Fall Fest in the Adirondaks

I look at my schedule for September and whine: "Geez, the summer is over, and I haven't been anyplace!!". Of course I've been out bouldering tons and even tied into a rope and did some climbing up at the crags near Burlington, Ontario once, but I haven't been anyplace "real".. I realize that my Labor day wknd is still completely empty. Time to make some plans.

A Monday trip to the climbing gym gets the ball rolling. Jim is totally psyched to cruise up to the 'Daks to do some climbing next weekend. He is not working and can leave any time after 3 PM or so on Friday, and doesn't have to be back at work till Tuesday morning. Cool. A phone call from home finds out that Kayte may be able to tag along for her first multi-pitch trad climbing adventure - GREAT - but she may have to work Saturday morning. ICK. She's really psyched to go, and vows she'll find a way to get out of working. I call Jim back and ask if his g/f Rachel wants to go, but she's starting her first teaching job on Tuesday, and really can't climb the whole weekend. Bummer. I call Kayte on Thursday night to find out what the work status is? She has to work later on Friday, but can go!! COOL.

Friday

Friday afternoon and the weather and forecast look absolutely perfect. I leave work early to grab some last minute supplies. Jim comes over & we pack the car up and give Kayte a call... She did get out of work, and just got home... We cruise over and finally hit the road around 7 PM.

About 2 hours out from Buffalo, our first "coincidence" happens. We make a bathroom stop on the I-90 and run into John, Jim's brother who has been busy peak-bagging all summer and had given me beta on a "super-fast" way to Keene Valley. We chat, but quickly hit the road again, and follow the new route and end up running into John once more during the 6 hour drive before arriving at the Chapel Pond campsite at 1 AM directly behind John's pickup.

The campsite is more congested than I've ever seen it before. We check the "upper tier" and find room, but the road looks treacherous for my '87 Sentra loaded w/ climbing gear... so we borrow 2 tarps from John and bivy next to the car. John, Yvonne, and their friend Bill sleep in his pickup.

Saturday

Saturday morning and John's group are off to bag some more peaks... we wish them luck, and they cruise to The Garden trail head early. We brew some oatmeal and tea, pack-up the bivy and head to the chapel pond parking area.

The plan is to do Prelude (5.8) on the Washbowl cliff, and maybe Partition (hard 5.8) if we are fast enough. Jim has a vengeance out for Prelude as he'd backed off the 1st pitch 2 years ago and really wanted to do it. It would be a great first multi-pitch climb for Kayte. 3 Pitches with great views & good belays.

We do the approach hike up the steep talus and arrive at the base and Jim quickly starts to fire up the first pitch. I belay and admire the view (impressive even from the base of Washbowl). The weather is kind of "funky".. grey and cool, but not threatening. We are all in long pants, long sleeves and hats. Jim finds the crux layback moves and after some hesitating dispatches them and cruises to the belay. A really nice pitch of climbing. Kayte follows, back-clipping the rope and carrying the pack (since she isn't leading :). She cruises the crux no problem and I clean the pitch.

We scope the topo... and I grab the rack for the exposed second pitch of traversing across a face to a REALLY dirty ledge. I traverse out the face on bad gear towards an antique (Wiesner vintage) ring pin, and a more modern knifeblade... They are the only indication of the route, so I clip the blade and watch it quiver in it's placement...great. I pull the moves to the ledge and totally don't see where the route goes. According to the topo, it supposedly goes up the next corner to a slot and chimney for the 3rd pitch. The moves look about 5.10+ to me... I throw in a belay after only 50 ft of climbing and bring Jim and Kayte over. Jim is glad he didn't have the exposed traverse pitch J

We eventually find the route after more traversing and Jim takes off and is quickly out of view on the 3rd pitch. I can still hear him, and he quickly comes to the base of the chimney. "How does it look?" I ask... "I'm scared" Jim says, but the rope starts moving again, and I hear "clipping". Cool... he's fine. I notice the sun has finally broken thru the clouds and I'm cursing my fleece hat.

