when: friday june 25th, 2010
where: lake placid / wilmington ny
who drove: i drove my brother's car halfway (the transmission died). mike drove(the entire distance) in his fiance's car.
participants: myself, mike, mark, adam hump(man)
food: (a lot of stuff): peanut butter and cherry preserves on wheat, cliff bars (multiple flavors), pistachios with shells on them, water, tang w/ water, chips ahoy cookies, nature's valley peanut butter and chocolate bars (i think). we also ate different stuff when camping the night before and after the hike (stuffed peppers, pasta and prego sauce, breakfast and lunch at a country store and Judd's respectively).
cellphone service: in parts there was definitely, interesting on top there was cellphone service. i know because both mike and adam called their fiances from the summit.
trail: began at the trail head off of 86 in lake placid (12 mi round trip). muddy in spots as always in the 'dacks. flat, sort of, to whiteface landing, 3 or 4 stream crossings. steep after the lean-to. dusty, duff and roots, then boulders and roots and running water. bushwhack to the rock slide = pretty difficult re diverting from the marked trail too early and having to bushwhack more than necessary. bushwhack: spruce pits, short spruce with many brittle branches, closely spaced, scratchy branches, soft duff and mossy underfoot, precarious fallen trees, precarious ledges of moss-covered rock and drops-offs from moss-tree-covered rocks into spruce pits. rockslide (landslide, really, but i been calling it "rockslide" all my life): steep, wet and mossy in parts; dry and steep in other parts. there was a gravely, avalanche looking part but i forget the name of that kind of phenomenon.
views/weather: started out clear, then sort of low billowy clouds that let a lot of sunlight through. all of lake placid, most of the 46 highpeaks (to the south) viewable. darker and hazier in the directions of vermont (east) and canada (north). we found out later that it had rained in the hamlet of lake placid / mirror lake while we were somewhere on whiteface mountain. cold and windy on the summit and since we were sweaty that didn't help. when the sunlight wasn't on us directly it made it a lot colder.
notes: camping and paddling were considered part of the trip that was centered on the hike, or vice versa. we planned on paddling to either moose island (lake placid, actual lake, north-side) or whiteface landing but the car carrying the canoe stopped working halfway (albany). we all rode in mike's car and camped on paradox lake after leaving the ford and the canoe at sunnyside garage outside albany. we planned on staying saturday night (adam, regarding saturday on friday: "i'm having a good time."). however mike woke up saturday and his ear was bleeding from an incident during the bushwhack and he couldn't hear from that ear. we left saturday morning and watched usa lose to ghana in the first elimination round of the world cup in lake george village at a place called judd's.
*new category* swimming *new category*: swam in paradox lake: a little cloudy some garbage but other wise clean, clear and pretty warm in temperature: swam in lake placid: kinda chilly but warm after a few minutes, very deep clear and tasted nice if the water got in your mouth, like really nice i think they add sugar or tea leaves or something to the lake.
elevation: summit: 4,867'; change; ~3,000'
