Laughter, Blood, and K-Mart on Mt. Washington

Back in October, I told my friend Jim I was determined to go back to Mt. Washington again this year and revive my tradition of inaugurating the ice climbing season with some early ice in Tuckerman's Ravine. Last year, I couldn't rummage up a partner, and didn't feel like making the 12 hour drive by myself and climbing solo, so I ended up not going.

Jim told me he was totally psyched to go this year and he was DEFINATELY going. Cool. No worries about a partner this year.

Jim and I make plans to leave stupid early (4 or 5 am) on Friday morning and do the STEEP approach hike Friday night, climb Saturday, hike down and drive home on Sunday. Everything is pretty well set by the beginning of the week, when the weather starts to be totally un-cooperative. Back here in the flatlands of Buffalo, NY, then highs for the days were topping out at around high 50's. Totally unacceptable for the first week of December!

Tuesday before we leave, I scan a bunch of web sites (Northeastern Ice Report, Mt. Washington Weather Observatory, etc..). Well, the NE looks VERY warm, but the mountain appears to have lots of snow... not sure about the ice conditions in Tucks though. The trip is definitely still on.

Wednesday rolls around and John (Jim's brother) calls me. He's whining and wants to ride in the car, and just hike up Mt. Washington and do the peak bagging thing. There's room in the car, so I tell him to start packing - the more, the merrier.

John is always super fun to travel with as he's ALWAYS got a story to tell about something and usually trips with him turn into a non-stop laugh fest, and this one was not going to be an exception. :)

I ditch out of work on Thursday as early as possible, and shoot home to do a quick clean up in the Apartment (I hate coming home to a dirty kitchen :) and run out to the store for some food. Lots of energy bars and munchies as Jim is bringing some Freeze dried stuff for dinners. John & Jim both come over around 10:00 pm, we all crash at my place and set the alarm for 4:15 am.. UGH.

The alarm is blaring in my ear after what seems life 5 minutes of sleep, and I manage to wake everyone up... I quickly brew some hot water for tea and instant coffee while we pack the car. It's the first big climbing road-trip for the new Saturn 4 door, so it takes some figuring out, but everything fits in no problem, and we finally hit the road and Interstate 90 by around 5:00 am. Right on schedule (which is truly amazing considering that NONE of us are morning people).

I'm not a big coffee drinker, but between John and Jim, I'm convinced they consumed at least 5 gallons of the stuff before we even travel 200 miles east along I-90. Numerous bathroom breaks ensue as our bodies adjust to the early morning and initial wake ups. Each of us seems to need to hit the john at least twice during the first few hours of driving, but none of us or coordinated enough to have to go at the same time. After the potty breaks, Jim and I are regretting the lack of an ample supply of underwear for the trip. "yeah, yeah, definitely K-Mart" becomes one of our mantras for the entire weekend (If you don't get the reference, think Dustin Hoffman). We eventually hit Saratoga Springs and leave New York state behind. John's stories and wise-cracks keep us laughing for almost the entire state, and our stomachs literally hurt from laughing too much.

John takes a turn behind the wheel for the trek across Vermont and half of New Hampshire, but I want to stop in Lincoln NH to scope for some new Gortex pants. My current ones are a little on the small side, but I don't find anything that looks like what I want. We also stop into the new climbing gym there in Lincoln and chat with the friendly manager, and scope the facilities. Nice gym. We finally hit the road again and soon arrive in the crowded tourist haven of North Conway NH around 4:30 pm. We hit up Wendy's for some final chow, then head north to Pinkham Notch. Finally.

We pack up in the hikers lodge, and grab our tickets for the Hermit Lake Shelters. There are only 6 other people up there right now - GREAT! We won't have any problems with not finding empty lean-tos. John and Jim both pack down yet ANOTHER cup of coffee, while we pull the tents out of the packs and finish packing. Just before hitting the trail, we meet a family of 4 that are also heading up to Tucks tonight.. Mom & Dad will be climbing tomorrow on the headwall and the 2 sons will be snowboarding & skiing in the gullies. Nice family outing for the weekend :) We finally hit the trail about 6:00 pm.

