Adirondack super awesome shred gnarliness: the path less traveled

Adirondacks March 2015 from Matthew Farquharson on Vimeo.

Different people have different tactics for getting to through the winter, I'm all about embracing winter for a period of time, then forcing it out of my life. One way I like to do this is give it a good wrap up weekend; "Hey winter, let's have fun one last time, then see you in November, okay?". I decided to plan a trip in the Adirondacks and invite all of my friends! Matt. I love you buddy.
I got confirmation that I had a travel partner at noon on Friday, while gorging myself at an all you can eat buffet for students, Matt was coming and he'd be at my place around midnight.
Around 1:30 Matt showed up, we finalized our route plans, and went to bed at about 2 (I was too excited to sleep actually) and we woke up at 5:30am to get an early start on a big trip (Noonmark Mountain, Dix Mountain, Beckhorn, Hough Peak, South Dix Mountain, East Dix (Gracie) Mountain and Macomb Mountain on day 1, followed by a massive hike around Elk Lake to the next range where we would do Pinnacle Mountain, Blake Peak, Mt. Colvin, over Elk Pass to Nippletop Moutain, then Dial Mountain, and Finally Bear Den Mountain before a big hike out to the car.). We didn't look too hard but it seemed to be something like 2 20km days and about 13 mountains or something. Time to sleep.

The first mountain (Noonmark Mountain) was 75% incredible, the whole way up was really nice and challenging, but once we were about 3/4 of the way up, we were above the ceiling (in the clouds), and couldn't see much. We quickly found out that down could be a lot more fun, and started running and jumping to a slide on our bums (or I even penguin slid on my stomach once or twice). This was like going down a waterslide, except for the fact that there are trees and cliffs around, but it was fun and significantly less effort so why not?

We made quick distance along the valley to the next mountain range, where we started climbing Dix Mountain. This was a complete wall to climb, but once we could get to the top we were able to hike along the dagger's edge of the range, the problem was that there had been so few people using these trails that they were very hard to find.

Matt climbing up Dix Mountain, we did this steepness for about 45 minutes. 

I managed to spot some faded snowshoe tracks, and we began our treck from Dis Mountain to Beckhorn, then across to Hough Peak, and eventually South Dix and East Dix. Getting along the razorback of the mountain proved tougher than we expected for a few reasons. Firstly, it being so late in the winter, we figured that we didn't need snowshoes because it hadn't snowed recently. What we didn't foresee was that nobody gets that far out and does the trails so that we were sinking into the snow up to our knees or crotch or armpits. The next problem was that because the prevailing winds always come up one side of the mountain and down the other, you end up with a snowdrift effect that piles snow taller than the trees, and out past where the cliffs and rocks are. This made for precarious walking, as it was a pretty snowy storm, and if you stepped to close to a buried tree, the snow wouldn't support you at all and you could be up to your armpits in snow.

The struggle was real here (and in the video at the end of this post). 

Hiking along the ridgeline was pretty awesome as the cliffs dropped off on both sides, but it was a bummer that there was so much snow that you couldn't really see out. It was a slow going, with lots of crawling just to keep on top of the snow, or to duck under the limbs that make the tops of these trees, and by the time we hit the turnoff where we would go to East Dix Mountain, we decided to do the responsible thing and get over Macomb Mountain so that we got to shelter on time before it got too dark.

Look how skinny these trees are, they're the tops of trees!

When we summitted Macomb, the trail just stopped. We couldn't even find the faintest trail at all. Upon looking at the map, I realized that we had definitely continued along the Dix Mountain chain, and were actually way out on East Dix mountain. We ended up there because we mistook a fork in the trail. In the summer there would have been more forks than there are because nobody had blazed these trails, so we went much too far up another mountain, and now had to get to the shelter for the night as fast as we could before dark. It was hard to see trails in the light when you're not near the well traveled paths, and it was starting to rain. We never got up the elusive Macomb mountain.

Cliff? What cliff?

