Lower Great Range

May 20, 2018

I was dreaming about packing up a tent as my 05:00 alarm went off as I slept somewhat fitfully within my tent at Keene Farm. Today marked day five of a nasty cold and as I was still seriously congested, the thought of rolling over in my bag and going back to sleep was very tempting. The lure of hiking mountains was stronger though, so after spending some time trying to hack up a lung, I waddled over to the cooking shelter to eat breakfast in a light drizzle. At 06:30 I was hiking up Johns Brook valley with a heavy pack containing snowshoes, crampons, and microspikes as I had no clue what the conditions were going to be like at elevation. Carrying snowshoes in a warm rain, in May did feel a little silly, but I saw no one to make fun of me for most of the day. The rain stopped and started, the sun peaked out and disappeared, as I hiked quickly along this easy trail. At the ADK property, I decided to take the bridge past Grace camp and explored some of the wilderness museum, the remains of an old generator which was used to power Johns Brook Lodge almost a century ago. As I climbed up along Ore Bed brook, the rain started really coming down so I dug into my pack for a jacket to attempt at maintaining some semblence of dryness. Climbing the staircase was slow, though as I am in a fairly high condition of fitness, the lingering cold was really setting me back a bit and caused a lot more huffing and puffing than I should be. The heavy load did not help. At 3200' the first patches of snow appeared and a little bit higher had me donning microspikes to walk the icy snow spine. Once on the range trail, the snow disappeared and I scrambled the soaking wet slabs of the Gothics garden hose (aka cable) route. This bizarre infrastructure is starting to seriously decay. In several places the cables are broken and sometimes sketchily tied knots in rubber hose material is meant for climbing aid. I stuck to solid rock, not trusting any of this to hold any weight. After four hours I reached Gothics summit which was a cold, windy, drizzly, and simply downright nasty place to be today, so I quickly descended down to the Armstrong col, where it was a much saner place to stop for a few minutes and take a food break. Armstrong was easily climbed except for one short icy section which I had to spike up for, then immediately go back to bare boots. The summit of Armstrong was just as nasty as Gothics, so I pushed on towards the jaw of the wolf. I met a pair of hikers coming along here, the first souls I saw all day. They asked about snowshoes and I just shrugged and claimed that it was training weight. As I summited Upper Wolf Jaw, there were three guys with no shirts on, trying to catch some rays from a brief break of sunshine. They were friendly, so I sat down to chat for a few minutes before continuing down towards Wolf Jaw Notch. Some of the scrambles here were a little more challenging than usual as sometimes key footholds had ice packed into them, but I never needed to spike up again. I also met quite a few people coming up, several of them asking me if they were on the right trail to Upper Wolf Jaw. When the third person asked me what mountain this was, I almost answered that they were half way up Kilimanjaro, but I maintained politeness. At the notch, I decided that though I was tired, I still felt good enough to add a fourth peak to this day so up I went towards the summit of Lower Wolf Jaw. This took a little longer than it should have as my climbing was slow, but finally the summit arrived and I chatted with another solo hiker enjoying the view of the fog. He then departed and I sat down for a while on the big rock for a second lunch. At least the rain had stopped, even if the promised clearing at 13:00 never arrived. Now began the long descent. I leap frogged a couple of backpackers on the trail a few times, and met many others coming up who asked about the snowshoes on my pack... no not needed, just taking the gear for a walk. At the ranger outpost I said hello to the ranger who was busy chopping firewood, in full uniform, complete with side arm. The last five kilometers down Johns Brook Valley was a slog as now I was really tired. I stopped to rest on a log at one point and found a small piece of chocolate in my lunch bag which was a real pick-me-up, at least mentally. Two other guys passed as I was resting who had come off of Marcy. They claimed to have been post-holing up to their hips in snow and were eyeing my snowshoes with some jealousy. Finally the parking lot appeared after almost a ten hour day. Drove back to Keene Farm, cooked up a bunch of food, ate until I was stuffed, but still hungry, and then crawled into my sleeping bag long before dark.

Pretty walk up Johns Brook Valley