Adirondack Peeks Summer 2024

and an adequate assessment of fitness over time. I supplied very detailed information not only to build confidence in her abilities but also to help establish an as pect of credibility. It must have worked, as before she took the first step on the hike of Giant came this letter, showing me that she was a very goal-oriented person who wants to know it all on the front end and is very moti vated to get this done. Aren’t we all. Here is a portion of that next inquiry to me:

Wondering if you have any advice/thoughts on any of the following hikes: Wright, Algonquin and Iroquois Phelps and Tabletop Colvin and Blake Street and Nye LWJ and UWJ (I thought I read the Jaws are usually done in conjunction with a 3rd peak.) Dial and Nippletop That continued with a myriad of other excellent questions that I would address but to the first part my re sponse was: “I do indeed have some advice/thoughts on these. . . . You should hike them :-).” Over the next three years we were in contact via email or the correspondent website literally hundreds of times. We grew to know about each other’s lives out side of hiking, including about our families, our goals, our hopes and desires. However, we still had yet to meet in person. Donna’s significant other Larry did every hike with her. With each trip report I found that the questions were fewer and more focused as their experience grew. What had become evident to me early on was Donna’s ability to absorb information, ask good questions, and tell great stories. As she mentioned earlier, I had hinted

Larry and Donna finishing on Big Slide September 30, 2022

do Ha, Ba, and Sa as she succinctly titled that report. In October of 2021, Donna related to me the joys of the mudfest on the way to Emmons and how Larry “wobbled” off a boulder and ended up face down and covered in mud. But the best part of that story was that when they reached the summit, mud and all, Larry pro posed! Hikes don’t get much better than that. It would take more space than allocated to go into depth about each and every correspondence. With each one, that shared passion of being a 46er was taking hold and our friendship grew. Still as of this writing we have not yet met in person. I was unable to be there for her finish on Big Slide, and I was not able to go to the dinner when she received her certificate. I was fortunate enough to ask a good friend and 46er vice president to convey a con gratulatory message to her for me and in that message was a sincere thanks for allowing me to be a part of the journey. You see, some might be under the impression that being a correspondent is simply about sharing infor mation and experience, and that is a lot of it. But the best part of being a correspondent to me is not so much in

[T]he best part of being a correspondent to me is not so much in the giving as it is in the receiving. I gain so much insight into myself, my relation ships, my failures, and those successes.

to her about mlthinking about becoming a correspondent her self once she became an official 46er. She had climbed Sad dleback via the Orebed Brook trail to avoid the famed cliffs,

which were a real and legitimate fear for her. Later on, when she was doing Haystack and Basin, we discussed what the out and back would look like and the joy of climbing the Shorey Short Cut and I offered as an alter native going over Saddleback again via those very same cliffs. As an incentive I expressed that having that experi ence would be of great benefit when she became a corre spondent. I also reminded her that while she was so con cerned about Saddleback that Basin itself was no joke. I left the decision up to her and in the end she did indeed

the giving as it is in the receiving. I gain so much insight into myself, my relationships, my failures, and those suc cesses. To me this is not a one-on-the-masses type situa tion; no matter how many aspiring 46ers you are working with, it is an endless series of one-on-one relationships in which both people benefit immensely as they climb to gether, separately.

1 Heaven Up-h’isted-ness! The History of the Adirondack Forty-Sixers and the High Peaks of the Adirondacks (Lance et al., 2011)

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