For this hike, I'd also be trying out some new gear. For Christmas I received a CampSnap camera and a new fanny pack. The fanny pack has two generous compartments, a belt loop to fit a nalgene, and two pouches for dog treats (and people treats).
The camera is digital, but has no screen or control modes. It's just a simple point-and-shoot camera with a huge storage capacity and long battery life. My plan is to use that camera for candid and documentation photos throughout a hike, thus saving battery on my phone. This camera won't, however, track location or time. The locations I'll have to manually set if I want to. Fortunately, the times are all relative to an internal clock in the camera. Because of this, I can upload the photos to a Google Photos album, select them all, and use the site's time adjustment tool. If you feed it the exact date and time of the first photo, it will adjust the date and time for all the rest of the photos by that amount. That is extremely helpful.
Swede Mt.
We arrived at the Swede Mt. trailhead a little after 7:30am. The air temperature was 6 degrees Farenheit, but with no wind whatsoever. It was a glorious start to the day.
A couple of years ago, Jay and Dan invited me on a hike up Swede Mt. It was about the same time of year. When we came to the beaver dam here, I started crossing it with Sunny. Sunny pulled me in and we were forced to bail on the hike before we even started. I did try to make it right by buying everyone dinner that evening, but it was still a bummer.
The scene of the crime.
Sunny was motivated despite the cold. I applied conditioner to his paws as I've been doing the past few weeks. I wore my new microspikes all day.
Ground conditions in the Southern ADK are pretty good right now. There's only a couple of inches of snow and you can probably make do with boots and microspikes. The streams are absolutely frozen and I suspect most exposed slabs and slides are icy.
There are a few decent sections of elevation gain on the way to the fire tower, but nothing crazy.
There's a lot of signage warning you not to stray on private property. Do note there's a period of time during hunting season that this trail is closed for hunting season.
The hike is very quick, only about two miles, and it has some pretty sections.
The fire tower is in great condition. The steps have new wood and the top flight is stairs instead of a ladder which is nice.
The cabin has a helpful chart pointing out all the peaks you can see, Crane Mt. to the West and the Dix Range to the North. According to the DECinfo Locator, these two locations are about equidistant as the crow flies, about 23 miles. The Eastern side of the fire tower has actually become obscured by trees.
Crane Mountain and Gore to the West.
Northwest towards the Southern ADK Brothers.
The Northern view usually includes the Dix Range and Giant Mt., but they were just obscured by clouds. It was a pretty view nonetheless.
Sunny gets so anxious when I climb a fire tower. He hates it.
We were both sporting ice beards by the time we got back to the trailhead. Fire tower #7 was complete. I had to gnaw some snowballs off Sunny's feet, but he was fine otherwise.
We were both feeling great, actually. Swede was little more than a warm-up. Since it was just a little after 9am, we headed off to the next hike.
Deer Leap
We got started at around 10am. Ground conditions were the same as on Swede, as were the temps.
There's a bit of a hiking superhighway at the start of the trail.
Found the register a bit down the trail.
No snakes were spotted today.
There is one main stream on the trail which held my weight. There were other slippery spots as well.
Almost from the start we'd been following the tracks of another canine. The tracks were solitary, out and back. I didn't examine them closely earlier in the hike and I'd initially thought there were two animals rather than one. Better safe than sorry, I leashed Sunny for nearly the entire hike. I thought it was interesting that the animal had followed the human trail 90% of the time. I daydreamed a bit that it was a lost dog following the trails it and its Human once travelled. I'd guess it's a fox, though.
The canine had found an unlucky turkey, but had clearly wasted no part of it.
And mice.
Deer Leap in the distance.
Sunny was pulling hard following the scent trail of the other canine. I'm going to be sore tomorrow.
The climb was steady but not relentless. We were keeping oursleves warm with the effort.
A little over half a mile and less than 300' of elevation gain took us to the junction.
The ridge walk was lovely. The weather was fantastic the entire time: partly sunny, cold, and calm.
The first Campsite from the junction is very close, here near the base of Brown's Northern spur.
This site seems like it would be fine for hammock camping, but tough to lay down tents. That'd be fine by me because I'm not about to be waking up to snakes snuggled up to my tent.
The col between Brown and Deer Leap features a fairly large swamp. Interestingly, although we were still on the ridge, we had lost almost as much elevation as we'd gained. This is because the valley the road winds through loses elevation as it travels North and the trailhead was South of us at this point.
Spooky tunnel!
We climbed a little over 200' to the summit of Deer Leap. We checked out the Northmost campsite in the range, situated here. This site is larger than the first one, but I still wouldn't sleep on the ground with Rattlesnakes.
Our friend's tracks.
We reached the overlook an hour after we started at 11am. The view is obscured, but we knew it would be. Deer leap is a perfectly fine quck hike with modest elevation gain and the view is comprable to the effort.
Angry tree.
We hung out at the overlook for a while, snacking and snapping pictures. I think Sunny was upset our friend wasn't at the end of the trail. I did have to de-snowball him and re-apply conditioner, but nowhere near as bad as on Swede. It's likely because I had him leashed this time and he was mainly hiking on the trail.
The hike back was quick and largely painless. We were still in great spirits and had plenty of gas in the tank.
Sunny was ready for a nap by the time we got back to the car, however.
We had a great time today. It's amazing how many of these little hikes are available within a 60 to 70 minute drive. We were able to leave the house at around 6, get two Lake George hikes in, and get home by 2pm. I see many more Mondays like this in the future.
Afternoon hike at Deer Leap Trail.gpx (240.11 KB)
Morning hike at Swede Mountain Trail.gpx (135.64 KB)