Adirondack Peeks Summer 2025

This section was easy, automatic walking, but wet trail conditions dashed any remaining hope of keeping up with Bob. Before arriving at Lake Colden, I stopped one more time to fill up on water. Bob must have been cruising through this section, because now I was a full hour and a half behind. The junction to Iroquois and

Algonquin marked a significant commit or bail decision point. Unlike my one-foot-in-front-of-another decision-making approach on Marcy, here I needed to be calculative. Like Bob, I wanted to finish, or nearly finish, the high peaks before dark. The ascent from the junction to the height of the MacIntyres is 2,300 feet in about 2 miles. It took Bob about two hours to get to Iroquois from there. It was 5:37 p.m. I thought that if I pushed it, I could be on the downslope of Algonquin by dark, so it was a go.

“Sun going down on Algonquin.”

When I finally reached the Loj at 11:30 p.m, I immediately saw the silhouette of my friend through the window. He was patiently waiting in the common area, ready to hike Jo. He had checked me into my room. He even bought me a cheeseburger and put it in there with my other stuff. I am super grateful for his support. The hike up Jo at midnight passed quickly in his company, even though it took us nearly two hours, round trip. All total, I was out hiking for nearly 24 hours, my longest single activity. Elapsed time on the BMT (excluding the walk from the Garden) was 22:09, Moving time was 18:43. Any way you count, it was a long time. There are elite trail runners who are doing this route twice as fast. Abundant kudos to them. They are animals. I trust that they have proven themselves in the context of ultra running before trying it in the “wilderness.” On Bob’s own terms, it is questionable whether his hike constituted a wilderness adventure. His hike was record setting, so it did explore and expand the limits of human possibility. In that sense it was an adventure. The paradox is that pursuing his sense of adventure, he rendered the wilderness nonexistent: the hike itself demonstrates that the High Peaks Wilderness can be traversed in a day without sleep, and therefore it is not sufficiently spacious on Bob’s definition. Another characteristic of exploring wilderness is that it requires self-reliance. The appetite for adventure, basically in defiance of physical limitations, potentially undermines self-reliance. In this light, wilderness adventure appears to be a perverse game of designing a vitally challenging situation to test one’s powers of self-reliance. Perhaps there

This was certainly the most grueling part of the entire BMT. I worked as if it were an emergency. The odd thing is that in a real emergency, I would have taken the easy way out. By refusing to take the exit, I voluntarily put myself in a situation that was beginning to feel like an emergency. Pushing my limits, I was growing more familiar with Bob’s definition of “adventure.” But at that time, in that place, on the rugged path on the far side of Algonquin, I was no longer enjoying myself. I was working like an animal. But what strange animal would put itself in that situation? Under two hours, I arrived at the col between Iroquois and Algonquin. Forgetting that Boundary Peak obscured the view of Iroquois, I didn’t hesitate to turn toward Iroquois. The summit looked so close. That mistake made Iroquois feel farther out than ever before. I arrived at 7:40pm. The sun was going down. The wind was picking up. I hadn’t seen anyone else on the trail since Lake Colden. I rushed up and over Algonquin. When I got to the Wright junction, I was assured that it is only .4 miles from there to the summit. If it were any longer, I might have been discouraged. On the ascent above treeline, I could still make out the shadowy cairns, but on the summit at 9:30 p.m, it was dark and windy. For the first time that day, I used my GPS to help navigate. I also used its satellite communication to tell my friend at the ADK Loj that I would be a couple more hours. The way out from the Wright junction is a blur. I may have been sleepwalking and dreaming of stepping from boulder to boulder. By the time I reached the parking area, I was so out of it that it took me 15 minutes to find the Loj.

SUMMER 2025 | 29