Our first Adk High Peak- Big Slide - Katie

As I am writing this we are finally sitting in bed again after leaving our house at 9AM. Our day started with me not being able to find my hiking socks I bought a week ago. Once I gave up the search and we filled up 4 water bottles, we headed out to breakfast. After a big protein filled breakfast at our favorite diner in Saratoga, we hit the road. It is around a hour and a half drive up to the Lake Placid area where most of the high peaks are. The town most of the trailheads are centered around is called Keene Valley and you drive through a cute, old, small town main street which clearly caters to the tourists brought in by the peaks. We drove on a one lane gravel road (very typical) to the parking lot where there was a DEC attendant collecting the parking fee crazy!

So there are 2 paths up to Big Slide, which obviously means people go different ways in and out and around. Technically where we parked is called "the garden" and you can reach lots of different peaks from there. We chose to start by going over the 3 brothers which are 3 different peaks (although not high peaks). This trail starts you off with an immediate incline which doesn't really let up until you get to the top of the first brother. Immediately out of breath and tired, we drank 2 smaller water bottles before we even got to the first summit. This ended up being a problem later. And this was our first mountain with a rock scramble. Ben had asked me what that means and I had laughed at him previously. He will know tell you that he definitely does NOT like them.

So after our first rock scramble we took a break... and apparently I never wrote about the middle soo...

- after the third brother was the first significant descent of the day. It was so cold in that area my hands went numb. Yes, it was a beautiful 78 degree day but a dark damp forest combined with my crummy circulation meant that I was holding my hands together and blowing into them like it was January.

That last .5 of a mile felt like the longest of my life. I am not sure if this is the longest hike I have ever done but it is certainly is the longest hike I have done in the past 5 years so I felt like I was dying. Every step I could feel every rock or stick through my boots like I was barefoot.