Esther

This one was my first winter hike in the Adirondacks, and it took place in February with my brother Adam. My previous winter hiking experience consisted of Mt. Washington in New Hampshire -- a decent amount of elevation, but a fairly short amount of distance (but damn cold at the summit).

We had recently had a giant snowstorm, so there was quite a layer on the ground. I believe the total was about three feet of powder up there. Luckily for us, somebody had been through that way and broken trail for us (at least somewhat).

Again, I'm writing about this months later, so I'm going to have to be brief on details for now. One thing to note is that there is no officially maintained trail to Esther. We never would have known where to branch off the main trail if someone hadn't been up there previously. Good thing their snowshoe tracks hadn't filled in completely from the wind yet.

Once off the main trail, the going was rough. We were hunched over ducking under branches and squeezing our way through dense pines for the next couple hours. Frustratingly slow and painful is the only way to describe this process. Eventually we reached the summit of Esther and were able to take in the views -- quite impressive. There was a fantastic view of Whiteface from here -- one mountain I still need to climb.

We headed back out again the same day. I haven't yet ventured to do the winter camping. One of these days when we pick up a four-season tent that may change...

Haystack

So I also climbed Haystack with Seth awhile back. Being that I haven't posted on here in so long, I can't recall the exact date of this climb more precisely than summer 2006.

For now, I'll just fill in some brief details as a placeholder. Hopefully I'll get a chance to come back and populate this post with some real details.

It was an overnight trip to get there. We camped one night in a nearby leanto (I need to look up the name) and read some interested bear stories in the logbook there. The trip wasn't too bad until we ended up climbing over a mountain and all the way back down again to get to Haystack (I need to look up the name of that as well).

Anyway, we finally got the Haystack and were on our way up. With the summit in sight, some ominously dark clouds started rolling in. Based on my lightning striking Haystack experience previously (see the previous post about the Gothics climb), we decided it was wise to turn back and head down to lower, safer ground. After another 30 minutes or so at lower ground, the clouds moved on by without any storms hitting us and the sky cleared up. This was our queue to resume the push to the Haystack summit. Shortly thereafter, we were enjoying the view from the top -- a bit cloudy but impressive nonetheless.

And then we headed back. I'm short on details after this, we may have camped again that night? I need to do some remembering and/or question asking.

Indian Head - Part 4 (Back Home)

I've fallen behind on these trip reports, so with my memory the amount of detail for the rest of this trip may be a bit lacking.

We ended up camping another night at Indian Head before heading back to the car and calling it a trip. If I recall, the thunderstorms came back again during the night providing an impressive lightning show through the thin nylon walls of our tent.

I believe our original goal included Nippletop and Dial on the way out. Needless to say, this didn't happen. Uncooperative weather and aching legs led us back to the car to try again another day.