Giant and Rocky Peak

November 4, 2017

For the 10th annual ACC Adirondack November hike, twelve us us convened in Keene Valley on Friday evening. At first light the next morning we struck out as two separate groups to climb Giant Mountain from both directions. Bill (leader), Katharina, Wendy, Lee, Marcel, and Arlene climbed from the south starting at Chapel Pond, while my group of Debbie, Hai, David, Ray, and Joey struck out from route 9N to traverse around Green Mountain. Twas a frosty morning and the ground crunched under our feet as we climbed up to Owl Head lookout. Here we had a short break and took in the views of the rising sun. The trail around Green was quite a pretty walk through open leaf littered forest. Since the trees were bare, we could see our objective beconning us forward, although it was two more hours before we finally reached the junction with the trail coming up from Keene Valley. After a quick snack break and clothing de-layer, the real climbing began. As we got higher, the trail began to get a bit icy. Never enough to warrant putting the spikes on, but enough to require constant focus when planting your feet. Nevertheless, a couple of tumbles were had when an innocent looking rock turned out to be a little more slippery than expected. We topped out just as Bill's group arrived on the summit. Talk about perfect timing! There were several other group on top as well so the summit was a fairly crowded place. It was a beautiful day though, so we sat down for an extended lunch while enjoying the view. In due course, it was time to depart and the groups swapped David for Katharina. Bill headed straight back down to Chapel Pond, while my group headed out to on the side trip to Rocky Peak. The descent down to the col was a little treacherous, though the ice was now starting to melt off in the warm sunshine. A tricky ledge became a bit of a bottleneck as quite a few people, travelling in both directions were lined up here as the tree monkey moves were made by one person at a time. The climb up Rocky Peak was straight forward as the ice was almost completely gone now. Another break on top, much less crowded this time, and then we were heading back to Giant. The descent along the ridge to Chapel Pond was beautiful, however the group began to spread out as different levels of exhaustion began to set in to individual members. Hai and Deb were ahead, Joey and myself somewhere in the middle, while Kat and Ray were playing tailgunner. At a confusing trail section, Joey and I stopped to wait for the others to catch up. Ten minutes passed with no sign of Katharina and Ray, so we finally decided to head back up the hill and see what was going on. We had not travelled far when we found them coming down, and learned that they had stopped to assist bandaging up a knee on someone from another party who had taken a fall. We all regrouped at the junction with the Roaring Brook trail, and gained another person who was travelling solo, and ended up tagging along with us all the way to the washbowl. Here we sat down for a final break, but our new friend decided to push on, so we said goodbye. The last stretch went quickly as the visions of food and beer acted like the proverbial carrot on a stick to pull us along the trail. We arrived down at the roadway after a ten hour day and drove back to the hostel. An evening of refueling and rehydration was spent, including lots of laughter and good friends.

Happy hikers on a frosty morning.