Jim finishes the 3rd and final pitch, and pulls the slack. Kayte asks me "So how do you climb a squeeze chimney??" DOH!! Being the consummate instructor [snicker] I say "Just squirm and thrash a lot... just don't get pissed if you only go up in 6" increments". Kayte starts and is quickly out of view... I can tell when she hits the chimney because the rope doesn't move for a WHILE. I kind of feel bad at making her climb it with no guidance, but I'm confident she can figure it out.

I finally hear Jim tell me I'm on, so I quickly clean the pitch. Fun climbing, and the final squeeze chimney is challenging but not TOO hard. Jim is stoked to have finished the route after having backing off of it before, and Kayte is loving the multi-pitch thing. She thought the chimney was cool and fun!! go figure.J

We descend to grab our packs & boots and it's already 3pm... where did the day go?? We decide to leave Partition for another day. We descend and get a little off-route in the talus, but arrive without injury back at the car. Only 3 pitches, but a GREAT day...perfect weather. On the way up route 73, we see 2 people coming out of the Beer Walls trail.. "WOAH, that's Kevin & his wife Anne!!!". I hang a U-turn and we chat with Kevin (a guy I've met locally here in Buffalo and we boulder together) and Anne, and discover that our dinner plans are identical.. Desperados in Lake Placid.. We make plans to meet there in an hour or so.

Jim is on the hunt for a new pair of long route shoes, so we pay a quick visit to the Mountaineer, but the selection is slim. I make a huge purchase of a lexan spoon and 2 cliff bars, Kayte picks up a few things, but Jim leaves w/out any new shoes. We cruise to Lake Placid for dinner at Desperados and pick up some groceries, then head up to Poke-O-Moonshine, hoping the campground isn't full. We grab one of the last sites, and pitch the tents in the dark and hit the sack.

Sunday

Sunday morning dawns absolutely perfect. We take it easy and enjoy the Adirondak morning with tea, oatmeal and bagels. We finally get going after checking in, and cruise down to see if anyone is on Gamesmanship, the Poke-O classic 5.8.

Neither Jim or I have ever been to Poke-O before, but we get some orientation from a friendly dude climbing with his son on Pillar, a 1 pitch 5.7 that looks wide, but cool. We finally come to Gamesmanship, but we are about 15 mins too late, another party of 3 is already racking up for it. We glance at the guide and consider doing FM or Paralysis (5.7, 5.8)... but we are directly under the classic 1 pitcher 5.8 crack called The Sting. It looks awesome.

We wait for the leader to get moving on Gamesmanship as the 2 routes share a common start, and I rack up. I opt for the optional boulder start to the route (making it 5.9 ??I dunno) and immediately grease off the small feet 2 feet off the ground :) The party next door says "you can cruise up this if you want?"... I try the boulder start again and fire the moves no problem. Cool.

Some weird left-traverse moves find me moving along a finger-tip seam to the base of the twin hand cracks. I clip a newly fixed nut and plunk in some more gear. The tips seam meets the hand cracks and I'm stumped. I camp out on the big pumper slopy ledge right of the cracks for what seems like a week, and do my imitation of that guy in the Pusher video who chalks like 100 times before moving again. I try at least 15 combinations of hand jams, toe jams, crimp on the pumper ledge, etc... nothing seems right.

I plug in some more gear... totally over-protecting the crux (for me) and finally see a micro edge right of the cracks which could be the key foothold. I paste my right foot, jam the left hand, grab the pumper with my right and jam the left toe in the crack. Everything clicks, I squiggle my left hand jam up and go for the nice edge with the right. BAM. FINALLY. BREATH. UGH. WOW.

