Adirondack Peeks Summer 2025

THE BIG DAY On July 15, 1932, in a race to climb the greatest number of high peaks in a day, Marshall climbed thirteen high peaks in 19 hours. His plan went as follows: start at Johns Brook Lodge at 3:30am; hike Big Slide before sunrise; return to Johns Brook Lodge for breakfast; then proceed to traverse the entire Great Range, from Lower Wolf Jaw, to Upper Wolf Jaw, to Armstrong, to Gothics, to Saddleback, to Basin, to Haystack, and on to Marcy; have lunch on Marcy; descend the south side of Marcy to climb Skylight; next, by way of Lake Colden, ascend the steep path to Iroquois and MacIntyre (Algonquin); on the way out, bag Wright before sunset; and finally, cap off the day by climbing Mount Jo (not a high peak) in the dark, returning to the Adirondack Loj for dinner. This historic route is approximately 31 miles in distance and over 14,000 feet of cumulative elevation gain. It is known as the Bob Marshall Traverse, or simply “The Bob.” I had been thinking about this route for a few years. Having read all about Bob’s sense of adventure, I imagined his traverse to be impossibly hard, and, frankly, I was a little scared of it. Finally, on July 2, 2024, I went after it. On this day, there was over fifteen hours of daylight. It was mostly clear and calm all day and night with temperatures in the 50s and 60s. Trails were wet from rainy days prior, with runoff on rock slabs and mud bogs all over. Instead of staying at Johns Brook Lodge (JBL), where the route begins, I started at 2am from the Garden parking lot in Keene Valley, which is 3.5 miles out. I did not record the first 3.5 miles. My plan was to meet a friend at JBL at 3:30 a.m. My friend would hike Big Slide with me before dawn, do his own thing, drive to the terminus of the route, the Adirondack Loj, and hike Mount Jo with me after dusk. We would stay at the Loj together, and the next morning he would give me a lift back to the Garden. I arrived at JBL a bit early and filled up with water. It was nice to see my friend’s face at that dark hour in the woods. I started my GPS at 3:23 a.m., and we began, back the way I came, to the Big Slide junction. Bob wrote about his hike in High Spots , a publication of the Adirondack Mountain Club. In that article he includes a table of the peaks with the times of arrival. I used Bob’s times to measure my own progress. Remarkably, my time up the first peak matched Bob’s time to the minute. So, like Bob, I got to experience the sunrise on Big Slide. On the summit of Big Slide, I said goodbye to my friend. Bob says that on the way back down to the valley, he broke into a run and felt sure he could climb fourteen mountains in a day (Marshall, Adirondack peaks , 2006, p. 67). Although I felt fresh and energized by the rising sun, I lacked Bob’s youthful confidence.

Bob returned to JBL in the valley for a hot breakfast. I did not. So, on Lower Wolf Jaw, I was actually ahead of schedule by about ten minutes. Surely the trails have changed over the years, but in my mind Bob’s description of the trail to Upper Wolf Jaw—that it “shoots straight up cliffs, stumbles over all sorts of tree roots and skirts through narrow crevices among the rocks”— applies equally today, nearly a century later (p. 67). On Upper Wolf Jaw, I realized that I was beginning to fall off Bob’s pace. I was only one minute ahead. Then, on Armstrong, I was five minutes behind—oh no! Eight minutes behind on Gothics, and thus an irreversible trend emerged. I did deliberately stop on each summit to resupply my pockets with snacks, record my time, and take a picture, but I wasn’t hanging around. I wore a hydration pack for water and ate on the go. And yet I was slowly falling behind. I lost five more minutes on the way to Saddleback but was feeling good. I enjoyed downclimbing the Saddleback cliffs. Thankfully that aspect of the mountain was dry and grippy. I gave nothing up on Basin. Still thirteen minutes down. In between Basin and Haystack, I stopped to filter some water. When Bob was on Haystack, he had recently returned from Arctic Alaska, and he wondered whether he would recapture the experience of wildness. “Gloriously enough” he writes, “It was still possible to forget the automobiles and machinery” (p. 68). Maybe it’s not the most relevant, but I saw two women eating ice cream on the summit of Haystack! This was my second time traversing the Great Range. My first time, I started from Rooster Comb, and in my memory, the push over to Haystack was trying, like miles 18–20 in a marathon. Interestingly, a decade later, this is where I started to feel it. The scary thing was that, on my current route, Marcy would be the mental half-way point and not the final peak. On Haystack I was twenty-five minutes behind. Herbert Clark, the Marshall family guide and 46er #1, brought lunch to Bob on Marcy. Before the hike, I anticipated Marcy’s summit to be decisive because the route goes over the top and down the other side, away from the Garden. At the time, however, my momentum made the decision for me. Absent any objective problems, I continued without much pause. Twelve hours into my activity from the Garden, I was only 20 minutes down. That much time might be attributed to chit chat, I thought. The trails were fairly busy for a Tuesday. On the way up Skylight, a descending trio told me that they heard that the trail to Lake Colden was “swamped out.” When I replied, “it’s passable, right,” they responded in a way that, in retrospect, provides a fitting commentary on my hike: “Yes, but we’re not animals; we are out to enjoy ourselves.” I guzzled a mini can of Coke on the summit of Skylight. It was now time to cover some distance. Skylight is 16.5 miles into the BMT. The junction to Algonquin, on the far side of Lake Colden, is at about mile 21.

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