As we were expecting this hike started off very calmly. Mostly flat terrain of just dirt with lots of bridges over streams or muddy spots. We booked it at the beginning with 18 minute miles for the first 2. You reach Marcy Dam after about 2 miles of this lovely stuff. The dam was mostly dry. The original bridge was swept away in Hurricane Irene and they are still working on repairing it.
At this point the trail splits again and you can either go to some camping spots or Phelps and Marcy. After crossing a stream you start working slowly uphill away from it. After a mile or so along this trail comes the diversion to Phelps summit. The sign says one mile and you start thinking yay so close this won't be so bad. Oh, but it is. That mile took us over 40 minutes. Unlike last week, I was panting and out of breath more than Ben. I will blame it on the fact that it was the first time I was wearing a backpack to distribute some of the water weight.
As soon as you pass the sign it is immediately steeper. And the trail has far more rocks and giant tree roots to climb on and around. This lasts what feels like forever and then the landscape changes to more of an alpine atmosphere. Since that habitat only exists around 4,000 ft and up, I figured we were close. I was wrong. At some point some French Canadians that had started after us past us, bummer. Ben had to keep waiting for me to catch up but I was drained. So the air changes and the trail switches to bedrock with pine trees scraping at you. There are some small clearing but the summit was still quite far away. Then you reach some rock scrambles which I was less excited about this week. After some serious water drinking and by my sheer determination to not give up, we finally made it to the top. Just kidding! It was a false summit but it was only about 100 scratchy overgrown feet to the real summit.
I don't know which view is better both were wonderful. Different views of some of the same mountains. Ben pretends to have a sense of direction and guesses which mountain is which but I am pretty sure he is always wrong. But he says Big slide's summit was better.
So after some rest and refueling we headed back down. People always seem to linger at the top but we tend to get the heck out of there. I was feeling much better so we made great time down for a while. Much less jelly knee than last week. However after a 3.5 of a mile speeding down it was getting slippery so I started to slow Ben down again. Seriously, with his enormous gait he can just lumber downhill. I was swinging off trees like a monkey, which is dangerous when some of them have pointy little branches.
Once we were back down at the stream where we had seen some boys swimming on the way up, we decided to stop. I thought I would go all the way in but haha that water is cold. I just wanted to get some of the mud off the back of my legs and cool off my feet. But we sat on a steep muddy rock and I touched a sap tree so getting clean became a very difficult task. I ended up dropping my sock in the water and walking back with one wet and one dry boot. My wet foot felt nice and cool and just looked ridiculously pruny when we were done. The hike out was uneventful the rest of the way. General pain from walking for hours. I got a blister in the same exact spot as last week so I know where to protect next time.
We did talk to a DEC ranger that was monitoring the dam about the fact that the GPS had said we had gone 4.75 to get to the summit. Online we had seen a total of 8.2 to 8.4 miles listed at the round trip distance so I thought it would be shorter this week. Apparently the distances on signs that people assume are official haven't been updated in the computer era. They were calculated years ago by running a wheel over a map of the trail >< So I will never trust anyones distance again and will just be guessing from this point on awesome! In actuality this clocked in at a total distance of 9.5 miles with about 2,000 feet of ascent. We have a 3
Anyways that is enough for today here are some pictures!
At this point the trail splits again and you can either go to some camping spots or Phelps and Marcy. After crossing a stream you start working slowly uphill away from it. After a mile or so along this trail comes the diversion to Phelps summit. The sign says one mile and you start thinking yay so close this won't be so bad. Oh, but it is. That mile took us over 40 minutes. Unlike last week, I was panting and out of breath more than Ben. I will blame it on the fact that it was the first time I was wearing a backpack to distribute some of the water weight.
As soon as you pass the sign it is immediately steeper. And the trail has far more rocks and giant tree roots to climb on and around. This lasts what feels like forever and then the landscape changes to more of an alpine atmosphere. Since that habitat only exists around 4,000 ft and up, I figured we were close. I was wrong. At some point some French Canadians that had started after us past us, bummer. Ben had to keep waiting for me to catch up but I was drained. So the air changes and the trail switches to bedrock with pine trees scraping at you. There are some small clearing but the summit was still quite far away. Then you reach some rock scrambles which I was less excited about this week. After some serious water drinking and by my sheer determination to not give up, we finally made it to the top. Just kidding! It was a false summit but it was only about 100 scratchy overgrown feet to the real summit.
I don't know which view is better both were wonderful. Different views of some of the same mountains. Ben pretends to have a sense of direction and guesses which mountain is which but I am pretty sure he is always wrong. But he says Big slide's summit was better.
So after some rest and refueling we headed back down. People always seem to linger at the top but we tend to get the heck out of there. I was feeling much better so we made great time down for a while. Much less jelly knee than last week. However after a 3.5 of a mile speeding down it was getting slippery so I started to slow Ben down again. Seriously, with his enormous gait he can just lumber downhill. I was swinging off trees like a monkey, which is dangerous when some of them have pointy little branches.
Once we were back down at the stream where we had seen some boys swimming on the way up, we decided to stop. I thought I would go all the way in but haha that water is cold. I just wanted to get some of the mud off the back of my legs and cool off my feet. But we sat on a steep muddy rock and I touched a sap tree so getting clean became a very difficult task. I ended up dropping my sock in the water and walking back with one wet and one dry boot. My wet foot felt nice and cool and just looked ridiculously pruny when we were done. The hike out was uneventful the rest of the way. General pain from walking for hours. I got a blister in the same exact spot as last week so I know where to protect next time.
We did talk to a DEC ranger that was monitoring the dam about the fact that the GPS had said we had gone 4.75 to get to the summit. Online we had seen a total of 8.2 to 8.4 miles listed at the round trip distance so I thought it would be shorter this week. Apparently the distances on signs that people assume are official haven't been updated in the computer era. They were calculated years ago by running a wheel over a map of the trail >< So I will never trust anyones distance again and will just be guessing from this point on awesome! In actuality this clocked in at a total distance of 9.5 miles with about 2,000 feet of ascent. We have a 3
Anyways that is enough for today here are some pictures!
And here is the link to the rest. Phelps Mountain Photos
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