Whiteface

May 2, 2026

Had planned this trip with a couple friends, but with a somewhat poor weather forecast my mates bailed. I thought about cancelling too, but after a rough week at the office, I really needed a weekend in the woods. Drove down to Keene Farm solo Friday evening and spent some time socializing with a bunch of young folk around the fire pit before retiring to my tent.

I slept wonderfully to the lullaby song of rain pitter pattering on my tent all night. At 05:00 I was well rested, and the rain politely stopped for me to get up and cook my breakfast. By 06:30 I was driving in the narrow road towards Connery Pond. To my surprise, another vehicle was coming out at this early hour on the dead-end road, and we had to do a bit of shuffling to get around each other on the single-track laneway. I wondered if this meant that the tiny parking area at the end of the road was full, but arrived at the gate with the place to myself.

A light drizzle accompanied me as I scampered along the trail past Connery Pond and onwards to Whiteface Landing. Stopped for a brief break at the lake, and then continued on to the lean-to where I stopped for a longer break under the roof. The trail from here starts climbing, first gently and then steeply. The rain fortunately had stopped, but covered everything in a blanket of wet snow once above 700m of elevation. That snow was now melting out of the trees and dripping on my head. When combined with the narrow brushy trail, I was good and soaked in pretty short order. As I climbed higher, it got colder, which stopped the dripping, but not the feeling of being in a carwash as I pushed through the branches impeding on the trail. Finally breaking out into the alpine zone I figured I was finally free of the wet trees, but the trail still managed to find some wet bushes to crawl through here and there as it meandered up towards the summit.

Pretty trail past some cabbages

Connery Pond

Landing at Whiteface Landing is a little tricky these days

Entering the car wash

Finally the sight of a 25 cent tourist binocular pole appeared out of the fog and I knew I was nearly on top. The foot rings of this contraption made a good handhold for the final scramble and then I was on top of Whiteface. Got a photo by the sign and then hiked around to the far side of the summit castle to find a place out of the wind to rest and eat my lunch. The clouds parted a bit, with even the occasional glimpse of sunshine, but the views were only fleeting as I turned around to head back down.

They did not get my quarter today

Castles in the mist

I somehow have a lot of photos of this dude

As I made my way carefully down the slippery snow covered rocks the clouds parted briefly once more and I could see all the way to ski jumps at Lake Placid. I briefly contemplated heading back up to the summit again to take in the view, but the clouds quickly closed in again and then threw a graupel storm at me. The descent was somewhat treacherous as the ground was now covered in ball-bearing snow pellets but I made it down safely to the leanto, even more wet than earlier as I sat down for my second sandwich before continuing.

The view makes it all worth it!

I had intended to make a side trip to Eagle Eyrie on my way back, but encountering another graupel storm as I arrived at Whiteface landing, I made the decision to just head back to the car. Mercifully though, the precipitation stopped shortly thereafter and remained that way for the rest of the hike. Eagle Eyrie will have to wait for another day. As I strolled along the wide trail, enjoying the moment of not being rained, graupelled, or dripped on, I encountered a couple of trail runners and three dogs, the only other critters on this route today. By the time I got back to the parking area I was almost dry!

Since it was still fairly early and my car needed a bit of juice, I parked in Keene at the public charging station and did what the sign encouraged me to do; "Explore the town and see all that Keene has to offer". Wandered around for a while and on this day Keene offered me a cup of coffee, a delicious chocolate chip cookie, and a six pack of Ubu. Post hike cravings mostly satisfied I retired back to the farm to fix my final craving with a couple of the Ubus.

Hike time: 7.5 hours

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