Grace Triad

June 21, 2014

Katharina, Lynne, Na, Diane, Cory, Sue, and I left Keene Farm just after six and drove to Elk Lake. We were surprised to find the parking lot completely full so early in the morning, so we dropped everyone off and Cory and I drove the cars to Clear Pond, three km back down the road. We hiked quickly along the road and about half way a pickup truck arrived and offered us a ride on the tailgate. After a dusty and somewhat terrifying five minutes we arrived at the parking lot and were introduced to the trail masters in the cab, who were going in with a large group to move a lean-to. Now re-grouped, we got onto the trail on a cool but sunny morning, skipping along quickly until we found the junction at Slide Brook which was marked with a large cairn. This trail, though unmarked, was well worn, and easy to follow. After a couple hours of gentle climbing, we arrived at the base of the Macomb slide. This was a fun, if somewhat dirty scramble and we worked our way slowly up to the top. The last section was a clean slab which was a lot of fun. Back in the woods, we came to a wall which required a bit of tricky scrambling to surmount, where I dropped a hand line for a person in another group that was having difficulty, and eventually everyone got up this obstacle. A short bit more of easy climbing in the forest brought us up to the summit where we were rewarded with a good view of the Elk Lake valley. We took a short break here to eat a sandwich and soak in the views before continuing on. The joke of the day was the fact that I was hiking with an entourage of six women, and it seems that almost all the other parties on the mountain were female too... I was not complaining. A great little scramble broght us up to the summit of South Dix where we took another break in and enjoyed the South facing view from the lookout ledge. We could hear cheering coming from East Dix, our next goal. We plodded along the ridge towards it seeing many other people, and hearing more cheering and clapping from East Dix's summit. What was going on? We arrived and there was about 50 people up here, and as we approached the summit, one of them asked me what the name of the mountain was. I said "Grace of course" at which point everyone cheered and clapped for us. The group was performing a renaming ceremony of the summit (the peak having being officially renamed about a week ago from East Dix to Grace). They had brought two elaborately decorated cakes which they shared with us as well as were handing out packets of smoked salmon, carried all the way from Oregon. A woman played some sort of recorder so we had musical accompaniement as well. All in all a very strange, but fun way, to be on a remote mountain in the Dix wilderness. We finally left, wanting to get ahead of this mob for our descent, and we never saw any of them again, so they must have descended via another route. We crossed over South Dix took another short break in a much quieter setting, and then descended via the Lillian Brook trail. This slogged on for a long time as the group was getting tired as we slowly made our way down the mountain. We stopped briefly to soak some tired feet in a cool pool in the brook, and then finally reached the marked trail again. I recruited Cory who was still feeling strong, and we decided to speed ahead of the group to accellerate the car shuttle. The last six kilometers of trail went quickly. We arrived at the parking lot hoping to find someone to beg a ride off of, but there was no one around so we took to the road. We walked along for about fifteen minutes at which point a couple of tired looking guys from Syracuse graciously let us jump in the back. A few minutes later we were driving our cars back to the trailhead, where we arrived just as the other five were wearily emerging from the woods. Total hiking time was just over ten hours.

Cory walking the road to get to the trailhead.