Indian Head - Part 3 (Pyramid and Gothics)

After a rest, we started off toward Pyramid. The guy at the Mountaineer had said there was a great view from there, so we were enthusiastic to reach the summit. Unfortunately, quite a bit of time has passed from the climb to me actually writing this post, so I don't recall many details about the trail from Sawteeth to Pyramid. I do, however, recall the view from Pyramid. Although Pyramid doesn't count as one of the 46 (too close to Gothics I believe), it still has one of the best views in the Adirondacks. The summit of Pyramid is bare and open. It's situated such that you can see the entire range around you, including a phenomenal view of Basin's bowl. This is a spot that you absolutely must take some time to enjoy -- there is no peak-bagging over Pyramid.

So we stopped up here for about 30 minutes for another boots-off-beef-jerky break as we took in the surroundings. One really could spend hours on end up here. It's another point in the Adirondacks that must be seen.

But of course, as we were up here, dark clouds started moving in. We decided we had better push on and hope the storm passed us by. We started off toward Gothics. Again, I don't recall the trail on the way up in any great detail, so I'll breeze past that and get to the unforgettable part.

We were partway up Gothics when the rain started. No problem, we thought, we'll just summit Gothics and then decide where to go from here (and of course we still haven't had that clear view from Gothics that we hear so much about). As we moved further up, the thunder started. Now this was bad news. We are about to be on the bare rock summit of Gothics in a thunderstorm -- this is where we started to worry. As the storm grew stronger, we could see the lightning striking Haystack not more than a few miles from us. We had two options, head back down the way we came and try to take cover, or get across the summit (which we were very nearly at right now) and bee-line out of there and back down the other side as soon as possible. We chose option two, and in the process eliminated Saddleback, Basin, and Haystack from our plan. Climbing peaks wasn't the issue anymore, we needed to get off the mountain before the storm was on top of us.

There's nothing to reinvigorate a tired and sore body like the imminent threat of death by lightning. We ran across that summit at full tilt. I believe we may have set a new record for shortest time on the Gothics summit in Adirondack hiking history. We headed straight for the trail back down toward the Ausable without looking back until we were comfortably well below tree line and then some. Here, we found an overhang that provided at least a minimal shelter from the wind and rain and decided to wait it out until the brunt of the storm had passed.

Hunkered down here, the thunder bellowed and echoed off the surrounding mountains. I don't know exactly where the lightning was hitting at this point, but at least we couldn't see it from our position.

The storm passed fairly quickly. Wet yet again, we called it a day and headed back toward our camp at the Indian Head. Sometimes mother nature makes your plans for you.

Indian Head - Part 2 (Sawteeth)

Although this posting is several months delayed -- here it is.

The next day we rose early to start our planned trek (which of course was another death march) on a partial Great Range loop. The plan was to head to the Fish Hawk Cliffs, hike over Sawteeth, then continue over Pyramid on the way to Gothics (which we were still waiting to summit on a clear day). From here, we would continue on the loop over Saddleback and Basin finishing with a summit of Haystack before heading back to camp. Once again, we bit of more than we could chew.

We took the scenic trail up Sawteeth. Anyone who has hiked this trail may already see how this story unwinds. This trail winds up Sawteeth with various overlooks along the way. It may be scenic, but it is also one tough trail. It starts out steep, gets steeper, and doesn't stop all the way to the top. Additionally, blow-down has made portions of the trail difficult to follow, although some short double backs generally got us back on track. The overlooks are a pretty sight (although they still don't top the Fish Hawk Cliffs), but the strenuousness of this climb didn't leave us with much enthusiasm. We had a long way to go yet, and we weren't even up the first peak. We eventually reached the summit, which is mostly covered and doesn't offer the best view of the range. Nonetheless, it gave us a good spot to rest for awhile as we took a break to remove the boots and hope for them to dry off a bit.

We at least had a good view of Gothics -- the next high peak on the way. Here, we were temporarily deceived by what may be called an optical illusion: Pyramid. From our point of view (and the color-blindness probably didn't help), Pyramid looked like part of Gothics. Once we got up to the summit of Pyramid, it looked like we would lose almost no elevation on the way to Gothics. After staring at these peaks for a bit, we realized we were wrong. What looks like two humps on Gothics was in fact two mountains -- Pyramid and Gothics -- and you lost most of the elevation in between. This 'illusion' is difficult to describe in words, but if I ever get some pictures of this posted up here I can point out exactly how we saw it.