Cliff and Redfield

Katharina's 46er Finish

October 20, 2018 - Cliff

Katharina does not really like hiking in the Adirondacks. There are too many trees, not enough alpine, and way... way to much mud. Nevertheless, over the years she has accompanied me enough times, or come down on her own trips with friends, that she was actually starting to make a significant dent in "the list" whether or not she was actually counting. She vowed she would never finish, as "lists are silly", "why climb a mountain to see a view of nothing?", "too much mud"... blah, blah, blah. One day however, I caught her tallying peaks and then planning her own trip to Seymour, "to finish that one off" as she had skipped that one on the trip she had accompanied me to the "Sewage" range during my 46er quest. For the last year or so, she only had two peaks left, Cliff and Redfield. Those nasty two muddy peaks, that are a million miles into the middle of nowhere, have little to no views, still needed to be climbed. A friendly competition with another that was nearing completion put a little bit of the spurs to the mission, and finally she had me planning a weekend to get this thing done. We drove down together to Tupper Lake on Friday evening, had a good dinner and a comfortable night in a local motel. We hit the road again well before dawn and drove for another hour to Upper Works where we hitched up our overnight packs and began the long hike in. The wearther forecast for the weekend was pretty grim, calling for high winds and drizzle for most of the day, and that is precisely what we got for the first couple of hours. At least it was fairly warm, and the weather threat did seem to drive the crowds away as we hardly saw anyone on the trails. We stopped at the Henderson monument for a short break and then again at the Flowed Lands to take in the view. We met a huge group of people with camping gear here, but fortunately the were on their way out. We took another break at Colden Dam, and then the sun came out, which was a fairly nice thing for it to do for us. The hike along the Opalescent was beautiful as always, and we took our time along here as there was no need to hurry today. As we climbed higher, I scooted ahead to scout out Uphill camp where we were planning to spend the night. It was deserted, but what a disaster of a campsite this is. There are two tent sites... one of them is a mud pit and the second one, nearly beside the trail has many leaning dead trees over any dry patch of ground near the "Camp Here" disk. Though we really wanted to sleep in the tent, in the end we settled into the lean-to, for both safety (I do not like sleeping under widow makers), and to avoid wallowing like pigs in the mud. Lots of other nice tent pads were observed around this general area, but of course they were posted as "Camping Prohibitted". To top it all off, the overflowing box privy is a "poop and scoop" model, which fortunately an old shovelhead is provided to do just that. Anyway, camping was not really the goal of this trip. The goal was to climb two remote mountains. At Kat pace, this means we need to bivouac, and a lean-to with a roof and a dry floor above the mud actually makes a pretty sweet spot for a mountain bivy. We stashed our gear, ate some lunch and then began the mud wallow, which serves as the approach trail to Cliff. Soon we were through the muddy section and onto the scrambles which were a hoot as always. Kat dropped her pack at one of them, and then after we summited the false peak and started descending down the other side she began to get worried as she had not realized that we would be gone for so long, as her passport and all other identification had been left behind. She almost aborted the mission to go back, but in the end sense prevailed, no one would touch her pack, and we continued on to the true summit of Cliff Mountain. Not too much of a view here, so we did not stay long, even though the day was now quite fine indeed. The thought of the abandonned pack helped spur us on as we caught a few glimpses of Marcy, Skylight and friends through breaks in the treetops. As we came over the false summit again, we met a fellow who re-assured Kat that her backpack was fine as he had passed it on his way up. This was good news, as it relaxed her a bit and we could take our time to downclimb the tricky scrambles safely. A few more people were encountered before we finally reached the pack, where everything was fortunately safe and sound. Kat breathed a sigh of relief and then we continued down to the mud wallow section. Kat fell in. German screaming ensued and I though at one point that we might end up with a herd of forest rangers coming to our rescue. Kat sped off screaming something about the mud, the hideous trail building, and whatnot, as I stepped into another mud hole, sank to my knees, and had to self rescue as my partner was now long gone from the scene. I slurped out and washed my legs off in the brook and then met Kat at the bucket cairn where she declared this day was finished. I tried to convince her to climb Redfield as the sun was shining and we still had a few hours of daylight left, but she was not having it. Instead we returned to our bivy site after our 8.5 hour day, made some coffee, had a nap, and spent the rest of the afternoon trying to relax as we shivered the rapidly cooling day away until bedtime around 20:00.

The porter.

To give perspective to the depth of the mudholes, Kat does not normally hike with poles at knee level.

Flowed lands... I probably have posted this view before.

Pretty spot along the Opalescent river.

Number 45 and a perhaps a forced smile?

Ok, the view is not bad if you ignore the bushes.

October 21, 2018 - Redfield

After a very good sleep in the lean-to, we got up at 05:00 and fixed up breakfast in the dark. It had gotten even colder over night and ice had taken over everything, but we remained cozy in down jackets and the hot coffee really warmed the soul. We hit the trail at 06:30 under headlamp and started following the mud wallow herd-path towards Redfield. Though there was ice everywhere, good footing was easily found, so we climbed in bare boots most of the way, just needing to pay close attention to the dry spots on the rocks. As we got higher, the dawn broke and we could switch off the headlamps and look around... not much to see as it was pretty clouded in. We could see a distinct snow line above us, which manifested into some light crusty snow on the trail as we climbed into it. The skies also opened up with some significant snow fluries and finally I changed to microspikes about 100m below the summit to get better traction on the icy trail. As we neared the top, I scooted ahead and prepared some baloons (nearly losing one in the wind, but fortunately recovered it), and then came down the trail a bit to wait for Kat. As she arrived I draped her with a garland of fake flowers and welcomed her to the summit of her final peak of the 46. She was somewhat un-impressed, but celebrated anyway. The view of the fog was about as good as it would have been on any of the other 46 today, but due to the high winds, it was actually pretty fortunate that we were on a treed summit. A few photos, and we began our descent as it was not a day to be celebrating for long on top. We remained in spikes for a while down, but changed back to boots as the ice gave away to now snow covered rock. At the lean-to we stopped for a break to warm up, pack up camp, and have a snack before hitching up the full packs for the long ride home. It was a slog, and the constant snow made for some slippery footing. We stopped at a lean-to by lake Colden to get out of the weather for some lunch, and then continued on past the flowed lands, where we saw a large group in the lean-to there (the only people we saw all day). A couple more hours of slogging brought us towards Upper Works, where finally the sun came out and began to melt away the snow, just as we hiked the last stretch towards the parking lot. We finished today after about 9 hours of hiking, Kat a newly minted 46er, whether she wants it or not!

Snacking on some fallen ice during the pre-dawn hours.

More significant snow above 1000m elevation.

Katharina is now a 46er! She is smiling because she never has to come back here again.

We definitely come for the views.

Hanging out in the leanto.

Lake Colden on a snowy morning.

Arriving back at Upper Works.

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