Snowy Mountain, Indian Lake NY - 2/11/12

I had climbed six Adirondack High Peaks in the last week, so it was time to do something on a different list.  We chose to climb Snowy Mountain in Indian Lake, NY on Saturday.  Snowy Mountain is part of the ADK Firetower Challenge, and is the highest mountain in the southern Adirondacks at 3899'.

Leesa, Nick and I went on this hike.  We knew it would not be a good day for visibility and we had several periods of light snow, but we had a good hike anyways.  The trailhead is a designated parking area on Route 30, a couple miles south of the town of Indian Lake.  A group of 4 guys were starting up the trail when we arrived.  No one else was there.

We chose to ascend in snowshoes, although micro spikes would have been fine.  The trail starts very gradually, and only climbs about 600 feet in the 1st 2.4 miles.  Don't be fooled though!  In the last mile the trail climbs about 1500 feet.  In the packed snow, the climb wasn't so bad as it might be in other conditions.  We were able to make the ascent in our snowshoes.

In the steep stretch, we passed the 4 other hikers.  A couple of them were barebooting and a couple were wearing tubular snowshoes that were not designed for steep ascents.  They did manage to make it up, they just couldn't go at the pace we were climbing. 

We reached the summit after about 2.5 hours from the trailhead. 

Icy steps on the firetower

No view on this day from the tower

Nick and Leesa at the firetower on the summit

The firetower is open to climb, but the cab was not accessible. 

Mike and Leesa

After a quick lunch and about 30 minutes on the  summit and then began our descent.  We switched to micro spikes for the steep pitch and kept them on for the entire descent.

We could faintly see Indian Lake in the distance from the clearing just below the summit.

Nick at the clearing just below the summit

The beginning of the steep descent

Once we got down through the steep section at the top, we made good time going down and we were back down to the car after about 2 hours.    Nick enjoyed seeing a couple feet of snow on the summit.  He hadn't seen much snow yet this winter prior to this hike.

Hike Stats:

Hike Distance:  6.8 miles

Hike Time:  4 hours, 40 minutes, including 30 minutes on the summit

Trailhead Elevation:  1810'

Summit Elevation:  3899'

Total Vertical Gain:  2340'

Maximum Slope:  57 %

Our trail shown in blue

 

My Snowy Mountain track at EveryTrail

P.S.  Below is a picture of the summit a week later, when visibility was better...

A zoomed in view of Snowy Mountain from Route 30 on a clear day



Street and Nye Mountains - 2/10/12

Street and Nye Mountains are both on the Adirondack High Peaks list, although Nye stands at 3895'.  Street Mountain is a little higher at 4166'.  Leesa and I had attempted to climb these two peaks on 12/26/11, but we were unable to cross Indian Pass Brook on that day so a revisit was necessary.

Parking for this hike is at Adirondac Loj near Lake Placid, NY.  Parking is $5 for Adirondack Mountain Club (ADK) members and $10 for non-members.

The day was quite nice with temps in the low 30's, no wind, and a mix of sun and clouds.  There is no official trail to these mountains, but the herd path is quite obvious in winter.   We packed our snowshoes, but did not use them, as micro spikes were sufficient. 

We got kind of a late start and were not on the trail until a little after 9 AM.   We also had to be back out by 3 PM since Leesa had a business conference call at 3:30, so we were moving quickly on this hike. 

We got to the col between Street and Nye about 11:10 and decided to climb Street first.  For some reason, I was thinking it would take an hour or more after the split to reach the summit, but we were there in 20 minutes or so.  We were back to the col at noon and on the summit of Nye at 12:10.

We wished we had brought our plastic "butt sliders" to use on the way down.  The trail would have been perfect.  It slope wasn't quite steep enough to slide down in our winter pants, but the "butt sliders" would have been perfect.  Instead we bounced down the trail in our micro spikes and were back to the car at 2.

View from the summit of Street Mountain

Street Mountain has some views from a small clearing.

Leesa on the summit of Street Mountain

Looking towards Nye while coming down off Street

Leesa on the summit of Nye

Nye mountain is a forested peak and has very limited filtered views. 

This one will be going soon!

The stream crossing is not totally frozen over, but rock hopping is possible 

Leesa making her way back across the stream

We didn't see any other hikers on this day, perhaps because it was a Friday and not the weekend.  Usually on a weekend you will see someone climbing to reach any of the high peaks unless the weather is poor.  It was a pleasant day and with hiking on packed snow.  There was about 2 feet of snow on the summits and only about 2 inches of snow at the trailhead.

Hike Stats:

Hike Distance:  7.8 miles

Hike Time:  4 hours, 50 minutes

Trailhead Elevation:  2195'

Summit of Nye:  3895'

Summit of Street:  4160'

Total Vertical Gain:  2805'

Our route shown in blue

My Street and Nye Mountain GPS track at EveryTrail