The hike up is pretty uneventful but windy. There was a full moon, so I didn't need my headlamp for almost the entire 2.4 miles. We all suck wind pretty good, but make pretty good time, arriving at the Hermit Lake shelters about 8:00 pm. We crash into shelter #8 with some dudes from Connecticut and Mass. who are up and are planning to climb Tucks tomorrow. We make ourselves right at home, and continue to be pretty loud and somewhat obnoxious well into the evening hours. I think we kind of scared the kids at the other end of the lean-to a little bit as John can be really loud sometimes. The marathon day finally ends at about 10:00 pm. I set the alarm on the watch for 6:15 am.

The alarm is blaring in my ear after what seems life 5 minutes of sleep, and I manage to wake everyone up... I stumble into the plastic boots and fumble for the door and step out into a great morning. Light winds, not too cold, perfect conditions. We brew up some oatmeal, and Jim & I figure out the summit packing and the gear etc. While Jim pumps water for the day, I check in with the caretaker who gives me some beta on the a gully called Left of Left. He says it has the best ice in Tucks and should be pretty fat, and not too covered with snow. It's on the far left side of the ravine, someplace I'd never climbed before. Sounds like a plan.

John debates whether to climb Lion's head trail (the standard winter hike) or do the "hiking" trail up Tuckermans... The Tucks trail looks pretty doable, especially considering John has ice climbed before, but the caretaker dissuades him and he decides Lion's Head is the safer choice. This turns out to be a VERY wise decision.

We part ways about 8:00 am, and Jim & I head up to the Tuckerman's headwall. The morning is getting pretty warm, and I'm glad I dressed pretty light for the day. We make a pretty steady pace up to the base of the headwall, I notice how much snow has already filled in the bottom of the bowl. It's far more than I've ever seen in Tuckermans this early in the season before. We'll no doubt be seeing lot's of skiers today.

The ice in Left of Left looks great. Blue, fat enough to climb, not too long, etc.. Perfect for what we wanted to do. It's pretty short however, and Jim promptly announces "looks like 1 pitch... well, It's your trip, so I guess you can lead it." Fine with me !! We trudge across the open bowl which is completely filled in with hardpack snow after donning our shells as the wind is really kicking down the main face and the bowl. The snow starts kicking back in steepness as we head up the Left Gully snow climb before traversing left to the start of the ice. We start donning our crampons and Jim notices a tiny figure across the ravine on top of Lion's Head waving to us. IT'S JOHN!! He must be really cruising to have reached the ridge line already. He waits for a little while, probably snapping some pictures of the absolutely gorgeous day that's opening up. We continue to follow him across the ridge as we rack up and flake the ropes.

Jim does battle with the other double rope that we brought, but finally wins the fight, and I start to lead up the spectacular pitch of ice. My first placements make it very evident that the ice is a LOT more brittle than it looked. I promptly start firing HUGE dinner plates down at Jim which keeps him busy for pretty much the entire route. Good thing we are both wearing helmets :) The first half of the route is pretty mellow, and I'm feeling great, but the ice is still very brittle for the first 2", then good underneath. I rest about half way up on a decent stance and soak in the view. Crystal blue sky, medium winds, and moderate temperatures. We really have gotten lucky with the weather this weekend. Massive amounts of skiers have poured into the bowl and are cranking turns on all kinds of boards: snow boards, alpine skis, and telemark gear I watch for a few while my forearms and calves recoup.

I start up the last section of the climb which looks like the crux.. It begins by squeezing through a small slot between a large ice bulge on the left and an exposed rock buttress on the right. Very fun since the ice is nice and plastic in the runnel. I slam in a 22 cm Black Diamond screw at the top of the runnel as I ponder the very vertical dihedral above me. Looks kind of rugged, but I feel good. My first 2 tool placements in the dihedral turn out to be wicked placements that absolutely REFUSE to come out easily. ARGGH. The next 4 placements follow suit, and I'm rapidly pumping out just trying to remove my placements. This SUCKS! As I'm struggling with one of the nasty removals, my left calf gets one of those earth shattering charlie-horses in it. OOOOUUUCHHH!!