I plug in another piece and kick into pure jam mode... both hands and both feet for awhile until a nice rest. I asses my gear situation.. DOH only 2 slings left and no draws. Crap. I set out again in crack mode with the gear I need ready to go... I plug in a cam or two, then a tri-cam; all clipped directly to the rope. I finally reach the top of the crack. WHEW. A bomber #8 hex placement (1 of 2 hexes on my rack) and I clip my last sling and traverse 10 ft left to the 2 belay bolts. WOW... What a pitch!! I'm exhausted J

Kayte follows having some trouble on the boulder moves, but grins the entire way up the crack; quickly perfecting the jamming techniques we'd talked about and practiced while bouldering at home. After reaching the belay... she declares "cracks are very cool". Jim fires the boulder moves first try, and cleans the pitch... declaring he's definately not ready to lead this kind stuff. Ha, ha... we'll see. We all rap back to the packs. My adrenaline is still kicking and I could go home right now after that pitch and be totally content. Of course we stay.

Jim's not super stoked about doing another long route, so we decide to maybe shoot back to the Pillar and do that, but a quick glance reveals the need for a few more pieces of big gear than we have, so we find another 1 pitch 5.7 dihedral next to a 5.11 sport climb. We munch some food, and Jim racks up.

After about 20 feet of moderate stemming Jim appears seriously nervous. The left facing route has a mini roof, and Jim is having a tough time getting in good gear. He's wigging pretty bad, but he hangs in there. He makes a desperate move to clear the mini-hang, and plugs in the #2 Metolious 4 Cam as "panic-pro". He's still really pumped and super nervous.. He's climbing FAST, and plugging in gear, but it doesn't look great. I sweat it out at the belay wait for the inevitable.

Jim finally hits big holds, breathes for the 1st time in what seems like minutes, and traverses to the belay/rap station. PHEW. Kayte cleans the route and we think about throwing a rope on the sport route, but some guys come up and are going to lead it. No big deal. Jim and Kayte rap.

Jim is mentally "cooked" from this pitch, and the clock reads 3 PM again... geesh only 2 pitches today, we're gumbies I guess, but I really don't care. The Sting was great for me, and Jim says "this thing packed 4 pitches of fear into 1 for me". J Kayte says she's beat also, so we decide to call it, but plan on hiking to the summit of Poke-O after we dump the gear.

We re-hydrate at the tents and dump the rack & ropes into the car. Jim & I shambo for pack duties up to the summit and I win. YEAH. We pack a cpl of quarts and 2 headlamps into the pack and start hiking, but Jim just isn't up for it... so I grab the pack, he heads back to the tents and Kayte and I continue up.

We have a great time hiking... even though I'm sucking air pretty good (man my cardio sucks) and quickly reach the ruins of an old cabin below the main summit. We scope the impressive views, but continue up to the old rickety fire tower.

The views are great... the sun is just starting to dip and we can see well into the Great Range of the Adirondaks, boats sailing on Lake Champlain, and the rounded peaks of the Green Mtns in Vermont. Oh man, I really needed this... We both decide that we could stay forever. The views are tremendous, and we have the summit all to ourselves.

We finally relent and hit the trail back down and pass some touristy folks on the way up... Finally arriving back at the tents about 7:00 PM or so. We all brew up dinner, and tea, and watch the moon-rise and the light show of lightening up to the north. Looks like we are in for a thundershower. Kayte is dedicated and does some reading for school before we all hit the sack.

Monday

I wake up early and hit the showers.. NICE, and we all decide to do something easy & fun... we decide on running up Catharsis (5.6) on the Poke-O slabs. It's 5 pitches, but both Jim and I have done it before, and love the route. It's actually fun climbing and interesting (not like many slabs I've done). So we brew up tea, and hike down the road to the trail to the base.

All weekend we had been noticing the evidence of the massive ice-storms the decimated the North-East last Spring, but this was the worst. The trail has loads of blow-down trees and the going is slow. I am double careful not to get off-route on the approach J We arrive without hassle and I rack up for the fun (but run-out) first pitch and quickly find out I forgot to bring my chalk bag. DOH!! Jim and Kayte both have theirs, so Jim and I will share.. whoever cleans will climb chalk-less.

