Adirondack Peeks Summer 2025

In the movie Diamonds Are Forever , in the closing scene, Sean Connery is having dinner with Jill St. John on a private deck of a cruise ship. The bad guys are disguised as waiters, but 007 exposes them when they don’t know that a Mouton Rothschild is a claret. Fighting ensues. One of the bad guys tries to attack Bond with flaming shish kebabs, but Bond douses him with the claret and his hands catch on fire. The flames spread to his entire body, and he jumps overboard into the water. This is not what happened to Allen. Allen contemplated the flames consuming his glove liners, considered the options, and, with firmness of purpose, thrust his hands into the snow. The liners were no more, but his skin was unscathed. I can’t recall if we ever got the stove to work; Note from editors: What follows is a journal entry by Jim Anderberg #549. Says Jim: “While going through old papers I came across this journal . . . of a climb up Santanoni and Panther that I led back in August of 1969. I was with a group of campers (the Explorers) from Camp Paradox, a boys’ camp on Paradox Lake, NY. Five of us became 46ers on Nye later S antanoni and Panther were done in a day hike by the Explorers. We left early in the morning after eating breakfast in the nature lodge so that we could take advantage of the daylight. It started raining almost immediately after leaving camp and continued that way for most of the day. Because of the rain and cold weather the times for this trip are longer than they would be on a day with good weather. The trail starts out on a coarse gravel road and then turns off onto a trail. This trail is a blue marked trail which goes to Bradley Pond. After a way it runs into and follows Santanoni brook. The turnoff to Santanoni is marked on this trail by a rock cairn with a horseshoe on top. The trail descends to and crosses Santanoni brook. Immediately on the other side of the brook is an area which would be nice for a campsite. There are obvious signs of the area being used for this purpose. The trail turns right and follows the stream for a ways. The trail was very definite for a while, but we then lost it at a point where it ran into a stream. We were not sure whether the trail was actually up the stream or not—it had been raining so much that the stream could have actually been the trail and had been washed out. We spent some time looking around in an attempt to locate the trail but with no success. This took about a half hour of our time. We then discovered some blazed trees so decided to follow this way up to the top. The blazes were fairly easy to follow. Near

maybe we just had Pop-Tarts® for breakfast. After breaking “camp” we headed for Lower Wolf Jaw Mountain, and the descent back to Adirondack Mountain Reserve. In my notes I find that I wrote “very few unobstructed views.” Two months later Brian accepted my invitation to join me on another winter camping trip—I don’t know why. We camped out on Rocky Peak Ridge (presumably to obtain “unobstructed views”). Again in very cold temperatures, again at 3,999 ft. elevation. By this time Brian had obtained a RidgeRest pad, and we powered our flashlights with Lithium batteries. However, I would not abandon shelter-less winter camping until a later trip, when it inconveniently snowed on me. Jim Anderberg, #549 Santanoni and Panther—August 8, 1969 that year: Jim Anderberg #549, Bart Brodsky #550, Jim Cramer #551, Tom Field #552, [and] Howard Uniman #553. Jim Cramer went on to become the host of CNBC’s Mad Money. Back then those trailless hikes were quite a bit more challenging! Just a map and compass and faint ‘herd paths.’ To make matters worse this hike was done in the rain. the top of the ridge, we lost the blazes, so we set out on our own. Coming up to the top of the ridge we discovered a well-worn trail and followed this south to the register on the peak of Santanoni. We were so cold and wet we could barely manage to sign our names. We then headed due north on the trail to get to Panther. I did not notice when the trail we came in on branched from the trail we were following north. We just kept heading north and therefore didn’t have to worry about finding the trail over to Panther- -we just naturally ended up on it. The pace was very slow in the beginning because all of us were very cold and very wet. Shortly after leaving Santanoni we were caught in a hail storm. The trail over to Panther is very hard to follow in places. It takes a lot of careful watching to keep on it. In a few places, blown down trees made it appear that the trail just ended there. It was necessary to scout ahead in the brush to pick up the trail again. Towards the end of the trail (when you are close to the peak of Panther) many trails are found branching off from the one leading to the peak. It took us some time scouting out the various trials in order to make sure we were still on the right one. After reaching the peak we descended by backtracking on the trail and then going down to the east. Very quickly we hit a good trail which led to the stream that we wanted to follow down. Going down this stream started out nice but got harder and harder due to heavy blowdown on either side and swollen streams due to the rain. Following the

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