bit and then stopped after another look at the map. Alex wandered uphill again looking for the trail and finally found it. My watch recorded our bumbling.

As it turns out, there is a little section in the trail as it hugged the cliff face which steadily goes downhill, but then curves uphill for a short span. 

It's at this spot where we just kept walking forward instead of following the curve uphill and it seems like lots of hikers have done it (we met someone who also did that on our way to the lodge). It's no wonder Sunny was confused because the people smell also went off-trail. I wish we'd gone back and put some logs down or something across that wrong path to direct people in the right direction.

We drank all of our water today, with Sunny sipping from running brooks on the trail from the lodge and I drained my 2nd bladder half a mile from Yard. Hikers at JBL were trying to fill water from the spigot there, but it was running very slowly.

All's well that ends well. My buddy suggested the "Trails of the Adirondack High Peak" map book by the Adirondack Mountain Club. He says that it has all the unmarked trails in it for the high peaks where the Nat Geo one does not. I'll pick this up either the next time I'm at our friendly local hiking store or when I pick up our Big Slide pins at the Loj. I'll also be sure to set my phone and watch to airplane mode from now on.

The hike from the lodge to the parking lot was a little painful and took quite some time, but not because it's hard but because I was pretty sore at that point. Sunny likes to pull all the time and it puts a lot of strain on the soles of my feet. I need to get better at training him to heel and I need new boots. 

Big Slide was very different from Phelps. It was largely well-marked and well-maintained. While Phelps was a gnarly, rubble-strewn streambed ascent, the trails along this range were far easier on the feet and required a lot less careful thought on the descents. The climb is just a lot, especially on a very hot summer day. Getting to the summit early and doing the rest of the hike under the canopy is definitely the way to go.  Still, it was a beautiful and rewarding hike.

Phelps is like a cantankerous, mean, old grandpa who thinks you should figure everything out for yourself, but he's a very easy read. Big Slide is like a loving, characterful grandma who's tough, but holds your hand crossing the street.