We found a lean to just as it was getting dark, and after about an hour of running/hiking in the rain.  Thank you Lillian Brook for giving us a dry spot to sleep. I guess that you can't really trust maps in the winter so much, because you're at the mercy of whoever has blazed the trails before. We were pretty relieved to get to the lean to and start boiling water and re-hydrate our space food. I was sitting in my sleeping bag mixing my packet of dehydrated food and boiling water that I realized what my greatest fear would be: if the whole mixture somehow opened while in my bag. Which happened about 20 seconds after this thought occurred. I may have had water and pad thai all over me, but that night's sleep was the best one that I can remember in a while, bundled up in a 3 sided log cabin with a roof over my head. We slept from 8pm to 7am, ate some oatmeal (we had to share Matt's breakfast because I thought that he said he was going to bring me one too), and hit the trail.

Ready to leave our snowed in accommodations

We got out for a long day and started to work our way around the southernmost bit of our route, out past Elk Lake and then wrapping up north west toward the Blake Mountain Range. It was precarious just like the day before, sinking feet in the snow all of the time, which led to a nervous mission-impossible style of hiking, trying to be light on our feet even with the heavy packsWe got about 14 km from where we started and the trail just stopped. Judging by the map however, there would be a trail intersection in less than 1km, so we decided to trudge through some seriously deep snow. How deep? I don't actually know, because if you're walking on pure snow you typically only ever sink to your crotch. I did however see the tops of what would be ~8ft beech trees sticking out from the snow, so I like to imagine that we were in snow over our heads. Went went over a small mountain pass this way and then the trail stopped. 

It took us more than a half hour to go about 700m. And the there was no trail, just signs where the intersection should be. Our options were clear: hike 4 more miles to up two mountain peaks to where we THINK there would be packed trail again, or turn around, and hike 15km back to where we started, and another close-to-20km back to the car over the Dix range again. Given that we couldn't even guarantee that the trail was packed in 4 miles (and that that would take about 8 hours maybe), and that we only had a couple of CLIF bars left, we turned back. Close to 9km later we were back on trail that was hard enough to run on, still 5 or 6km from where we had woken up, and more than 6 hours into our day, which started at 8am. This meant that it was time to run. We set a good pace along the trail, with a fast walk up hills and inclines, and running flat sections and downhills. Our next trail decision came when we got to the fork that would be either taking a trail straight up Dix Mountain, or going a slightly longer route up Hunter's Pass. Either way, we were more than 30km into our second day of hiking, with limited food, limited daylight, and weather that was getting colder. Matt was a big advocate of going straight up and over Dix, we thought that we could back down in the valley on the other side in an hour and a half. Dix mountain broke us. It took more than 2 hours just to reach the summit, and the trail was TOUGH. 

The higher we went, the further from the top we seemed, worn out smiles

Matt had gotten into his every man for himself mode. We were no longer singing songs (which is fair because we were going up a mountain and that requires a lot of breathing), but the banter back and forth had stopped, and it was a stone cold process of walking, crawling, and sinking through the snow. I could also tell that something was wrong because I could take it easy for a minute and still catch up to him. I'm never faster than Matty up a mountain. After more than an hour of silence (mixed with my mumbling about stupid snow and having to swim through snow to get up a mountain) Matt looked back at me and said that he was cold. Sure, it's the winter and it's quite cold and windy, but the trail was very steep and I wasn't cold at all, the poor guy had bonked, and had no blood sugar left. We stopped and shared the last CLIF bar, getting colder but re energizing at the same time, and kept going. We were climbing a bit of a razorback up the mountain, summitting Beckhorn before continuing up Dix, allthewhile with cliffs on both sides, and only somewhat sheltered by the trees from the wind which prevailed from our left. Finally, we were completely exposed and had made the summit of Dix Mountain, which was a dangerous mix of icy rocks and a lot of wind. 

The way down Dix gave us both the energy to keep trucking, sliding down wall that took us 45 minutes to climb the day before was pretty awesome, like a dangerous icy waterslide that lasted 5 minutes. I set the pace across the valley as we ran back to the car, and just as it was getting dark, after 11 hours of hiking, we got back to the road. It was 19 combined hours of hiking, and about 74km in 2 days, I'm glad that I've got great friends to push myself and find new places with, and that when things go went bad, we manged to make the right call and get out of there, even if it involved 48km in one day in the Adirondacks. Thanks for the support buddy, we'll get that whole route in the summer.