I quickly look down at my last gear, pondering my opportunities for relief of the calf muscle, and decide that I should have definitely brought at least one pound-in screw. DOH. I grab one of the short BD's instead and quickly place it, clip it, and immediately call for Jim to take my weight for a second. PHEW, I shake out the leg muscle for a minute or two, and try to regain my composure. GEESH, that was fun. My leg returns to normal, and I fire the rest of the dihedral without incident, pulling the final bulges onto steep snow and bushes.

I throw a belay around some sketchy looking bushes, and bring Jim up, who doesn't seem like he has a hard time at all, but was VERY happy he didn't lead the pitch. We rack the gear, coil the ropes, grab some water and head for the ridgeline above us. We climb unroped up the steep hard-pack snow for approximately 300 or 400 feet before we can finally take a break and grab some more water and some grub before making the final push to the ridge. Everything seems great, but Jim's knee is giving him MAJOR problems. He had twisted it on the approach hike up to Hermit Lake, but it hadn't seemed that bad...until now. By the time we reach the ridgeline, he is in some serious pain, and has gained a pretty severe limp.

We discuss our options, and Jim decides to head back down the Tuckermans headwall - he doesn't feel up to the summit push from the ridge. It is definitely the right decision. The final push is still at least 600 vertical feet and Jim doesn't look or feel very good at all. There are still boatloads of hikers trudging up the summit cone, so I don't feel apprehensive about continuing on alone. We repack the packs... I take my 2 fleece jackets, 2 quarts of water, my Gortex pants, my headlamp, and some energy bars, while Jim takes our super lean ice rack and thankfully takes both ropes down with him. This is a god-send for me, as I'm in ultra-light-weight mode for the final summit bid. My watch shows 12:30 pm, so I have plenty of day light. We part ways, and I make a bee-line for the Tuckerman's summit trail which joins the Lion's Head trail about half way up the final cone. It's a long trudge and I'm really beat. My cardio is in REALLY bad shape for this sort of thing, but I eventually top out at the weather station and stand on the highest point on Mt. Washington. WOOHOO. I finally summited in winter.

I don't stick around too long at the little shelter on the summit. There is a decent size crowd there, several guys putting on skis to ski the bowls on the other side, and other hikers taking a break out of the wind before they descend. I throw my light fleece on under the shell and re-hydrate and chow down on the big-block Hershey bar I brought along. HMMMM. About 1:45 pm, I begin the descent and start smoking past the hikers.. they obviously aren't that comfortable in crampons yet, and I make good time to the Tucks / Lion's Head trail junction. Decision time... I could either descend down the hikers trail which is longer, or head back down Tucks. I opt to continue straight down into Tucks for the shorter distance. This turns out to be a BAD move.

I hit the Tuckermans ridgeline and catch up with some guys from the AMC who are also descending down Tucks. This is usually a pretty easy walk down, but because of the quantity of snow on the main face, we literally have to DOWNCLIMB the entire face. It's a chore that I did not enjoy, to say the least. Luckily, the traffic of the day had creating a pretty easy "ladder" of steps that went down the face, but this really took a lot of energy out of me and killed my time. If John had tried to climb up this way earlier this morning, it could have been really ugly. It's very exposed, and a fall here could be dangerous. I am really glad that he opted for the Lion's Head trail.

I finally make my way to the right gully in Tucks, and glissade the last few hundred feet down to the bowl level. I finish the hike down to the shelters with the mom of the family of 4 we had met Friday night. We both enjoy the banter as I try not to concentrate on my rubber legs. We finally hit the caretaker's lodge about 3:30 pm and I meet up with Jim who is coming up the trail to pump water. He says he'll be right back and I finish the walk to the shelter where John already has the stove roaring with hot water for tea and is lounging in his sleeping bag.

John had made really good time and hit the summit by about 11:00 or 11:30 in the morning, and waiting for a while for us, but hit the trail back down and was back in the shelter by 1:30 pm. He tells me about his summit experience: "So I'm standing on the actual summit, scoping out the view, and I just wet my chapped lips with my tongue.. I turn around, and this gust of wind hits me, and BAM, my lip instantly dries out and splits my lip open and blood starts pouring into my mouth!!!!" YIKES! We had a good laugh about our respective summits and swapped stories about some of the "funny looking" hikers we'd seen until Jim came back with more water.

