Adirondack Peeks Winter 2023

Our one big mistake was not doing Iroquois when we were on Algonquin, so we had to go up there again the next year. I can't take credit for landing us back on Nye after summiting Street because my son, an experienced hiker who had been there before, was leading that trip. We were not inclined to complain, so we weren't whining about the cliffs on Saddleback, the precipitous descent from Colden, and other such things, as quite a few folks tend to do nowadays. My brother, Allen McRae, #2077, who is respon sible for getting our family interested in the 46ers (8 members), once told me I'd be lucky to make it all the way around Heart Lake. I guess I showed him!

correspondence, but I still used it. I often wondered how she felt about having a hot cup of coffee in the cafe at the summit of Whiteface, but was afraid to make mention of it. We met Grace at a 46er meeting one fall, and the Dittmars and Helen Metz at the lean-to at Bradley Pond. We also met Pete Fish, the infamous ranger, several times; he was always warning about the perils of hiking in cotton cloth ing and other dangers, possibly about the folly of setting foot in the woods at all. There were no Winter 46ers, or if there were they did not boast of it or rain on our parade. Only the skies did that, particularly at our finish on Gray, which was about as miserable a day as the Adirondacks could possibly dish up. Of course, there were no cell phones or other elec tronic devices to bail us out if we ran into any trouble. We were on our own. The Mountain of God Jim Coyne #3815V A walking safari in the Serengeti? Wow! That idea sounded quite exotic as I pored over the outfitter’s description of the trek. It was being run by Rick French from Pack Paddle Ski. The ten-day trip was limited to ten adventurers and billed as moderate, which turned out to be a bit of an understatement. The location was East Africa. The country, Tan zania, was created in 1964 by the merger of Tanganyika and the island country of Zanzibar. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the east; Zambia and Malawi to the south;

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Democratic Republic of Congo to the west; and Uganda, Lake Victoria, and Kenya to the north. Tanzania is one of the oldest continuously inhab ited areas on Earth and has more than one hundred and thirty ethnic groups and languages. Swahili is the official language and English is widely spoken. The Maasai have their own language, Maa, and most also speak Swahili and some English. They are pastoralists tending sheep, goats, and cattle but are also famous for their reputation as courageous warriors. It is impressive to spot them far off in the distance wearing their distinctive red shukas and armed with just a stick to ward off wild animals. The tribal diversity in Tanzania might account for the absence

of conflict that has embroiled other African countries. The lack of exploitable natural resources such as oil and rare minerals are likely factors as well. Thanks to the foresight of its first Presi dent, Julius Nyerere, Tanzania boasts some jaw-dropping national parks and re serves. Our walk would take us to where the Serengeti National Park abuts the Ngorongoro Conservation Area in north central Tanzania. It is a remote place with just a handful of dirt tracks. There are scattered Maasai villages, or bomas, in the area and none have running water or electricity. One thing that caught our at tention right away was to see the Maasai bring their animals into an enclosed cor ral each evening. We, on the other hand, were sleeping on the ground, in the open, in nylon tents. Hmmmm? Each day, we were on the move and saw many animals in the open but had only a single, tense encounter. We had climbed down into the Lake Epakaal crater to ex perience a huge flock of flamingos feed ing at the lake shore. On the single-file

Jim Coyne is in the back row on the left.

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