Adirondack Hiker

Monday, May 08, 2006

The Great Range (Part 1) - Ore Bed Lean-to

I just finished my latest Adirondack hike this past weekend. Unfortunately, the hike was poorly planned from the beginning and it only got worse as time went on. I'll just start from the beginning.

On Friday (5/5), my brother Adam and I left for Keene Valley around 2:00 p.m. We arrived a bit after 4:00 p.m. and stopped at The Mountaineer (a hiking shop in Keene Valley). Adam needed to get a bigger pack and we had to rent some bear canisters to store our food in for the weekend. For those who do don't know, a bear canister is a strong plastic cylinder with a locking lid. These are supposed to keep bears from eating your food, and they are now required for use by overnight hikers in the high peaks region. After 30 minutes or so, we had the new pack and two canisters and we headed up to the Garden Parking Area where we planned to start our hike.

We were going to hike in past the John's Brook Lodge to the Ore Bed Lean-to where we planned to camp. The hike was going fairly well until we reached John's Brook. The bridge we had planned to cross was closed, so we had to take another trail further upstream. Here, we met obstacle number one: the melting Spring snows meant that the water of John's Brook was extremely high and fast moving. Of course, there was no bridge at this point. After about 45 minutes of trying to find a safe crossing, and several failed attempts (and one soaked boot from going in knee deep), we decided we had to make our own way. We managed to cross halfway on a fallen tree trunk to some solid rocks at midstream. From here, we lifted and dragged the fallen tree up to throw as far as possible toward the far bank. This was going to be our crossing -- of couse, if this failed, there was no turning back. The momentum of the tree-toss almost threw us face first into the stream, but it landed true right where we needed it. With an extra-long leap of faith we could make it to the far bank. Despite our fully loaded packs, we made the leap -- we had overcome obstacle number one.

Shortly thereafter, we crossed the Ore Bed Brook without too much trouble (it only took us five minutes or so to find a crossing this time) and continued on toward the lean-to. It was dark for the last half hour or so of the hike, but we arrived without any further difficulties around 9:00 p.m. after a three hour hike. Here, we set up camp and waited for our two friends to arrive.

Seth, and his coworker Ed, were flying up from South Carolina into Albany shortly before 10:00 p.m. They were renting a car and driving up to Keene Valley that night. They planned to hike in to meet us at the Ore Bed lean-to. Their hike started at 1:00 a.m. and ended with their arrival at our camp at 5:00 a.m. An all-night hike followed by the all-day hike we had planned for Saturday -- certainly a bad idea if you asked me. But, it was their idea after all.

They got about an hour and a half of sleep before we got ready to set off on the real hike. This I will discuss more later. For now, here's some pictures of this first leg of the journey and our camp.

Adam standing outside our lean-to. Yes, it was dark. (5/5/06, 10:09 p.m.)

The Ore Bed brook, closeby to our lean-to. (5/6/06, 7:16 a.m.)

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home