The first pitch starts out with a super easy crack, but then the angle kicks up and you climb these cool "scallops" in the rock for about 50-60 feet run-out from your last placement to a small belay. Fun but a little scary at the top. Kayte follows and realizes that there really is something too this slab stuff... she has great footwork, but climbs slow, and then figures out the technique. She is happy to reach the belay and soaks in the great views again. Jim cleans (which is easy) and we quickly re-rack.

He cruises up the second pitch which starts in another crack, but then goes to pure unprotected friction moves for a while. He finds an OLD rivet and does the nut-wire-loop trick then discovers that the small birch at the 2nd belay is now missing. Another causality of the ice storms perhaps?

The third pitch is mine which is another "mojo" pitch IMO and has some great pure friction and bad gear, topped off by a killer traverse to the spacious belay ledge. Jim notices the weather is starting to get bad, and I'm concerned, but not worried. Dark clouds are moving north from the big peaks of the Great Range... they are black and big. Hmmmm.

Jim does the cheesy 4th traverse pitch to the "old oak tree" and we figure if it starts to pour, we can escape out right into the trees from there, but the last pitch is Jim's. He leads out left into the "eye-brows" and quickly finds the crux friction moves about 30 feet from the top. After some hesitation he cranks the moves off the REALLY hollow flake and punches up to the trees. We all follow, and the weather holds out. I remember once again, what a GREAT ROUTE.

After some wicked bush-whacking thru more blow-down, we find the hiker's trail and quickly descend back to the tents & pack up.

The way down is fun and we all reflect that it's been a PERFECT trip. Sure we could have gotten in more climbing, but Jim and I both led stuff we had wanted to do (Prelude for him, Sting for me) and Kayte had an absolute blast from start to finish doing "big" trad climbs and learning tons of new climbing techniques.

As I write, it's amazing to see how good climbing is the "great equalizer" since each of us climbed differently, but I really can't tell who had most fun.

No Rest for the Wounded

Adirondak Mountains, June 23-25, 2000

Prolog

Who ever knew that such a happy occasion as a wedding, could ever produce so much fear and loathing into a group of guys?? You see, Jim and Rachel are getting married (or maybe even have by the time you read this) and both of them are climbers. So that means, the 'normal' traditional ways of doing lots of things have been thrown right out the window.

One of the drastic deviations from normal happened when Jim told me he wanted to go backpacking with a few guys instead of having a stag party, I thought 'what a cool idea'. Like many of our adventures, things started innocent enough, and as usual, things would change.

Initially, the cast of characters included Jim (the bridegroom), myself, John (Jim's brother), and Phil C, a long time friend of both John and Jim's and a guy whom I had met on previous ventures into the Adirondaks. The initial plans hatched by myself, Jim and John went like this: Jim and I would drive up towards the Upper Works parking lot leaving around noon on Friday and hike into a bivy spot just north of Bradely Pond. John and Phil would drive up later since both had to work later. Jim was taking the day off, and I was just going to work for a half day. Saturday, we would hike up to a place on a high ridge called 'The Crossroads' which is in the middle of a 'T' of peaks. Santonini would be on our left, Panther on our right, and Couchsachroge straight ahead. The guidebooks say that Couchsachraga is the 2nd hardest peak in the Adirondaks to summit, second only to Allen. This seemed strange to us all in that it's one of the lowest peaks which make up the '46' highest peaks in the park. After climbing to the ridge, we would head directly for Couchsachraga since it's the most remote and difficult. The guide says figure 4 hours for the round trip from the Crossroads. After returning, we'd turn right and head up Santonini, then finish the day on Panther and finally head back down to the camp. Sunday we'd hike out and drive back home. Sounds simple enough.

Monday, June 19th dawned and I found out that my alternator had died in my relatively new Saturn. ARGH.. It's still under warranty, but I have no clue how long it's going to take the dealer to fix it up. I'm hoping it will be all set to go by Friday. Tuesday, my car is still in the shop, but Gary called me at work and was wondering what I was doing for the weeked. I told him about the trip and that he should call Jim. He did, and was immediately added to the list. Even better news was that Gary was willing to drive the 3 of us up early on Friday so I was off the hook for driving duties. My car should be done by then, but it was just 1 less thing to worry about.

