First Vacation of Covid-19: We Survived the Adirondacks

We’ve had a couple of nasty weather days here in NYC. 

Days of damp and yuck and cooler temps, enough to let the mind wander and think about what the city is going to be like in the coming winter months when it’s both brutally cold, windy, and with potential snow. And what will the holidays look like? Thanksgiving in a pandemic is a hard pass for me and my parents. And then I spiral even further and think about that I was snowboarding just one month prior to the pandemic. 

I fucking miss travel. 

A lot. 

So when I was asked if I wanted to head up to the Adirondacks to tackle three of the 46 high peaks — aka, get the fuck out of the city for four days — I happily obliged. 

Looking back on trips of Yore, I’ve partaken in some hiking. I’ve taken a stroll through Valley Forge National Park outside of Philly. And a stroll through Great Falls Park in Northern Virginia. And I (literally) ran up Chimney Rock Park in Lake Lure, North Carolina. 

When my injury settled in at the end of August, I randomly started taking the Metro North train (north) to Cold Spring and Beacon. And those were the most “arduous” hikes to date, literally labeled “hard” on the AllTrails map and leaving me feeling beaten up and satisfied while sipping a glass of wine upon completion. 

After my birthday hike in Beacon — coupled with my bum Achilles’ tendon — I decided it high time to invest in some hiking shoes. In the process, I ended up acquiring proper hiking pants, more wool socks, and a pair of microspikes to round out my largely expensive Monday afternoon. My comrades and I also discussed what our strategy was going to be, as one of us read a ton of reviews from the previous weekend which all stated that there was already ice on the mountain. 

Me being me, I gave zero fucks about any of this information and continued on with my wine and guacamole. 

So the plan was simple: drive to the Adirondacks, fuel up, hydrate with Pedialyte before an early bedtime, and up and at ‘em for a 4:00 a.m. wake-up call for a roughly seven-hour hike summiting Algonquin, Iroquois, and Wright, starting at sunrise. 

Most of this happened. 

We drove to the Adirondacks (at a leisurely pace). We checked in to our hotel. We fueled. (On nachos, which were topped with so much stuff including pulled pork, and they were enough to feed at least five adult humans.) We each had 16 ounces of Pedialyte before our early bedtime. And we successfully arose at 4:00 a.m. the following morning and departed the hotel an hour later. 

As we drove to the trailhead, we discussed how we were “certainly not” hiking prior to sunrise. Even though Doug brought his bike flashlight, we deemed it to be a “stupid idea” and “why on earth would we do that, we’ll just sit in the car in the parking lot for an hour until sunrise.”

We managed to successfully get a parking spot at the trailhead (which is why we left so early to begin with), and then everything that I just stated flew right out the window. 

“Ladies, I think we should have an ETD of 6:15, tops,” Douglas said. 

And not even batting an eye, we just went with it, like we were pros at this hiking game. 

Checking us in and also instructing who should play us in the movie should we plummet to our dooms.

So we were off, the three of us trotting through the forest at a good clip with Doug acting as our own personal Rudolph with his bike light beacon. 

For the first hour, we made jokes about how funny we were and took note of how cold it was. We chatted with other hikers and wished them all good luck — we knew it would be hard, but how bad could this be, anyway? 

As the sun rose and we could successfully see our surroundings, the temps started to rise and we took a moment to disrobe a layer of clothing. By now we had reached rocks and boulders, passed a waterfall and several babbling brooks, all while reminding each other to not put too much bodyweight on any tree limb we were using for support. 

We took note of how much time had passed and how much time we (supposedly, surely) had left. We made friends with a group of gentlemen (likely from the city, just guessing given conversation), and joked about the large boulders and about the poor excuse for a bathroom at the trail merge. 

And then we started noticing black ice on those boulders, as well as light snow on the trees — it was practically Narnia. At this point, Danika and I were taking the same path up the mountain together, avoiding any bad icy patches if we could. (Read: Easy Street.) 

A couple of hikers who passed us earlier were now descending, saying they couldn’t summit due to their lack of microspikes. The ice was getting thicker now, and Danika and I decided to pull over and throw on our spikes. My confidence restored, I thought I would have no problem reaching all three summits. 

At every stop we took, we turned around to look at the breathtaking views, and somewhere around 4,000 feet, we saw people summiting to Wright, which would be our third and final peak of the day. 

More climbing, more rocks, more snow and ice. At one point, the vertical got to be a challenge and I needed some reprieve, so I hit a manmade path through the trees. Danika followed suit while Doug stayed on the rocks. 

And then we were above the treeline. The ice now was thick and the sun was slowly creeping up over Algonquin. We reached a particularly steep boulder covered with ice and Doug instructed which way we should go up (again, Easy Street), as well as to throw on our shells as the wind picked up tremendously. It was the first time of the day that I felt nervous, but we managed just fine.

The wind, indeed, was bitter cold, and my gator was now up across my face. I looked at Wright on my left, Iroquois (or at least, what I though was Iroquois) on my right. We saw some hikers descending who noted how beautiful the summit was. We pressed on, and then we we came to a full-stop, staring straight into the face of a Abbe-sized boulder that was completely encapsulated in at least four inches of ice. Doug managed to get himself up easily, and then pulled Danika up to a safe space. 

My headspace completely shattered, and I had a full meltdown and panic attack and said that I simply couldn’t do it. (And thus we would refer to this ice boulder as “Crying Point” for the remainder of the trip.) 

Like a scene out of mother fucking Aladdin, Doug reached out his hand and instructed me to take it. 

“I’ve got you.” 

I put aside my tears (I really didn’t), grabbed his hand, and he pulled me up and threw me into Danika’s arms. 