Jim had a pretty wicked time descending down the Tuckermans face. He went through the same ordeal as I did... having to downclimb the entire face, but he had his bum knee that was torturing him on every kick step. OUCH. He really took his time, and eventually made it back to the shelter about 2:30 pm.

We all swap our mini adventures until well after the sun sets behind the mountains and we continually gorge ourselves with all sorts of food we had brought up with us. It also turns out that we had all brought stoves and fuel, so we lounge around an MSR Whisperlite that just burns free and we all dry out our sweaty feet around it. LUXURIOUS. Occasionally, John would put some of our cheddar cheese into a pita and expertly melt the whole thing into a quasi-grilled cheese sandwich over the stove. HMMM. We each downed our dinners and probably 3 gallons of tea between us until we all finally hit the bags around 8:00 pm. I don't set the alarm for the next morning... we can sleep in. YES.

My bladder finally boots me out of my sleeping bag around 7:15 am Sunday morning and John declares "It's about friggen time you got up... I've been lying awake for hours". Sorry :) We quickly pack up and hit the trail down to the Pinkham Notch camp. Jim is glad to be going downhill with his bum knee, and John and I consult with him before continuing on ahead of him at a faster pace. He is in good spirits despite his painful knee. John and I make great time down the trail, John even RUNS the very last part, and we pass mountains of people going up the trail to ski or hike for the day. We chat with bunches of them about the conditions in the bowl, snow, ice, etc.

Jim surprises both of us, and cruises into the lodge not more than 15 minutes behind John and I. Great we're all down, in one peace, and safe. We wash our VERY stanky bodies and change back into normal clothes - "Definitely K-Mart !!", pack the car, and head back to North Conway for a HUGE Breakfast. We decide to eat at Peaches, a small little place that has great food on the south side of town. HMMM.

We finally hit the road again at around 11:45 am, and head back to flatland. I take the first shift of driving and have fun cruising back along the Kankamangus Hwy, and through Vermont. John takes the wheel in Fort Anne, and has the WORST traffic problems along Rte. 29 out of Saratoga Springs. We all discuss the various armaments we'd use to completely vaporize the evil Cadilac which ponders along the road at 30 mph ahead of us. Once again, laughing it up hard enough to make us yearn for the next bathroom break. "Laugh and pack" continues to be the theme of the weekend, as the laughing packs our food and drink and forces us all to hit the john more often than normal.

We stop for some food at Sbaro's on the thruway near Syracuse and I take over the driving for the last shift back to Buffalo. We are making awesome time... and we finally pull back into my parking lot at 9:49 pm. Smoking travel time.. less than 10 hours.

We sort most of the gear and John and Jim head home as the very thought of a warm shower and a nice bed sends shivers down all of our spines.

All in all, an excellent trip. Jim's bad knee was really the only "bad mojo" for the entire trip. The drives flew by (mostly due to the non-stop laughter), John and I both summited, Jim and I had an EXCEPTIONAL time doing some fantastic ice and snow climbing, and we all came back in one piece. All of us are already thinking about next years "Laugh and Pack" trip.

Peter Millard.

Huff, Howe and Hoe

Some might find it difficult to believe, but I don't ALWAYS want to go on climbing road-trips. I actually do spend some time outdoors doing other activities. (OK, maybe not lots of time, but anyways)... So it was a nice summer weekend and Jim R. and myself found ourselves planning a weekend trip to the Adirondaks to do some peak bagging with Jim's brother John.

John is making a serious concerted effort to get his "46" done in a short amount of time. What this means is to hike up the 46 mountains in the Adirondak State Park which are all over 4000 feet high. Well, most of them are more than 4000 ft., it's kind of complicated, and besides it's not the point. ANYWAY, John had made plans to spend 5 days in the area which surrounds Dix Mountain. Dix is the highest peak in the region, but is also the only one with a well established, marked trail up it. There are 4 other peaks in the immediate area that are all part of the "46". These were our target.

Jim makes some

arrangements with John and a plan comes together: Jim and I are going to leave quasi-early on Friday afternoon and drive up the Adirondaks. John has to work all day Friday, so he's not leaving until some time after 6 pm. Jim and I will hike in to the "base camp" and John and his crew are going to spend the night at the parking lot and hike in the next morning. Then we are planning on doing Macomb on Saturday, then South Dix, East Dix and Hough (pronounced huff, we think) on Sunday. Jim and I will hike out Monday morning and drive home. I'm taking Monday off.

