Red-lining when we're talking hiking is the desire to hike every mile of every trail, and mark them off on the map with a "red line".  I have a desire to do this with the high peaks region, and as I look through the trails that I don't have marked off, a little bit is stuff I didn't have a GPS for or lost the track.  Others are just little things that aren't the main routes anywhere.  Saturday, I went in through Loj and went to do a couple of those that are just not the main path, and one that I just didn't have the GPS trace for.  So, I started off from the parking lots and went over the trails to the heart lake loop.  That short bit of trail from the lot to the loop was new to me.  The loop was not, but I also didn't have the GPS trace for it.  Then I got to the SW corner trail, which I mistook for the old Marcy Dam trail.  I shortly realize that the ski trail I was on was not what I wanted to be on, so I bushwacked over to the proper trail, the Old MacIntyre trail.  From here I went on to the current Algonquin trail, then back to VanHovenberg and out to Marcy Dam and up to the Phelps Brook crossing.

From here, I took another new trail to me, and that was the high water route.  I found myself again on the Marcy Truck Trail and headed out to the trail junction with the Algonquin trail.  From here I took the old Marcy Dam trail back to its junction with the Old MacIntyre trail, backtracked about 1/4 mile to get the bit I missed, and then back to the Heart Lake loop and back to the car.  Yes, it really was as convoluted as it sounds.

Mud was really the name of the hike.  I've heard that the Old MacIntyre and Old Marcy Dam trails were perpetually muddy.  They surely were.  I just plowed through them though.  Nothing horribly deep, but there were spots I put my pole in where that sunk a good 10 inches.  The high water trail as also a little muddy, but it was obviously not as well used as the VanHovenberg trail, so it was still a nice trail that wasn't horribly erroded.  The campsites and lean-to along that trail and the one I passed on the Marcy Truck Trail all looked to be lovely sites that would be ideal to camp at.  Quiet and away from the masses at Marcy Dam.

In the end I did 8.2 miles in 3 hours and got a couple miles of new trails.  Within the central high peaks I still have a few miles of trail to hit.  Some of them will be done this summer, others will take a few more years to do.  But, I'm getting there.