Order in ranking, number 20.
This past weekend, I headed down to the
Adirondacks yet again, but this time with a gaggle of girls. Besides my climbing partner Stephanie, there
were four other women who were keen on hiking and camping in the Adirondacks:
Terri, Mel, Nath, and Christine.
We drove down in a thunderstorm, but
thankfully the rain let up long enough for us to erect our tents….and tarps
over the tents. It proceeded to rain
most of the night, but Friday morning dawn with a cloudy sky, but no sign of
rain.
We set off for the trailheads – our plan being
to park one car at the trailhead to Rock Peak Ridge on Route 9, pile into the
other car and park at the Roaring Brook trailhead to Giant Mountain and Rocky
Peak Ridge on Route 73. We got off to a
slightly later start that we had hoped, but it was still early enough to get
parking.
While Stephanie and I have climbed Giant
before, the women were new to climbing the 46ers, with the exception of
Christine, who accompanied Stephanie on her hike up Big Slide. Giant is certainly an interesting choice for
a first climb – most people would start with Cascade or Porter, as the two
easiest. But Giant is a nice climb, if a
little steep in places. It also involves
some minor rock scrambling that isn’t very scary.
We took a few breaks on the way up – Stephanie
wasn’t feeling too well, and the other women wanted time to soak in the
experience. We weren’t trying to set any
records, so we meandered along, taking breaks, chatting, and going at our own
pace.
It’s funny how trails seem to change – there
was lots of stuff that neither Stephanie nor I remembered, but other places
that we recalled in great detail – such as the first rocky slab that you have
to scramble up. The first time we
climbed it, we stuck to the edges, rather afraid of falling down the rock, and
anchoring each other as we took pictures.
This time, however, we were much more confident (thank you, cliffs of
Saddleback) and strode out to take photos from the same lookout.
After a bit, Stephanie made the call to send
the other women on ahead of us as she was feeling a little out of sorts and
wanted to take a bit longer of a breather.
The reasoning was that they wanted to summit both Giant and Rocky Peak
Ridge, and if they went ahead they could summit Giant, and we would meet up
with them at the junction for Rocky Peak Ridge.
Neither party would miss out on what they wanted, and no one would have
to wait for the other. So the four
women went on, and I stayed back with Stephanie.
We slowly made our way up, chatting with each
other about our hike that day and the next, and about what hikes we might like
to do next year. We moved at our pace –
we’re slow, but we’re steady. We rarely
need to take long breaks, because we don’t push ourselves too hard above what
we’re comfortable with.
 |
| Relaxing at the junction |
When we passed the junction for the Zander
Scott trail (also known as the Ridge Trail), with .7 of a mile left to the
summit of Giant, and .6 of a mile left to the junction of Rocky, Stephanie
decided to send me on ahead as well. She
had made the difficult decision to not summit Rocky Peak Ridge. She was feeling exhausted, and wanted to be
fresh enough for our climb up Street and Nye the next day. (Stephanie had done the majority of the
driving the day before, in torrential rain, so it’s no wonder that she was
exhausted.)
So I set on a little bit quicker, and reached
the junction to Rocky Peak Ridge, to learn from other hikers that the other
women had just left to summit Giant. I sat down, and prepared to wait (and
enjoy the sun that had burnt off the clouds).
After a quick wait, both Stephanie and other women joined me.
We decided that Christine would stay with
Stephanie, as she had only intended to hike Giant, and Nath, Mel, Terri and I
would hike over to Rocky Peak Ridge.
After that, Nath would return to meet up with Christine and Stephanie,
and Mel, Terri and I would continue the traverse to the Route 9 trailhead.
The “steep descent” on the col between Giant
and Rocky Peak Ridge wasn’t that bad. I
felt it was on part with the rocky steep bits on Lower Wolf Jaw – perhaps a bit
less. The ascent on the way to Rocky
Peak Ridge was steep, but no more so than most Adirondack hikes – there at
least was no rock scrambling involved.
All in all, it’s very doable if you’ve done several hikes in the
Adirondacks that involve some rocky scrambling.
We quickly hit Rocky Peak Ridge, and took
various group and solo photos. From
there, Nath headed back, and Mel, Terri and I headed on.
The trail to Route 9 is lovely, descending to
pass by a pond (Mary Louise Pond) before ascending to Rocky Mountain (not to be
confused with Rocky Peak Ridge). Lots of
open rock face, and lots of great views from here. Then it was another descent, before climbing
again to Bald Mountain. Again, lots of
open rock and some fantastic views. The
trail is clearly marked over these peaks with not only with yellow paint
blazes, but also with cairns that lead you around the rocky summits to the path
on the other side.
The map we had, had one more name on
“Blueberry Cobbles” so we figured we were fairly close to the end of the
hike. We set on, and descended and
ascended yet again. Here we were faced
with not only open rock face, but very slanted open rock face. I was reminded of the cliffs of Saddleback –
although these were not as steep, nor as perilous looking as Saddleback, they
were intimidating. We took it slow over
the rocks, as we slowly starting to descend yet again.
From here, we thought it would be a straightforward
hike to the trailhead. And then….a
sign. There seemed to be no reason for
this sign (although, it could be that it was marking the junction to a short
cut, that we found out about after the fact) that said “Blueberry Cobbles Rte 9
2.4 miles”. Had we gone 2.4 miles since
Blueberry Cobbles? Did we have 2.4 miles
to go? We had no idea.
 |
| Great view, long hike |
And then, suddenly….another ascent. That’s right – our fifth ascent since leaving
Rocky Peak Ridge. We were going up
again. When, we wondered, would this
hike be over?
We continued to follow the trail, and started
another descent when we saw a sign for a red-marked trail that was a short-cut
around Blueberry Cobbles summit. I’m not
sure how much time could have been cut off if we had followed this trail, but it
may have given us one less ascent/descent.
We picked up the pace, as much as we could given the fact that it was
nearing on 8 hours of hiking at this point.
We were moving on auto-pilot, when we saw
something in the distance. We didn’t
want to be fooled – far too many times we had seen a small clearing in front of
us, and we had thought it was the parking lot to no avail. But this time was different. This time we could see sun glinting off of
metal. And it was – we had finally, at
6:20, hit the parking lot.
The traverse is a nice hike, but it’s long,
and the constant up and down as you climb and descend the various peaks between
makes it feel even longer. But the views
are quite nice and almost make up for it.
Still, I’d recommend climbing Rocky Peak Ridge from Giant.
Total climbing time: 9 hours and 28 minutes
Left trailhead on Route 73 at: 8:52, hit
trailhead on Route 9 at: 6:20
Summited Rocky Peak Ridge at: 1:43
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