Everything unfolds nicely and the weather is pretty hot and sticky at home, so Jim and I both pack

light. We both decide to try something different and leave the sleeping bags at home to save weight and bulk in the packs. Lately, it's been getting all the way down to like 70 degrees at night, so what the heck. Jim packs a light-weight army blanket he inherited from John, and I pack my burly fleece blanket that usually lives on my bed.

We throw everything in the Saturn and hit the road at about 4 p.m.

We make good time and have an uneventful drive up to the Dix Mountain trailhead, arriving around 9:30 p.m. The parking lot is pretty full already, and some Canadians arrive just after we did. Jim and I shoulder the packs, don the head-lamps and prepare to cruise the 2 miles up to the camping sites near the lean-to. The Canadians are acting kind of strange, and look incredulous that we are going to hike even though it's getting dark. Do these guys really belong in the woods?

Jim and I have a good laugh and start cruising. Our packs feel astonishingly light considering the lack of technical rock climbing gear, and we have a pleasant hike over relatively flat terrain. We arrive at the designated camping area near the base of Macomb and find tons of people already there and look for some free space to pitch the tent.

We get the tent up, and decide to brew up some tea and maybe some food before going to bed. Jim brought his stove, and we unpack it and "try" to fire it up. The jet appears to be clogged however, and neither of us have brought cleaning tools. What this means is that the stove, basically, doesn't work. I look over at Jim.. "No problem" I say, "I have a few spare jets in the my kit, let me dig one out". We pop one in, no good either... it's also clogged. DOH. We frantically search our packs looking for something the size and sharpness of a pin, to no avail. I figure I'll try to clean it out using my knife, and proceed to make the jet hole a little TOO big. Of course, we don't know this yet, so we pop it in and fire up the stove, and are greeting by flames

shooting out of the stove about 20" high. WOAH. We try to cook, but the giant flames are just not throwing off enough heat, they are however making a complete mess of my pot. We decide to scrap the idea of cooking and finally crash out wrapped in out blankets.

Jim gets pretty cold that night with just the army blanket, and I toss and turn quite a bit trying to keep my feet covered... maybe the blankets weren't such a good idea after all. Well, it's a little too late at this point to change our minds, but we both decide that sleeping bags are definitely the plan, no matter what the weather at home feels like. Oh well.

John had told us to expect him and his crew at 8:00 am ready to go, so I had set the alarm for 6:30. Jim gets up and chuckles at the late arrival that had set their tent up next to ours...it's a Moss Stardome, identical to my tent that Jim and I are in. We both have a laugh at the coincidence. We find another guy up already and Jim asks him if he has a cleaning tool for the MSR stove that has now turned into a portable flame-thrower. He does, so we pop in a new clean jet and are back in business. We immediately brew up some hot water for coffee, tea, and some hot oats.

We eat, and patiently wait for John to come cruising up the trail.. 8:00 am.....8:30 am, and still no John

. Hmmm...... By 9:00 we are getting impatient, and we finally see some rustling from our new neighbors in the Stardome. A guy pops out of the door and I look at him... It's Mark Cusac!! Mark is a climber that was living in the Buffalo area for several years and climbed quite a bit with both Jim and I as well as volunteered at the same rock gym as Jim and I. He had moved back to Boston for a new job about 18 months ago, and nobody has seen or heard from him, and here he is camping next to us in the middle of the Adirondak park... to wild.

"Pete Millard!"... "Mark Cusac...holy crap!". Mark had said he thought he recognized our voices but we had been attempting to keep quiet so as to not wake up everyone. We enjoyed catching up with Mark while we continued to wait for John. Finally about 9:30, Jim decides to hike back down the trail to see if John is on his way or not, and arrives back at the site at 10:00. Still no sign of him. Grumble.