Friday June 23, 2000

Why is it that Murphy's law always has a propensity for Fridays and the day I'm supposed to leave for a trip. When both of these happen to be on the same day (as they often do), bad things are bound to happen at work and this day was no different. I purposefully did not really dive into major projects knowing full well that I wanted to leave the office by 11 AM that morning. My partner called and relayed a message that we both have to go up to Chatham Ontario the following Monday with supplies ready to take care of some lingering computer issues a manufacturing plant has been having with some of our software. All well and good, but the supplies include a completely new hard-drive for their PC with Windows 98 installed, as well as all of our custom software. I also need to load up our laptop with all of the development tools I would need ready to add and remove features to the software on Monday at their plant. I now have zero chance of leaving even REMOTELY close to my planned take-off time of 11 AM.

After many 'computer issues', I finally wrap it all up at the office and head home at 12:30 PM, which is the time I was planning on meeting everyone at Jim's house. I jet home, throw the pack, CD Player, and munchies into the car and head to Jim's, hoping that I at least beat Gary there (he's always late anyway). I arrive at Jim's house to see no Gary-mobile so I'm no too late at least.

Gary arrives, we pack the truck, and finally depart closer to 2 PM and head East toward the South-Eastern High Peaks region of the Adirondaks. Finally. The drive passes quickly as we all catch up, make fun of the idiot drivers, avoid speed traps, and see how fast I can drive Gary's pickup up route 8 without flipping it over. We finally arrive at the trail head, and see only 1 other car in the parking lot. It looks like we'll be treated to a relatively isolated and quiet weekend, we can't wait.

Of course this all changes the moment we step of the car, as we are greeting by moderate amounts of mosquitos and black flies. We chat with a solo hiker who is just getting ready to leave for home and he warns of us the bugs and really muddy conditions. One look at his clothing, and copious amounts of mud on his legs confirm the 'route beta'. We change footwear, shoulder the packs and head off. The watch reads about 8 PM.

The first 1.5 miles of the trail follow a gravel road which is used by the Tawahaus Club. The hiking is easy, but we are constantly assaulted by the hordes of bugs. The DEET we are all wearing seems to keep them at bay and we make good progress to the 'real' trailhead. The trail from the road consistantly climbs up and gains elevation over a typical Adirondak maintained trail. We've all been on better and worse. The mud and dropping sun keeps us hopping and eventually we are forced to break out the headlamps for about the last 1 hour of hiking.

We arrive at the left-turn cairn and turn north-west in search of the bivy spot that John had spoken of. We start following the much worse terrain of the unmarked herd path which we will be following up to 3 peaks tomorrow. We walk for about 40 minutes until we can only assume we've long past the bivy spot, since we are constantly going up a steep incline now, and a glance at the map confirms our fears that we've hiked for at least 30 minutes extra. Returning down the path proves to be a little more difficult than anticipated and we get slightly 'misplaced' for about 5 minutes before finding the path again back down towards the Lake. Of course by now, we are completely pissed at John for his crappy beta, and decide to just head back to the original trail, and sleep at the lean-to which is 0.3 miles farther down.

JUST before emerging back onto the main trail, we find a large enough spot to pitch our tents, and finally throw our packs down for the night. We brew up tea and dinner and enjoy the cool, bug-free, star-light evening. Gary does his best Warren Harding immitation as he chimneys up between 2 trees to fetch and rig the bear bag line, and we finally complete the last duty for the night. Time for bed. A quick glance at the watch shows it to be about 1 AM.

An hour and a half latter, we hear the voice of John which seems to be loud enough to drown out the entire Blue Angels squadron if they had been flying over at 100 feet. He succeeds in waking us all up as he and Phil find our bivy, setup their bivy sacks and rig their bear bag. John mentions that another friend of his and Jim's, Bill is somewhere behind them, but none of us are placing our bets that he'll find us. John had an advantage as he's been to this part of the 'Daks before, as opposed to the rest of us (Bill included) who've never been to this part of the park before.