Compasses, maps, and initials all day long

I'm sure that most athletes who have an almost unhealthy focus on a seasonal sport get into a routine in the off season that can seem a bit mundane at times. We all crave that exercise and competition, or even just something to do until it's time to compete in our respective sports again. For me, I just can't wait to ride bikes, my strategy as such is to book myself up entirely for every weekend until bike season is upon us again, and I have varying success in my endeavors. Last weekend I tried out for the Nordic ski team, but it's a very small, pretty elite race squad, and I'm quite new to the sport, so that was a flop. This weekend however, I had the opportunity to take part in an orienteering race through the snow.

A cool landmark in the race, I wonder how long it's been stuck for? (Brad Jennings Photo)

The concept is simple, one hour before start we are all given maps - this race spanned farm fields, forests, canals, creeks, ponds, swamps, rivers, drumlins, hydrolines, and even a university campus. The race format is teams of two, navigating in our own chosen order to try to make it to all of the 20 checkpoints and back in 3 hours. There are only 2 ways to get penalties - being late (penalty of 10 points per minute past the given 3 hours), and losing your punch card (penalty of 100 points). The 20 checkpoints in the race were worth anything from 20 points to the biggest which was worth 70 points, with their value assigned based on how far from the start finish that they are, how technical the terrain was that they are in, and how hard they are to find. Seems simple, right? Right. 

Measuring distances so that we can count steps and get there precisely

My buddy Kelsey and I were team Gnarvest, and friends Matt and Nichola joined as a co-ed team called Matata Hakuna. The race started off pretty well, and almost all of the teams went to checkpoint number 1 first. Then Kelsey and I deviated from the pack and ran straight down a steep ridge to start searching for checkpoint 3.  After number 3 we were the first to make it to checkpoint 20 (worth the most points) and as such I left a yellow C + K unavoidably close to the checkpoint as a calling card. This was a trend that I somehow managed to uphold for 5 of the 20 checkpoints, though admittedly the initials got smaller and smaller. 

Team Gnarvest - also did I mention that I"m always somehow #31? (Brad Jennings Photo)

We got a bit mixed up and lost in the northern boundary of the map for what seemed like forever, but eventually got our bearings and got up to checkpoint number 5, which was inside a massive cedar tree. This is where things went bad for us
"Hey Chris, pass me the punchcard"
"Dude you had the punchcard"
"You're right, Uh oh."

Now we were on the hunt for a white punchcard in the snow, which could have been anywhere as we had run probably 2km since the last time that we punched it. We gave a solid effort of backtracking and scanning the ground, desperately looking for the punchcard as the other teams kept finding checkpoints and filling in theirs. Eventually we just had to call it and get back on track, we figure that we could just punch the map, and if we went really really fast we may be able to still cover a lot of ground.

We may have screwed things up, but at least our uniform was on point
(Just had to get rid of the turtle necks) (Brad Jennings Photo)

This extra pressure brought Kelsey and I to another level of speed (our fastest km in the 3 hour, 20km race was 4:18 on snow and ice) and focus, using the compass and map to pinpoint our next destination with surprising accuracy.

Teamwork and interpretive dance (Brad Jennings Photo)

With Matata Hakuna, teamwork never looked like so much fun (Brad Jennings Photo)

Teamwork was necessary in a lot of different ways during this race; and we did a great job working together. When the bush got too thick we would leapfrog and point a bearing to a tree if we couldn't keep a straight line, re adjusting as we went. Kelsey even helped me up some of the icy hills (his shoes have carbide spikes in them, where mine do not), these were fun times because we got to hold hands and run up hills together <3.  We crossed over frozen water, through the locks north of Peterborough, over tall barbed wire fences, through thick bush, and back to Trent University to be the second team back, managing to get to all checkpoints with 11 minutes to spare. Being the second team back, we got to cheer our friends in.

Kels and I aren't that cute

After the points were tallied (and our 100 points were deducted), it was quite close, but Kelsey and I came out on top with a 10 point lead over second place. Matata Hakuna explored their way into third place for the day, and we all felt pretty great. We worked hard for it, and it was pretty sweet to get to do such a fun race like this, Sure we got soakers, and it was a bit frustrating sometimes being unable to find the checkpoint or being too far off, but we didn't give up and were the only team to get to every checkpoint. Afterward we had a massive sushi lunch at an all you can eat sushi place in Peterborough, and I can't think of a better ending to any story.