Jim and I decide to take off and head up Macomb, figuring John can't be that far behind, and

we'll meet up with him later. The peaks in the Adirondaks that are called "trail-less" do have basic trails that go up them, but typically they are a little more "rough" than the maintained trails. Often called "herd-paths", they can sometimes be hard to follow, are not always well marked and are sometimes just the quickest or easiest way up the side of a mountain. All of the peaks we were looking to "bag" were of this variety, but Macomb is a little different. It has a big rock-slide on it that the "trail" uses for a significant portion of the route to the top. The trail started directly behind our campsite and would it's way up through scenic woods along the side of a stream and eventually merges with it. We were coming up the stream bed, came around a corner, and saw the very large and moderately steep rock-slide staring us right in the face. WOW, what an abrupt change of scenery.. it took both Jim and I by complete surprise.

All morning long, Jim and I had both been keeping an eye on the weather, and now in the open-ness of the slide, we can really feel the temperature drop and the winds really kicking up. They are definitely not great signs, but nothing really terrible, so we continue upwards. The slide is quite steep and filled with loose gravel and compacted mud, so the going is slow and tiring. About halfway up, we both grab our shells from the peaks to help cut the wind and the shed the light mist that had started coming down. We finally reach the top of the slide and quickly find ourselves on the summit of Macomb. A check of the watch shows that it's only 11:50 am. We are making some killer time. Jim and I glance at the map and I convince him that instead of just heading down, we should try and bag South Dix which is less the a mile away across a ridge which joins the two peaks together. My ulterior motive for suggesting this plan was that the idea of hiking / climbing down the slide we just came up in the rain was not something I was really digging. We decide to give South Dix a go. I sign us in the summit register and note that we are heading to South Dix. I figure when John and his crew summit Macomb, they'll see our entry and have an idea of our plans.

We check the map and compass to get a direction and head down the ridge. We drop into a col between the two peaks and start going up, and almost immediately break out above tree-line onto some rock slabs of South Dix. WOW, the weather has definitely kicked up about 100 notches. The wind is blasting away at what has got to be well over 50 mph and it's raining in every direction - down, left, right, even up it seems. Jim and I find hunker down behind a huge boulder to get out of the wind / rain combination to catch our breaths and grab some chow.

The weather is really wild, we admire the sheer power of nature while we munch on some mini-pitas and peanut butter. We want to bag the peak, but the weather is really wild. We decide to ditch the peaks and just make a run for it, we think we can see the summit, but aren't sure. We run like soldiers dodging enemy sniper fire... from boulder to boulder, planning our sprints up the rock slabs. We finally make it to some trees and start hiking through them, but quickly realize that we are going down. Hmm... neither of us saw a summit register, but we are going back down. We are a little confused but assume we just missed it during a sprint. We head back down to the packs and quickly back down to the safety of the col and it's surrounding trees. It's definitely raining pretty hard now, and Jim and I are both on the way to becoming completely water-logged. We find another herd-path that leads us in the right direction and quickly find ourselves on a pretty serious, technical, path.

It really wasn't the constant rain that soaked us to the very core our bones, it was all the rain on the vegetation. You see, paths like this aren't very wide, usually less than a foot, and the huge luscious plants overhang the path almost constantly. Well, these plants manage to hold tremendous amounts of water on their leaves; which, as you walk by, manages to soak into everything you are wearing. It's tiring, we are both soaked, and I'm getting pretty cold. This is prime weather for hypothermia, so we keep moving. Finally we make it back to the main trail the leads us directly to the campsite.

We both pile into the tent (it's still raining) but do notice that there are 2 new tents at the site. One is definitely John's, so we know he's around someplace. Jim and I strip down and get dry clothes on, and brew some food up in the shelter of the tent vestibule. It finally stops raining around 6:00 p.m., and we migrate out of the tent rummage up some firewood. We don't often make campfires in the woods, but this is definitely the time for one, Jim and I could both use a few things dried out around a fire, not to mention to take the nippiness out of the air.