Much to our surprise, Bill arrives 30 minutes later, and joins the party. He just throws his bag down between John and Gary's tent and crashes. I finally fall asleep, but dread the alarm clock which is set for 6 AM.

Saturday, June 24, 2000

Saturday dawns cool but clear. It promises to be a nice day and we all are a little bleary eyed from the lack of sleep, but dutifully fire up the stoves for the tea, coffee, and instant oatmeal. Traditional backpacking morning food for all. As we finish up breakfeast and packing for the long day ahead, the bugs descend. They came from the sky, but MUST have originated in the depths below the earth, as they were truly the pure essence of evil which would shadow us all day long.

We all load up on huge amounts of bug dope and water and head up the trail at about 8:20 AM, not too bad, all things considered. We soon find out that a rest or stop of any more than 30 seconds attracts enormous numbers of black flies. For those unfamiliar with these truly evil insects, they are quite small.. about the site of 2 pin heads, but must be made up of mostly teeth. The land on any part of your body, bite you and can do so numerous times. Some people (like Gary) can react to the bites and swell up leaving huge bumps and marks. We try to ignore the bugs, and continue to climb and hike in the 80 degree heat towards the cross-roads. The plan called for us to cache water on the top of the ridge as there is no water source there, so we endured being held hostage by the bugs and loaded up on the water at one of the many stream crossings high up the side of the ridge.

After the last push to the top of the ridge we finally arrived at the Cross-Roads only to be greeted by yet another ferocious batch of the evil black creatures. We were right on schedule, having made it to the Cross-Roads in exactly 2 hours. The watch read 10:30 AM. Once again, we were refused time to rest by the bugs, so we quickly stashed some water, consulted the map and compass, and headed off down the appropriate herd-path for the distant Couchsachraga summit. The trail out to Couchsachraga definitely ranks up there with some of the most difficult paths I've tromped in the Adirondaks, but all in all, I didn't think it was super hard. There are several false summits that we had to hit and over-come before doing the final climb up the to the real summit. On our way, water supply started to become an issue, and some of us were beginning to feel the affects of being on the go for quite a while in hot conditions, with no real time for any substantial rest. We were definitely slowing down.

We reached a plateau and it appeared that we had topped out the infamous Couchsachraga, but I remembered the previous summer when we failed to summit Hough because we thought we already had. The trail continued out the ridge, so I forged ahead, and found another small rock outcrop and climbed it to finally find the summit register. We had all finally made it to the top of this beast. Climbing this peak definitely deserves a lot more respect than it's 3850 foot summit means to most people. Once again, the bugs were feasting on our still bodies, so we piled on the bug dope and DEET, and started the long trail retracing our steps back to the ridge. Bill and Gary still seemed really strong, and John was almost out of water. I was running somewhat low, but was more concerned about not really having eaten anything except a few energy bars all day. It was about two-thirds of the way back to the ridge when I 'hit the wall'. The dehydration, lack of sleep, lack of rest, and lack of food finally caught up with me. I REALLY needed to rest and eat, but the bugs continued their merciless attacks. Jim, John and Phil lagged behind with me while we all kind of battled with our own demons. Jim's knees, John and Phil's cramps, my fatigue. We were really getting our butts kicked by these tiny little flys. It was really quite unbelievable.

We finally reached the Cross-Roads again at 2:00 PM and we all had some decisions to make. The intial plan was to bag all 3 peaks that are attached to the ridge, but for some most of us, that was just no longer an option. Personally, I needed rest, food, and water. Water I had now (thank god for the cache), but the other items I could only obtain back at our bivy spot. I was definitely going down. Bill was planning to drive home Saturday night (this sounds really wicked) so he was also going to be happy with the single peak, head down, and hike directly back to the cars and head home that evening. Jim's knee which has plagued him before was not doing well, so he was camp-bound as well. Phil felt gross, tired, and beat, he was headed down. John had previously summited Panther, so had just Santonini left to finish out the three-some of the ridge. He looked tired, but really wanted to do the last peak. Gary felt OK, so they both headed up and the 4 of us headed down.

