Tramp & Trail

Write-Up by: Nancy Coleman

Eight hearty Tramps started out very early after attending the Annual Dinner Meeting the night before. The weather at best was iffy. The pre-hike on Wednesday was in snow and water even at this late date in the year. Since then the weather has been in the 60’s meaning much of the snow would be melted and I was hoping that the water had run off. The hike description said, “in the Spring with the snow melt, the trail turns into a river.” Oh dear.
The weather was good to us. It is a beautiful trail to hike and unlike most Adirondack trails there are switchbacks. Everything was fine until we got past the switchbacks on the steepest section. On Wednesday we were hiking through packed snow. Today the snow had melted. All that was left was slippery, glare ice with water flowing over it. We all got to the overlook without incident.
We enjoyed a windblown lunch on the top (not the true summit) with a wonderful view of the Green Mountains of Vermont and the high peaks of the Adirondacks with ice covered Lake George just below us. Now we had to plan our trip back.
On Wednesday we were not able to take the back of the loop because of deep snow and no snow shoes. Upon checking the trail we could see that hikers had walked there today. We started out on unexplored territory believing it could be no worse than what we had seen.
It was for sure the correct decision. We crossed through a small stream. Saw Bump Pond and a beautiful waterfall flowing through a huge chunk of pristine, blue ice. Much of the trail was the river described in the write-up, but as true Tramps we all had a great day.