Write-up by Nancy Coleman

It was a very gloomy day, there were a lot of Tramps out for the hike on Saturday, and Meg and I didn’t expect anyone to show up for our hike today, and were we surprised.  25 is a large group and a wonderful group it was.  When we checked out the trail on Monday there was snow covering wet leaves and it was slippery.  Today most of the snow had melted.

We started up the steep slope by the Bub and Sis parking lot.  The group made good time.  There are, I’m told, seven hills we have to climb in the 4.25 mile trail.  Jim Wasielewski used his GPS and we found out that we climbed 1445 feet.  The views were good because the leaves were off the trees.  We could see Fourth Lake many times during the hike.

As we approached Mountain Lake, I asked everyone to watch for markers because Meg and I had some trouble on Monday.  It was shocking to see a marker on almost every tree.  I’ve never seen so many markers so close together before.  How did we miss them?  Maybe they were snow covered.

We got back to the Bald Mountain parking lot at around 2:30PM.  Everyone seemed to have a good time on the hike.  We retired for refreshment at the Front Door-Back Door in Old Forge.

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