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After conquering Vermont we hightailed it to New York’s Adirondack Park for her high point, Mount Marcy at 5,344 ft. It was dark by the time we got to the trailhead but we managed to find free camping on Meadows Road, along with about thirty other cars. I whipped us up our favorite pre- and post-hike meal- spaghetti and meat sauce- and we promised each other we wouldn’t drive at night anymore. We watch too much Walking Dead to set up camp next to a bunch of strangers in the middle of the night.
We drove to the Adirondack Loj before breakfast the next morning, and good thing because the parking lot there filled up quickly and parking is illegal within a mile of the lodge, which would obviously add another two miles to the already 14+ mile hike. But also a bad thing because the Adirondack Mountain Club charges $10 to park there. We set up breakfast shop next to the van and fried eggs and bacon and had them on top of everything bagels with black coffee. It was real good until a park employee came over and told us to stop being so rude and move our crap so other people could park there. Life lesson. Don’t be dicks. Before we started hiking I looked down and noticed Greg’s right boot had completely blown out the sole. He took his runners just in case but hiked in the boot anyway because he’s super bad-ass.
The Adirondack Park is six million acres, making it the biggest park in the lower 48 and almost a fifth of the total land area of New York. Roughly half of those six million acres are considered ‘wild’ state lands and half of are private. Mt. Marcy, known to the Native people as Tawahus, is apparently granite, but I can’t find anything online to back that statement up. Isn’t that weird? But I did read that Vice President Theodore Roosevelt had just returned from his summit of Mt. Marcy when he heard President William McKinley had started to really go downhill from the gunshot he took to the abdomen the week before (the ultimately successful assassination attempt by Leon Czolgosz).
Mt. Marcy was a nice long day and a really great hike. Next time we’re saving the $10 for parking and hitching or just walking the extra two miles. There are lots of trails out of the Loj so you could make Marcy a longer dayhike with more summits along the way. There were $0.25/min showers waiting for us at the bottom, though Greg described his as ‘like being peed on by an 85 yr old man’. Still, we were clean and after eating cold spaghetti in the parking lot we were full. Clean, full, tired, and happy. Hiking is the best. And the Warckens are up to 22 high points!