I cried out all my relief and hugged Doug as well, and tried not to think about what the descent on that shitbag boulder would feel like.

Meltdown city.

Now victorious, we climbed to the summit, screaming with joy. And then I looked over towards Wright.

“That look’s like child’s play,” I said to Douglas. 

I truly cannot stress this enough that those were my exact words — this, my friends, is the art of foreshadowing.

The time was now 10:24 a.m. We took a moment to take some photos, fuel (all while blocking ourselves from the brutal wind), and reassess our game plan. Summiting Algonquin took four hours of our supposedly seven-hour hike. We still had to get to Iroquois, turn around and ascend Algonquin again, and then head down to the trail merge to ascend Wright. 

We now banked on this being an eight-hour hike. 

For whatever reason, I had zero qualms descending Algonquin (or any mountain of the day, for that matter). When we reached the tree line, we were hit with another merge and started our ascent to what was not Iroquois, but was in fact, Boundary. 

“What the shit is this?,” I asked. I don’t remember signing up for four peaks. (To be clear, Boundary is not labeled as a High Peak which Danika fact checked even though it is over 4,000 feet in elevation and thus makes zero sense.) 

Regardless of the rocks and ice (and nature’s ice luge in which I recorded the best Instagram boomerang of all time), Boundary was by and large my favorite portion of the day. 

And then things started to get dark. I was suddenly climbing an extra “peak,” and also another smaller unnamed peak, and knew I had to return to Algonquin before hitting the final peak of the day. My anxiety was settling in and I didn’t want to do this anymore. I was officially over it. 

I put all of my feelings away and kept trucking, keeping quiet to myself and forging through the ice, snow, and wind. Finally, we reached our second peak of the day. 

It was now 11:33 a.m. I was downright cold — and still over it — and was determined to keep moving to get this show over with. And so we returned from whence we came. 

The return trip to Algonquin was steeper and my quads were feeling it. We crossed paths with two lovely girls who we would later play a game of cat-and-mouse with for the descent of Algonquin. We took a brief moment when we re-peaked to stop for lunch, which for me, consisted of a Honey Stinger waffle. 

When we started descending, I was flooded with memories of Crying Point. How the actual fuck was I going to get down from that damn thing?

I caught up with the two gals who were making moves, took mental notes, and asked them to reiterate precisely how they accomplished such a feat. And then I requested that they stay put should I plummet forward and knock my own teeth out. (And they did! Such kind humans.) I successfully got down from Crying Point and told myself that that, right there, was the true victory, and waited for Doug, who took an accidental way down but stuck the landing, and Danika, who carefully followed in my footsteps.

Now, to Wright. 

Thankfully it was getting warmer and so the ice and snow was slowly but surely melting. When we reached the aforementioned vertical from the ascent, Danika and I found our tree path and started to make our way down through the mud. (I will take this time to say that I fucking love mud and would roll around in it over climbing sheets of ice. Mud and trees all day, every day.) Doug continued via the rocky road.

Then we heard a crack. Danika and I simultaneously looked to our right and saw Doug slide at least 20 feet down the boulders with no end in sight. Ahead was one of our new gal pals, who saw him coming, stopped dead in her tracks and then used her own body as means to catch him. (She was completely banking on that working, telling us later that she was just “hoping for the best outcome possible.”) 

Luckily, Doug stopped his feet on a rock and thus stopped sliding. Shaken up, we made our way to him at the merge (carefully, mind you!). Doug had two busted up hands, cookies to eat, and a story to be told for years. 

To Wright, again. 

I will be perfectly honest and vulgar when I say that, after all the shit we had already endured for the six-plus hours, Wright swept in to be the biggest dickbag of them all, delivering on all the vertical fronts, zero reprieve, and zero grips to get your bearings. When we made it above the treeline, I had no idea as to which way I should tackle the fucker. It was a scramble with serious vert and I was not having it. 

(This would then be referred to Crying Peak.) 

Danika’s face literally screams one million words.

Doug made mention of how pretty Algonquin looked and Danika and I practically told him to shut his mouth. And when we finally made it to the top, I swiftly said, “Okay, I’m getting the fuck off of this mountain now.” And so I descended down via crab crawl, telling myself all the hard shit I’ve overcome in my 36 years of existence and singing various songs by Dave Matthews Band. 

When we finally got off Wright, the rest of the hike was largely boulders. So many, in fact, that I don’t think I realized just how many we were climbing over in the first place. Furthermore, the views never ceased; I wondered if we were ever going to get down and when. 

At this point the sun was starting to set behind the mountains and my left ankle was slowly swelling in my boot. Danika and I took in all the mud we could — literally every chance we got, we were in it.  We told ourselves that we would have our celebratory beverages once we approached the forest. (Yes I brought batched cocktails, don’t @ me.) At some point, Doug said we were close to two hours from being done. I told him to stop reminding us of that fact. 

Finally — finally — we reached the forest, and Douglas and I cracked open our Old Fashioned cocktails while Danika popped her mini Champagne bottle. It was like the final mile of a marathon. 

We reached the car at precisely 6:15 p.m., an exact 12 hours from when we set off on our adventure. We each changed into our post-hike attire of sweats and I tore into my bag of SunChips. 

We’d done it. We set out what we wanted to do. It may not have been according to plan, but it happened. The communication and trust were on lock, we somehow managed to have conversation for that length of time (aside from Wright, anyway), and I couldn’t be more proud of our little support system. 

See you soon, Adirondacks. I’ve got 43 high peaks left to go. 

Not pictured: the artsy dad to my left taking an artsy photo of his daughter sitting on the roof of their Jeep.