Old Trip Report (Winter ascent of Marcy, 1/3/2009)

Seeing as I meant to start up a blog a couple of months ago, I figured I'd make my first post about a day trip I made early in January.  I spent most of November and December planning some sort of an adventure for the holiday break.  I wanted to get out to Colorado to try my hand at some winter fourteeners or to get some backcountry snowboarding in with friends, but money was not on my side (nor was the prospect of wasting that much gas or money on a bus ticket that would prove itself more useful in the summertime).  So i opted to stay in the northeast.  I changed my plans to work themselves around a winter ascent of Mt. Marcy (5344' elevation), the highest point in New York.  Marcy is 14.8 miles RT, and is a hell of a tiring winter hike.  Some people take a day or two extra to camp out, but i figured I wouldn't have too much trouble doing it as a day hike (I did pack enough extra gear to be suited for an overnight, which ended up weighing me down 25 pounds or so, but I'm sure I wouldn't have regretted it had I run into any trouble up there).  The day itinerary fell into place as follows:

Saturday, January 3, 2009

4:30 AM:  Depart from Albany with too little sleep (oops).

-  Sometime between these two got pulled over by a cop with a mohawk in Lake George while trying to find a gas station, he was friendly and pointed me towards a gas station.

6:45 AM:  Arrive at Adirondack Loj.

7:00 AM:  Depart from ADK Loj via Van Hoevenberg Trail with light snow falling and headlamp on.

7:45 AM:  Got treated to a beautiful sunrise at Marcy Dam , 5.1 miles to go!

9:15 AM:  More Beautiful views from Indian Falls, got to see Algonquin and the Macintyre Range snowcapped and caked in clouds.  No wind cover was provided here and it served as a reminder as to what windchill can do to predicted temperatures..  3 Miles to Go!

10:10 AM:  Reached trail marker which happily informed me that only 1.2 miles remained.

-Reached Alpine Zone soon thereafter.  I didn't think crampons would be a realistic necessity, since my MSR Denali's have full crampons on the bottom and have served as truly awesome snowshoes thus far.  A badly bent trekking pole and a bummed leg would be a reminder of how nice they would have been up there.

11:10 - 11:30 AM:  Summit!  The only shelter from the wind was beneath the commemorative plaque.  I caught my breath here while staring into my surroundings and trying to pick out what I could through the nasty cloud cover.  I spent a couple of minutes on the roof of New York and decided to head back down.  This was the only point of the trip where I worried about staying on trail.  The entire alpine zone was caked in about an inch of very white ice, making object differentiation difficult.  I made a point of reference with lake tear of the clouds and finally picked out an obscured cairn and started the trickiest part of the descent.

12:00 AM:  Ate "lunch" (some clif bars and vegetarian beef jerky) at Indian Falls.  I took a well deserved breather and relished in the thought of my warm car sitting back at the bottom.

2:15 PM:  Reached Adirondack Loj, changed into some warm clothes, and fell into the backseat of my car.

Overall, the day went well.  I finished over an hour ahead of my original schedule.  We drove into Lake Placid to get food and then started the drive back down to Albany.  Marcy CAN be done as a day hike in any season, assuming you are in the right physical condition for it.  It is a strenuous hike, but the overall RT took just over 7 hours and was more than feasible for a day.

More pictures of the trip can be found here.