Adirondack Peeks Winter 2024

ing down the south side of Haystack was incredibly steep but also offered gorgeous views. We were getting tired and low on food as we rested at the Panther Gorge lean-to. The hike back up to Lake Tear was arduous but necessary. At Four Corners we had the choice of going up the short Skylight trail or heading back to camp. Craig and Pat opted to skip Skylight, but Tom and I couldn’t, being that close, and it was one of the top five highest peaks. Tom and I duti fully carried a rock from timberline to the huge summit cairn to prevent the inevitable mythical rain (an old legend). The cairn is now gone of course. As we neared camp, I learned that I should have brought more food. That level of hun A Journey of 50 Years Richard Andrews, #15942 M y first climb in the Adirondacks was in the summer of 1974. As a British 21-year-old, I had just gradu ated in language and literature from university. I was a guest at my girlfriend’s family camp near Keene Val ley. Naturally I wanted to climb one of the local mountains— and my first climb was up Rocky Peak and Giant. When I look back on that climb, it is the lack of water that strikes me. I hadn’t brought enough, and there was little on top. It was a good lesson to learn early on when climbing the mountains. Five years later we were married in the Adiron dacks and throughout the next decades made trips back there every two or three years, including from Hong Kong where we worked in the mid-1980s. We had three children, so family visits included the excitement of having young children with us. Every so often I would head off into the mountains for a day—largely on my own—and enjoy tak ing in the different peaks, different perspectives. It was the way the mountains and valleys related to each other that

ger was not pleasant! Thankfully Craig and Pat had dinner when we reached camp. I think we slept really well that night, and I was on a tremendous high from the incredible hike. The hike out was uneventful, and we were sure glad to see the car! My parents were camping at Lake Harris in Newcomb, and we went there for a barbecue before the drive home to Rex ford. They were super happy to see us, being worried and all. I didn’t realize until much later about all the mistakes and poor choices we made, but they sure made me a bet ter hiker and backpacker! fascinated me—threaded together by a network of trails and rivers. My reading background was in the pastoral and mountain poetry of England: Wordsworth, John Clare, Ted Hughes. These writers had shaped the way I saw the Ad irondacks. I also loved the writing of Emerson, Thoreau, Gary Snyder, and Annie Dillard, who explored the relation ship between pantheism, Buddhism, and wilderness. Sometime in the early 2000s, I counted up the number of peaks I’d climbed on the family chart: 28. Most of these were done solo as day trips. Cascade and Wright were the only ones we climbed as a family and with friends. I was well over halfway to 46, but I was also into my fifties by then. So, I considered the remaining mountains and de cided that I’d join ADK and do some of them in group hikes, particularly for those unmarked trails. In all these group hikes I got to know other climbers, mostly from Quebec and the rest of New York State. Climbing in groups was just as good as climbing alone: I still had time for my own thoughts, but it was good also to chat to other climbers and hear about their experiences and backgrounds. The first of these group hikes went up Esther and

Whiteface. We were greet ed on the top of Whiteface in the car park by a woman who said incredulously, “You walked here? Why?” There wasn’t any stra tegic planning as to the se quence of the mountains I climbed. I simply looked at what guided hikes were pos sible within the dates my fam ily and I were in the States, and joined in. Soon I found myself on guided hikes that required overnight stays in lean-tos. Those lean-to nights were memorable: first into the Santanoni range, then on the way to Seymour, then at Feldspar Brook to tackle Cliff and Redfield. On the latter, I

Carol on Iroquois in 2016

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