high peaks #2 and 3- Colvin and Blake

Let me start off by saying "col" should be a four letter word...

Ok, so I started this hike out of the Ausable Club, on a beautiful Wednesday morning, 6/3/09. There were a few black flies out on the road back but once I got going it wasn't too bad. The trail back was well maintained and pretty easy until you got to the trail split for Nippletop via Elk Pass trail. After that there were some serious steeps in short spurts and a number that required hands and feet scrambling to get over and up rocks. Nothing extremely techincal, just took some time and caution. The top of Colvin isn't that big, but the views are spectacular! The Great Range is right in front of you for viewing pleasure, as is Giant, Nippletop, Haystack, and Marcy. After I left the summit and headed out for Blake is where the real "fun" began. It involves dropping down into a very steep col and of course back up to the summit of Blake and the non-existant view from its top, then turning around and doing the same thing all over again to get back to the trailhead. I certainly wouldn't recommend the Blake portion to anyone who wasn't going after the full 46, unless you just like misery. lol I passed one guy doing the same hike I was that day and caught up with 2 more who had done the Elk pass to Nippletop, on the road heading out. Overall, a fun but tiring 15 mile round trip.

First hike peak- Tabletop

Started off with the idea of doing Tabletop and Phelps, but got a later start then I wanted and do to conditions decided to only do Tabletop. Started out from the Loj and trail conditions were great, not much mud and smooth cruising. Trail was pretty much cake till after the Phelps trail split; after that it started to get steeper but nothing too bad, certainly by high peaks standards. After I crossed the stream for the second time snowspines started to show up, with a pretty much constant presence of them from where the trail breaks off the Marcy trail. Thankfully I had just picked up a pair of microspikes (which worked awesome!) but the real challenge of this hike was due to the fact that the warm weather had been melting the snowspines and as i was following the herdpath to the top of Tabletop i was constantly battling the collapsing spines and falling into the stream runoff. Some spines from top to stream bottom were over 3 feet and I had to really work the footing to limit the chance of injury. The view from the top isn' t really that good; basically just some views over treetops on the way up, but it was nice to get this first high peak out of the way. It was also the first trailess one I had ever done. 10.5 miles round trip with a small detour to the falls.

I've always had the desire, to some degree, to hike all 46 of the "high peaks" in the Adirondack Mts of New York. Going into this year I believe the number that I had summited was in the 10-12 range, but because they have been spread out over the last 15 years or so and I wasn't actually logging them, some of them I have forgotten and thus I determined this past winter to rehike all of them and journal them to make them all "official" and become a certified "46er". As I do each hike I plan to blog it and post pics that I take along the trek.
May the journey begin!

Dave aka scotzman