We manage to get a half-way decent fire going, and Mark and his friend roll back into the site after having summited Dix. We all kibitz around the fire waiting for John to roll in. Jim and I figured that we would all eat together. John finally wanders back into camp at around 7:30...it turns out that they had arrived at the site around 10:15 am, just a few minutes after we had left. They hiked up Macomb, and got really lost coming down after taking a slightly different trail. They ended up doing some heinous bushwhacking and were really beat. Not to mention, John also bent a really nice collapsible trekking pole during the whole escapade. Everyone arrived back at camp safely though, so we settled down for some chow and talk around the fire. Jim and I talk about our "blanket" decision, and while we may not be getting the best sleep in, we score some serious "hard-man" points with the crowd. All is not lost I guess. :)

We got up around 7:30 the next morning and got a slow start. Jim and I brewed some coffee, tea, and oats again, while we all discussed today's plan. The weather still looked sketchy, but a lot more promising than Saturday had. John's wife Yvonne is not in the mode to do anything serious, and Phil's son was not feeling well. So we decided that John, Jim, Phil, and myself would try and get up Hough, and maybe South and East Dix, we'd see how things went though. Yvonne and Phil's son were just gonna have a nice leisure day at camp.

We finally take off around 9:30'ish and head back up the same trail that Jim and I had descended the day before. This trail is supposed to branch left to go up to Hough. We have a nice hike but again, the trail demands our full attention. We keep an eye on the compass trying to determine if we are still on target for hitting Hough. Jim and I both are looking for a branch in the trail, and are pretty sure we've made a turn somewhere... That is, until we find ourselves in the exact col that Jim and I were in between Macomb and South Dix. DOH, we've made a wrong turn somewhere. Well, we decide to go up South Dix, and see what happens. We cruise up the same rock slabs that Jim and I had been on on Saturday, but OH what a difference a day can make. There are a few very high clouds, but the sky is bright blue, the sun is shining and we can see for miles in almost every direction.

We cruise up and over the rock slabs, and then down the same trail that Jim and I had turned around on, but quickly realize that there is still more mountain up ahead. Jim and I hadn't summited South Dix after all!! We finally reach the REAL summit, and find the register and sign in. We consult the map, and decide to hike out to East Dix, come back here to South Dix, then up and over Hough and finally back to camp.

We head down off of South Dix heading north-east toward the summit of East Dix and really enjoy the trail, the good views and nature. All of us get along pretty well, and talk most of the entire day about everything from cars to jobs, computers and rock-climbing. We reach the summit of East Dix and the un-believable views that it gives you in all directions. To the east, we can see Lake Chaplain, to the north, the high peaks of Giant, Gothics, and the rest of the Great Range. To the South, we can see South Dix and Macomb, and to the east the massive peak of Dix dominates the view. It's really quite a spectacular summit. We all eat some lunch, and Jim and I share the rest of our pitas and PB amongst the four of us.

We head back to the South Dix, to make the traverse over to Hough, and quickly find ourselves on another large peak. But like the day before, we can't find the summit register. We continue on down and are suddenly going down a STEEP trail. We consult the map and look around. The only other peak that we can see is the huge summit of Dix. We must have been on Hough, it's the only answer that makes any sense.

We continue down the trail, and run into a guy who had come through our campsite early in the morning, and we describe where we just were, and he doesn't think that we nailed the summit. I'm also skeptical since we didn't find a register, but it's really too late to go back and figure things out. Plus, we are already heading down. This trail proves to be even more steep and technical than the other path we had taken up and is quite a challenge to navigate safely and efficiently. Eventually, it hooks up with the other trail, which reveals the error we had made on the way up. Definite mental note for the next time I'm trying to find my way around these so called paths.

We finally make it down to the main trail and quickly cruise back to the campsite. We also talked to some more folks about the Hough question, and came to the realization that we definitely did not summit. Oh well, something to do for the next trip back to this neck of the woods. Many of the folks have already cleared out (as it is late Sunday evening by now), so things are a little quieter. We all get down to some serious cooking and we finally roll into our tents.

The next morning dawns sunny and promising, but Jim and I are heading out, so we start packing up everything while John and Phil start brewing up some pancakes. Jim and I eventually hit the trail back to civilization around 8:45 and make quick time back to the car. We change into some non-smelly clothes, and hit the road hoping to make it back into Old Forge before all the breakfast joints stop serving.

We pull into "The Pancake House" in Old Forge but it's almost lunch time already! No worries, they serve breakfast around the clock. We both order gigantic omelets and enjoy the amazing food. We pile back into the car and head for the interstate and home.

Aside from some extremely wet clothes and some chilly nights in the tent, a really fun trip. Good company, we managed to nail 3 of the 4 peaks we wanted to do, and we're coming home on schedule. An excellent long weekend.