Adirondack Peeks Winter 2023

tinue toward Marcy on the yellow trail until it meets the gravel lumber road heading N and S at 0.29 m. Turning R this road heads S. . . . , crosses several brooks flowing from L and comes to a junction with another gravel road at 1.28 m. (This road to the R heads 250 deg., turns S at two loading stations, then W and SW, finally heading 160 deg. At 2.00 m, crossing Dudley Brook on a bridge at 2.07 mi and joining the main gravel road in the first clearing at 2.14 mi.” Whew! Good orienting skills were absolutely essential. On a flawlessly blue first of October in 1989, I fin ished on Seymour. “Done at last,” I wrote Grace Hudowal ski somewhat uncreatively. “Done at last! Thank God I’m done at last!” On October 21, Grace wrote me a personal, multi-paragraph letter. “Seymour on a spectacularly gor geous, sunny, first of October must have been incredible. It’s an added blessing to have such a day in the mountains although nothing takes away the special feeling one has on his 46th. Welcome to Adirondack Forty-Sixer member ship.” What a lady! As was the pattern from the very beginning, there would be long gaps between spurts of hiking. Thus was the case with New Hampshire. Perhaps it was the sheer “OMG—there are 48 of them” that kept me away, but once I began, it took less time to finish than either New York or Maine. My first foray into the Whites was in late August 1995, which started a tradition that went on for several

years. The last week in summer, before my teaching job brought me back to school, was a perfect time to get away, spend a chunk of time off the Kancamagus or in the Franconia Notch area of the White Mountains, and peak bag my days away until the start of the Labor Day week end. More than once I hiked hut to hut, starting on one side of the White Mountains and relying on the kindness of hiking strangers on the other side to bring me back to my car. My New Hampshire journal records serendipi tous encounters with other hikers, our common passion for mountains the linkage that bonded us. Most of those hikes were done alone, but I did avail myself on some of the more difficult climbs with AMC-sponsored hikes. It was during those years that I fell in love with the Presidentials. If I saw a stretch of particularly good weath er, I’d drop whatever plans I had, drive to Twin Mountain, bunk in at my favorite, now nonexistent, cabin complex, gather up firewood and enjoy a bonfire before settling in for an early night. Ridge walking high above tree line on those mountains, always on dazzling midsummer days, remains one of the highlights of New Hampshire’s White Mountains. Vermont’s peaks were easily accessible from home and were always done when late summer or full peak autumn days were blue and vistas spectacular. The descent off Mansfield’s Sunset Trail is one of the more memorable hikes as the sun began its slow descent over the Adirondacks and the Lake Champlain Islands. My hik

34 | ADIRONDACK PEEKS