It's been a while since I hiked a high peak on my own, as I've been fortunate enough to make a lot of hiking friends in the past year, but sometimes the weather is just too perfect to wait for those friends to have a day off. While I enjoy the solitude of hiking on smaller mountains, I prefer company on the bigger ones for three reasons. One, safety in numbers in case an accident should happen. Two,the distraction of conversation to keep my mind off of how sore my feet are after ten plus miles. Third, a helping hand to get past the tricky spots on the trail, those spots where your next step looks like an impenetrable wall of rock with no hand or foot holds, and it takes teamwork to figure out how to get past it. It seems almost every high peak has at least one of those spots, as if mother nature herself put it there to weed out the people like me who actually fear falling and breaking something. But I really wanted to hike something this weekend, and after talking to people and reading trip reports it sounded like Mount Colden was a fairly safe and straight-forward hike up the Lake Arnold trail, making it a good candidate for a solo hike.
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| Closed Gentian, so named because it never opens |
I expected the 11th highest peak in the Adirondacks, with it's steep slides looming over Avalanche Lake, to be a challenging hike that I would barely make it back from. The hike itself from the Loj is about 13 miles and has 2900 feet of elevation gain, certainly nothing to shake a stick at. So I was pleasantly surprised to find myself keeping a good pace all the way to the top, with just a few rests to refuel along the way. One of those rests was at Lake Arnold, which is really a small boggy pond, at 3,772 feet, a quaint body of water with dragonflies buzzing about. One of my favorite late-summer wildflowers, Closed Gentian, was blooming along the shore. The trail from the Loj to the lake is a nice, gradual climb that winds back and forth across a brook. From the lake it is only 1.4 more miles to the top, though it is certainly the steepest and muddiest section of the entire trail. The trail rises steadily from the lakeshore to top out at bald summit that looks like it could be the end, except for the fact that the real summit is clearly looming over it another .25 miles away. Although this false summit is not the destination, it has a spectacular view in all directions and warrants taking a breather. I stopped here on my way up and my way back, as it was a little warmer and less windy than the true summit and made a better spot to relax. The descent from the false summit to the col between the summit is the steepest part of the hike, with a few tricky spots, one of which was a challenge to climb back up (which is exactly the type pf spot I was referencing in my first paragraph!). The trail dips down and over a small bump, and then makes a quick steep climb to the true summit.
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| Lake Arnold |
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| McIntryre range and Avalanche Lake at the bottom |
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| Lake Colden from the summit |
The summit itself is broad and by wandering around it you can get a spectacular 360 degree view of the Adirondacks, with almost every other high peak in view. What is even more spectacular is the view of all the bodies of water below. You can look straight down to Avalanche Lake and see the wooden planks that guide hikers along the sheer rock walls. From the far end of the summit you can see Lake Colden, Colden dam, and the Flowed Lands. In the far distance you can see Lake Placid, including the town itself with Whiteface looming beyond it. Look the other way and Mt. Marcy is looming over you, along with all the peaks around it. I could recognize Cascade and the patchwork of rock that is Pitchoff just over the hill of the false summit. Obviously I had a clear day, with blue sky and fluffy clouds, so it seemed like I could see forever. It was a perfect day for hiking, just cool enough to keep from overheating, though that meant staying on the windy summit required a few layers to keep warm. I ate my lunch and rested a bit on the summit, then made my way down to the first summit to take a little nap out of the wind. Then I reluctantly headed back.
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| Indian Pipe |
The hike back was fairly easy with the exception of that one tricky spot that I spent a few minutes trying to find a way up before a nice person coming down the trail offered me a hand. The hike down was fairly uneventful, as the birds were quiet and there weren't many people coming up the trail that time of day. My only highlight coming down was a nice patch of Indian Pipe nestled between some Bunchberry, making a nice photograph. The trail was very wet after Friday's rains and by the time I got back to the Loj I was a muddy and sweaty mess. But I was happy to find that I wasn't completely exhausted, like I usually am after long hikes, which was nice. It seems I've finally gotten my hiking muscles in good enough shape to enjoy these hikes without suffering the long way back. Looks like I'm ready to climb some more....
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| Mt. Marcy and endless other peaks |
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| The McIntrye Range and steep walls of Avalanche Lake |
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