Nye and Street

Nov 15, 2014

My seventh annual ACC November hike brought us an easier challenge than usual, which attracted a few different people than the regular crowd. Don, Rob, Ray, Dave, Birte, Na, Wendy, Lee and of course myself (the fearless leader) set out from Keene Valley Hostel at a relaxed 07:00 departure time. We drove to the Loj, and started hiking around Heart Lake on a very crisp morning. A dusting of light snow on the ground kept our senses tuned while looking for solid foot placements, but it was not slippery enough to bother with traction devices. Indian Pass Brook was very low and easily rock hopped across, though we did don our spikes for this as the rocks were coated in a good thickness of ice. The climb from this point was pretty gentle but steady, and at about 3000' there was enough ice on the trail to force us to put on the spikes again, where they remainded on our feet for the rest of the elevated portion of the day. As there are no views on these peaks, we made sure to savour the views during the ascent, which gave us some nice sightings of the MacIntyre Ridge, and all the way out to Lake Placid. At 11:00 we were on top of Nye, in a forest of dead trees. It was sheltered up here so we had lunch in the sunshine before pushing on. After another hour of fairly easy hiking we were on top of Street, another unremarkable mountain, but at least with a bit of a view off towards Algonquin. Another lunch and then we were off on the descent. Lee was having some problems with her knee so progress was slow, but we steadily made our way back to the brook and crossed again without mishap. At this point we split the group; Rob, Dave Wendy, and Lee wanted to get back to the hut and the beer, while the rest of us decided to tackle the mighty Mount Jo and get some views. We climbed this quickly and arrived on the summit to the best view of the entire hike. It was too cold and windy to spend much time there, so we headed down shortly thereafter. We should have probably put our spikes back on for the descent as it was there was only a very small amount of marginal traction to be found down this steep trail. At one point I accidently practiced my telemark style as I skidded down a short icy stretch and managed to pull it off in graceful style (i.e. not falling on my ass). Just as the light was beginning to fade, we arrived back at the Loj, nearly getting run over by a skidding SUV as we walked down the driveway, and finally made it safely to the car in the lot. Much fantastic food and beer was consumed back at the hostel after the 9 hour day.

The gang coming up the lightly snowed trail.