With the start of the colder weather, it was time to bring out the winter pack, and to start getting used to the larger weight.  Today I did the Mt. Adams Fire Tower.  I knew going in that this was a steep, and unrelenting hike.  The wintry mix that I got hit with on the way in didn't make it any easier.  The hike in to the trail junction was quite easy, but the climb was difficult.  It was part due to the heavy pack, part due to the wet and slippery trail.  Boy, they were right when they said it was a steep hike.

What does one do after they spend 8 hours sitting at a trailhead talking to hundreds of people?  They go for a hike, of course!  It was peak foliage or damn near it this weekend, and it was busy.  I wanted to do Mt. Jo just to get a GPS track of it for the Lake Placid 9 and to see the new long trail.  I get down to Loj, and it's a mad house.  There were actually rangers ticketing people on Loj road for illegal parking.  I turn around and go down meadows lane to do Mt.

This was a quick hike... literally.  It took longer to drive to the trailhead than it did to hike it.  We were up in the area for the Peaks and People seminar series in Elizabethtown put on by the Grace Hudowalski Charitable Trust.  We went to the seminar, then an early dinner/late lunch, and then hit this on the way out.  The trail is literally 0.2 miles of road to a cell tower, with the fire tower being a little bit further up.

Having a nice day ahead of me, I decided to do Gore.  I went up from an unusual trailhead, the Raymond Brook Trail instead of the Schaefer trail out of the resort.  This route is a ski trail until it hits the Schaefer trail, and it was beautiful and obviously not well used as I didn't see a single person on it.  What I did see though was a startled black furry butt running away not far from the start.  My first thought was it was a bear cub, but it was way too small to be that.  Instead, I think it may have been a fischer I spooked.  

After taking the heart of the summer off from hiking, I got back into it with one easy hike with a couple other people I met through a hiking group.  I was not leading this, but I know the trail, so gave advice as needed.  Original plan was to hike up and back.  I talked the group into making it a little longer and go on some real trails (the shortest hike up is mostly forest road).  So a loop was made.  It was absolutely beautiful, and the temperatures were more than tolerable.  Twas a good day.

In my quest for fire towers, I went far north and did Lyon and Loon Mountain fire towers.  Two very different hikes.  Both were very muggy and took a lot out of me making me actually eat on the trail!  I also went through nearly 5 L of water over the 12.7 miles.

A while ago, a friend from my ADF days and I were talking about hiking as she had started hiking the Whites in New Hampshire, and I had already finished my 46er.  I told her that I would love to show her "my" mountains some day, whenever she wanted to.  Well, this memorial day was the time for me to show her.  My original plans were to come in from the south, backpack into the Lake Colden/Flowed Lands area and grab some peaks out of there like Marshal, Marcy, Skylight, Grey, and Colden, but the one place she had to go was Avalanche Pass/Lake.

Today was a prep for memorial day hiking/backpacking, and I failed miserably.  The hike itself is quite beautiful up to the former caretaker's cabin, that is once you get off the long road walk in.  You pass through forest and meadows, by ponds and over streams.  I actually saw some fish in one stream and painted trillium, which I don't recall ever seeing before.  The trail up from the cabin was a typical ADK trail, but the views from the tower are lovely, and I haven't seen the high peaks this well from the south before.

Today, I took a jaunt over to Baxter.  This is not a big mountain, but it does have some wonderful views at the ledges near the top.  Started off on 9N and followed the trail to the top.  Overall the trail was in pretty good shape, and the snow was all gone.  Once up top it was a question of do I go over and come back around, or just go back down and do another peak.  I went on, and this was a mistake.