Lower Wolf Jaw via Bennies Slide

October 13, 2013

Last night I convinced Nils to join me on a bit of an adventure. It took some kicking to get his teenaged butt out of bed in the morning, but by 08:30, Katja had dropped the two of us off at the Garden trailhead. We hiked in about three kilometers to a survey benchmark in the middle of the trail which I thought would be a good point to bushwhack down to Johns Brook. We found a beautiful pool of water down here with an easy rock hop to get across above the cascades. Surprisingly we met two other guys along here who were backpacking along the brook bed. We picked up the abandonned south side trail here and hiked easily along until we reached the base of Bennies Brook slide. A huge cairn marked this point, which was kind of unnecessary as it is pretty obvious that you are at the base of the slide here. We began climbing up the slide. The first while was fairly low angle and we bounded along, or rather Nils bounded along and I struggled to keep up. We had a food break in the sunshine at the point where the slide became a little steeper. From here on up the climbing was easy third class scrambling, but care had to be taken as it was sufficiently exposed that you did not want to fall. Nils continued to bound on ahead as I carefully worked my way upward on sometimes slippery rock, sometimes crumbling holds, but for the most part, pretty good climbing. At the headwall, the slab got very dirty, and since this did not look safe to climb without rock gear, we bailed down a herd path marked with another cairn which took us up easily to the hiking trail on the ridge. A short scramble later we hit the summit of Lower Wolf Jaw and had lunch up here enjoying the windowed view of Big Slide. We descended down the trail to JBL and sat down on a bench in the shade for a while drinking some cold lemonades that we bought from inside. No this is not your typical October fall hike! Finally we decided to go, and made good time to the parking lot. We waited for a while hoping that someone would come along who we could bum a ride from, but all was quiet here. The shuttle bus arrived, and for a fairly large fee, an interesting character of a driver took us down to Keene Valley. No one was around at the Rooster Comb, so we headed over to the Noonmark Diner for some food and coffee. A 6.5 hour hike with a fun slide scramble makes this a route I probably will do again. I think Nils had fun on his first high peak adventure as well.

Hiking along the John Brook trail in the fall light.

A strange place for a benchmark is found in the middle of the trail. Note the ADK high peaks map has the location of this marker in the wrong location. USGS maps show it in the correct place.

Neat little pool in Johns Brook.

An unnecessary but impressively constructed cairn.

Scrambling some ledges on the lower section of the slide.

Some low angle slabs in the center section of the slide.

The upper section of the slide becomes steeper and more ledgy.

Looking down the slide from the base of the headwall.

Nils and I on the summit of Lower Wolf Jaw.

Lemonade break at Johns Brook Lodge.

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