“The current state and direction of a path aren’t necessarily reflective of the final destination or goal.” – Yours truly
On my exit via the Johns Brook Lodge, I got lost for a whole hour. And it was because in spite of the map telling me otherwise, I became convinced that the path didn’t go because a) it appeared to be umaintained and b) the direction it was pointing was the opposite of where I had to go. Sadly, in fear of being lost, I forgot to rationalize the likelihood of the map (brand new) being incorrect and that a well worn path, suddenly going bust, midway. Because of my sudden concern for going the wrong way, I ended up backtracking to a known spot, conferring with a bunch of other hikers before realizing my mistake and heading back up the same, correct, path I just came back down. A valuable lesson to myself, out hiking or even in life is to not judge a particular situation based solely on its current status. It is important to step back and think about the larger picture and to trust in the map and directions, which could be something that you have set too. This could apply to situations where a single point on the journey does not accurately reflect the end goal (think startups or life building).
This obvious lesson above was brought forth by a culmination of events that began earlier that day at 3.30 am. Ming and I decided to attempt the Great Range Traverse which is a trail created by chaining a handful of the 46er high peaks in Adirondacks. To complete this trail, which is 25 miles long with 10k of vert, we wanted to allocate at least 16 hours. Wake up at 3.30 am, drive to trail head at by 4.30 and start hiking. We were late, starting around 4.50 in head lamps and heading to Rooster Comb which was our first summit (but not a 46er high peak). The hike was fairly quick and we were able to move fast because of the cooler temps. The Rooster Comb summit turned out to be pretty awesome - it was a rocky outcrop with a cliff to give unobstructed views of the other high peaks and we arrived just in time for sunrise, giving us a glimpse of alpenglow!
We then continued on to summit Hedgehog (not 46er) which was easy to miss because there are no views, just a very large rock in the middle of the path which I assumed was the summit. Finally, we made it to Lower Wolf Jaw, our first 46er of the day, followed by Upper Wolf Jaw, our second. At Upper Wolf Jaw we were able to get a good view of the surrounding peaks and most importantly an idea of where we were headed.
We could clearly see the next few peaks that we had to summit in order - Armstrong, Gothics, Saddleback, Basin, Little Haystack, Haystack and finally Marcy, the tallest in NY.
Next we headed to Armstrong which had a pretty spicy uphill with lots of scrambling. Really the theme of the next four uphills of Armstrong, Gothics, Saddleback and Basin was steep uphill scrambling. Sadly, Ming was cramping a little and since I felt really good to keep going, we decided to split up after the descent of Gothics.
I was able to get to Haystack after Basin at around 3.45pm. This was the last one before Marcy and although I felt that physically I could have potentially got to Marcy, I was running out of time. I was really not looking forward to hiking in the dark again, however, I got lost for a bit which rendered any plans to avoid the dark moot. Ming and I had agreed to meet in The Garden parking lot, which is the trail head for many of the hikes in the area. On the way to it, a long 7 mile hike out, I trail ran for a bit to speed things up. I did pass by the Johns Brook Lodge which I am really looking forward to staying at in the future - its a really neat little lodge in the woods (its a 3.5 miles hike from the parking lot). I was paranoid the whole time that I will run into a bear since it was peak bear season but something I remembered is that danger is real, feeling fear is a choice. I kept revising the steps I have to take if I did encounter a bear. Stand tall, scream loud and slowly back off without making eye contact. Remember that kids!
– G