Friday night Gene and I stayed over in Lake Placid, in the house that Pete rents for the winter. Got to Lake Placid after midnight, and went to sleep around 1:30am.
2011/03/12 (Saturday)
We woke up around 7 am, had breakfast, and repacked for backpacking/hiking. Got to ADK Loj area at 9 am, geared up, and started backpacking by 9:30 am.
Arrived at Marcy Dam at 10:30 am and broke camp. Took a little while to figure out how to put up the new tent, as we've never used it before - not too bad though, it was up in about 20-30 mins. Unpacked and left the large back pack in the tent. Got all food out of whatever stuff we weren't taking with us and hanged it between two small trees using 20-ft static cord. A little bird was flying around looking for food - at some point it sat down on my hand, which was really cool. A mongoose (or some similar) was prowling around, with an eye for our food. At some point he came within a few feet of me, trying to get to it - and I had to shoo him away.
We started going up to Marcy by 12:20pm. I carried the single backpack we took with us (about 20lb), as I needed the training, and Gene hasn't hiked in two years. Most of the way we went shirtless, since we were sweating quiste a bit. Got a lot of "wow's", "now I've seen everything's", and "so, why are you guys doing this". Got to top of Marcy by 3:20pm. Visibility was very poor - was very cloudy / foggy.
Near the top of Marcy we meet a couple of Russian-speaking guys from Canada (Vova and Shurik). Vova's birthday was on Friday and they did Marcy to celebrate, kind of like Gene and I. They waited while we summited (about 10 mins), and then went to summit themselves (since they missed the summit the first time around). We went back down together - one of these guys was farting like there is no tomorrow, and stinking up entire forest. By the time we got down it was about 5:30pm. I promised Vova and Shurik we'd stop by their camp (which was across the bridge from ours) and have a drink with them, but decided against it later, since it was getting darker and colder. After ditching the plan to hang out with the Canadians (which Gene wasn't too excited about in the first place), and started on the dinner.
We boiled water from snow (about a liter worth of) and made Lipton chicken noodle soup. Afterwards boiled some more water, and made a backpacking dish, which tasted great. Got into tent, and went to sleep in about 15 mins or less. I woke up about 4-5 times to have a drink. Eugene kept waking up to munch on pretzels. He needed to piss at some point, and had some trouble sleeping afterwards, not willing to go outside in the cold.
2011/03/13 (Sunday)
Alarm, which I set the night before, went off around 7 am. It took us about half an hour to actually wake up, then we got up, packed everything, and got out by 8:30am. We were out of the woods and back to ADK Loj by about 9:15am. Drove over to The Mountaineer, where I bought a new Meteor 3 Petzl helmet and Gene rented Scarpa Inverno boots. After that, we went to the nearby diner to have breakfast - ordered a whole lot of food, including each: 3 eggs, ham, bacon, pan cakes, and coffee. At that point we figured out that time was shifted, and it was actually an hour later then we thought it was. Paid and left to go to Pitchoff, where we spent about half an hour getting geared up, and walked up to the ice. I've walked up, set up the top rope, which took about 20 minutes to half an hour, and rappelled down. Explained the basics to Gene, and had him belay me while I climbed up. After taking me down, Gene started climbing up, but kept having problems with front of his foot hitting the boot. Eventually we figured out that his nails were too long and needed cutting. I went up again and took down the ropes, then rappelled down. We hit the road to stop by Lake Placid to pick up our laptops around 2pm.
By around 8:30pm we were back at Eugene's, where Tanya was waiting for us with sushi from Mr. Pi's. After we finished with sushi, we unpacked Gene's car and I headed back home, getting there by around 10:30-11pm. Unpacked everything, hanging stuff to dry, and laying out both the inner and outer tent parts in the garage. What a fantastic weekend!
Lessons Learned:
- Don't forget to bring extra socks and extra sock liners
- Bring extra underpants, although this is debatable whether extra weight is worth it. On the other hand, if going somewhere for a few days, need to think about the stinkiness!
- Change socks right after being done with long hike (if socks get wet)
- Waterproof boots better. Maybe wear plastic bags over boots?
- Wear full-zip outer shell pants, to improve ventillation
- 20-degree sleeping bag is just warm enough in 20 degree weather in 4-season tent after you get wet.