The hike back down to camp seemed endless. We had lots of water, but I was just battling to stay awake, alert and on my feet. It felt like I'd been on the go for 24 hours straight, but I'd only been going since 8 AM. It was mind blowing. We all felt like the walking wounded, and for the most part didn't chat too much on the way down. We had summited Couchsachraga, but the merciless pests had most definitely slammed us hard into the ground, proving once again, that you should never under-estimate the affects the insect world can have on you. After what seemed like days, we hit famailiar ground, but I had long ago passed the 'empty' mark on my gas gauge. The multi-colored flies of our respective tents have never looked so good. We finally arrived at the bivy spot around 4 PM, and I immediately crashed into my tent. The flies never relented one moment the entire day. We retreated to our no-see-um mesh enclosed tents and waited for the beasts to retreat for the night. Jim and I both caught up a little on sleep while we waited, and unbelievably, the flies actually got worse. Jim and I were both famished but had nothing to eat inside the tent. We dared not go outside and actually cook fearing that we would actually be consumed instead of being the consumee's. Jim braved the elements (and I'm not talking weather) and made a dash for the bear bag and came running back to the tent with the hard-earned stash. Unfortunately most of the contents required cooking, but we managed to chow down the left over pitas, peanut butter, and really gross looking cheese Gary had brought along. Sometime during our commotose state in our tents, Gary and John arrived safely back at camp and also dived into Gary's tent to escape the bugs.

After another rest, Jim woke me up to announce that he thought that the bugs had finally departed for the night. I didn't believe him until I looked up at the vestibule and didn't see a single little black dot. I rejoiced. We emerged from our 'cocoons' and Jim fired up the stove while I went down to pump some water. We were both still famished from the day's ordeal.

By the time I got back to the tents, everyone was awake and axious for some chow. John and Phil fried up (and shared) some summer sausage, pitas, and these really cool mashed potatoes. Gary, Jim, and I rehydrated 2 freeze dried meals (3 bean chili and 3 cheese lasagna). We feasted, brewed tea, and nursed our numerous bug bites. My stomach was really happy to be full again, and I could sense my blood chemistry slowly returning to normal after the long rest of the evening.

We finally retired to the bags after deciding about our morning plans.

Sunday, June 25, 2000

Jim woke up at 5:15 and as promised woke everyone up. The plan was to break camp, pack up and beat feet back to the car as fast as possible before the bugs woke up. Simple?. The only flaw was that the bugs apparently rise sometime prior to 5 AM since they were already up and ready for round two. We hurried the packing along as fast as possible and finally got the heck out of 'Dodge'.

We were all sore, but the trail back to the gravel road was almost all consistantly downhill. We just had to keep our feet underneath us and ourselves upright. We made quick work of the trail, and finally hit the gravel road which seemed at least ten times longer on the way out than on the way in. We eventually reached the elusive parking lot after continuing to be eaten by black flies AND mosquitos. The abuse just never stopped. We quickly changed our clothes and made a rapid exit, deciding to hit The Pancake House in Old Forge on the way home.

We headed down route 30, and stopped at a Stewarts to load up on caffiene for the morning. The bugs did not relent, and as a parting shot, continued to feast on our bodies as we sat outside Stewarts drinking our respective drinks.

It seems that even the best laid plans can end up as an epic adventure, and this trip truly lived up to that end. Believe it, or not, we actually DID have fun, and we did successfully bag Couchsachraga. John and Gary both summited Santonini as well, so it was successful on that front. All of use arrived back home at least a 'quart low', but otherwise in good (but sore) order.

I know for certain that Jim's very non-traditional bachelor party was not an outlook on the future, but know for certain that many sunny days will shine on him and Rachel as they begin a new phase of life together. As for the rest of us? we vowed never to return to the Newcomb wilderness area during summer ever again.