Adirondack Peeks Winter 2023

Ponds, the magnitude of breaking out MacNaughton from an entire season’s worth of snow hit us. The bushwhack up MacNaugh ton when approached from the Loj begins near the outlet of Wallface Ponds. Wallface Ponds are iso lated, beautiful, and infrequently visited, so it was great to be there for the first time. That feeling of ac complishment faded pretty quickly under the realization that we had reached the end of the marked trail and the beginning of the bush whack. I asked Heather, the one of us who had done this hike previ ously, “so now it’s a free-for-all?”, which she confirmed. I initially took lead on the bush whacking trail-breaking, but was soon confronted by an endless spruce trap minefield of waist

steep pitch. I followed in second, with Heather, Jerry, and Alex directly behind me. Nearly eight hours into our jour ney, the mountain suddenly flattened out—we made it, right? Nope, now it was time to find the sign. After consulting the GPS track, we headed left (east) and traversed the summit ridge to the true summit. Once we confirmed that we reached the true summit, we split up and continued to walk all over the ridge looking for the sign, but we could not find it anywhere. As a testament to the nature of this awesome group, not one person ever suggested stopping the search during the hour or so that we were on the summit ridge. This was a “yes,” “can-do” group of hikers—there was absolutely no quit in anyone, and positivity continued to reign supreme. Personally, it was inspiring to be a part of this team. Heather then recalled that the sign may actually be on the lower (west) end of the ridge and on the far side of where the primary route up the mountain was located.

deep powder. There did not seem to be anywhere to go, and following the GPS tracks was actually making things more difficult. Each step fell into an abyss. Heather then jumped into the lead to relieve me but seemed to have a similar experience. It was taking minutes to go just a few feet. Finally, we managed to get through the snow and found the drainage. We understood that we could fol low this to just below the final summit “crux.” Bob, Jerry, Alex, and Heather were all trailbreaking rockstars, and we slowly made our way up the drainage. As we reached the top, we knew we needed to head left (south) up the steep final pitch before the summit. The good news was that we were getting close; the bad news was that it looked virtually vertical and impossible to climb in the season’s worth of deep snow. Our snow shoes were getting very little purchase. I took a stab at commencing the final quarter-mile pitch, but it felt like I was making negative progress through the powder. I moved to the right a few feet, tried

I.e., where we went left after reaching the sum mit ridge to go to the true summit, the sign was to the right. After a few more minutes of search ing focused on this spe cific area, Jerry let loose a holler that immediately told us all that he had found it! We were elated! The photograph/high five session that ensued felt well deserved af ter nearly nine hours on trail to get to that point, but we kept it relative

again, made some meager progress, pulled down a dead tree in the process, and then managed to fall backward into yet another spruce trap. While Alex was assisting me to my feet and I was dusting the snow off and repairing my bruised pride, Bob spotted a pos sible route up, even further to the right of where we were, and took the lead. With some personal he roics by Bob and a lot of arm work, he was able to ascend the final extremely

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