Having climbed a couple small mountains here in New York, I had an idea. Someday I want to climb Mt Rainier, but the cost is pretty steep. But I still want to do it sometime. But I was thinking that next year, a hike up to Camp Muir might be fun and doable. Maybe stay the night up there, and come back down the next day. Camp Muir is one of the high camps for the climb to the summit of Mt Rainier. It is located at the halfway point between Paradise and the summit. It’s elevation is 10,188 feet, and requires an ascent of about 4,700 feet over a 4.5 mile hike. I emailed my brother in Seattle and he thought it sounded interesting. I don’t think I would need much in the way of expensive equipment. I have a medium sized external frame backpack. I might want to get a better sleeping bag, and a better jacket. I have a good quality 2 person tent designed for back packing. A few posts I read suggested crampons and an ice axe, neither of which I own, but probably wouldn’t be too expensive. Not sure. I would have to do more research into the whole thing. There are probably some books that would tell me exactly what to bring. All of my stuff is back here NY. I suppose I could box the stuff and ship it back to Seattle before the trip. I definately want to do more climbing back here. Maybe play a bit on the Adirondack High Peaks. A little closer to home is the Hi Tor region down by Naples, NY. Lots of steep climbing terrain to play on.
I ordered a couple books that should give me some idea on what’s involved: Hiking Mount Rainier National Park by Heidi Schneider and Mary Skjelset. Also Day Hike! Mount Rainier by Ron C. Judd.
I love barbeque ribs! I love finding little out of the way rib places. So I was excited as we were coming into the area and I saw the billboard advertising Tail O’ The Pup and their BBQ. I had to try it. They are located on Route 86, halfway between Lake Placid & Saranac Lake in Plattsburgh, NY 12901 (518-891-0777).
My wife and I had just finished climbing Cascade Mountain (I climbed, she only made it a half mile in), and were on our way back to the campground near Tupper Lake. We wanted to find a restroom and something to eat. As we passed Tail O’f The Pup, I said let’s go there. I had originally thought dinner would be good, but since we were here at lunch time, what the heck!
We took turns using the restrooms, while the other stayed at a table with our eye on our dog in the car. Be aware that the lock on the men’s room doesn’t seem to work, and you need to use the latch. I found this when the door came flying open as I was sitting on the john.
Then we prepared to order. The signature dish seemed to be the King Eddie’s Crown Rack Ribs (serves 2). So we ordered it, and a couple soft drinks. The servers were all cute girls, and the service was very good. The food came pretty fast. The rack of ribs came rolled into a tight circle pinned together with skewers. It was filled with, and surrounded by cross-cut fries. It also came with a couple ears of corn on the cob, and a couple plastic cups of cole slaw. It was an interesting presentation.
I tried the ribs. The first thing I noticed was a burnt taste. There was a sub-flavor of burned grease. Yuck! There was a bottle of the BBQ sauce on the table, and this helped. But that burning grease taste was always there. The fries were okay. Having braces, I had to slice the corn off of the cob to eat it which was slow and messy, but I thought the corn was okay. My wife didn’t care for the corn though. She ate some of the cole slaw (I don’t like cole slaw) and said it was just okay.
The whole meal cost over $30 with tip. Kind of expensive for what we got. I was kind of disappointed by the ribs. Maybe the burned grease taste was unusual. Maybe they had a small flare up on the grill as they were preparing them. I don’t know. But I probably won’t eat eat there again.
My wife and I were planning to go camping in the Adirondack High Peaks region. I looked for campgrounds near Lake Placid and Saranac Lake. I found a KOA but it was up around Wilmington, and I wanted to find something with a shorter drive from Rochester, NY. I found another campground with all kinds of amenities, but as I tried to book, I found it required a 3 day minimum stay. Darn it. I found another campground, but found that the tent sites were located on islands and you needed a boat to reach them (good thing I read more before booking one). Then I tried Rollins Pond Campground. It is a state campground. I went ahead a booked a site.
There are two campgrounds here: Fish Creek Pond Campground & Rollins Pond Campground. Fish Creek Pond Campground is more family oriented, and has it’s site located directly on the pond, and are all squished close together. Rollins Pond Campground offers more quiet, and has buffers between the sites.
As we arrived in the area, we found that we had to drive through Fish Creek Pond Campground, to reach the entrance of Rollins Pond Campground. There were about half a dozen cars in front of us at the check in. The check in process was agonizingly slow, and took us about us between 20 minutes and half an hour to get in.
We drove to our camp site. 80% of the campsites are located on the water, and the rest are across the road. Our site was not one of the 80% on the water. Reserve America listed our site as Drive Tent Prime. I am still trying to figure out what “Prime” is. The best thing about our site is it was near the bathrooms. The only things found on our site were a picnic table and a cement block firepit that looked kind of busted up.
The bathrooms were dimly lit, and not very clean. Often we found the toilets clogged up. And most of the bathrooms had only toilets and a couple sinks with cold running water. There were also mirrors, but because of the dim lighting, they weren’t extremely helpful.
There were a couple shower buildings at the campground, but we would have had to get into the can, drive to them as they were quite a ways away from our campsite. We never did.
There were water faucets located along the road for campers to use, but these were located a distance apart, and required a short walk to get water.
I looked at fishing in the pond (from a camp site on the water), but the water near shore was too shallow to try fishing from shore, and I didn’t have a boat. There was a place near the entrance where I saw people fishing on a small dock. But I would have had to drive to it, and just never got around to it.
There were a handfull of activities scheduled each day. We checked out one listed as Mountain Pies. We weren’t sure what mountain pies were. So we got in the car, and drove to it as it was a long ways away from our site. Mountain pies seem to be pie filling spread on white bread, and toasted over a fire. We didn’t bother with them, and headed back to our campsite.
Overall, I just wasn’t impressed. I will not likely stay at this campground next time. Maybe I was spoiled by our last trip to Old Forge where we stayed at a private owned campground.
I have wanted to climb the peaks in Adirondacks for a while. Yesterday I climbed Cascade Mountain, my first mountain in the Adirondack 46 High Peaks. Cascade Mountain has an elevation 4098 feet. It is the 36th highest peak in the 46 High Peaks. The ascent from the trailhead is 1940 feet, and the hike is 4.8 miles round trip. The top of the mountain is rock as the trees and soil were apparently burnt away many years ago.
My wife and I were camping over near Tupper Lake. We got up in the morning and drove to the trailhead which is located between Lake Placid and Keene. The parking area is located right off of highway 73. If you can, try to back into a spot as it will make it easier to get back out when there is traffic. The trailhead is is located around 44° 13.211N, 073° 53.150W.
There were three of us, me, my wife, and our airedale terrier Issaquah. We wore day packs loaded with water, two-way radios, fleece jackets, and some other stuff just in case (compass, flashlight, etc). I carried my Magellan Map 330 GPS which was great. I loved knowing how far we still had to go.
We signed the log at the beginning of the trail and started on our way. About a half mile into the hike my wife decided to stop and let the dog and I go on, while she would sit on a rock and read a book and wait for us. I set a way point in the GPS for where she was sitting.
I kept in touch with my wife as the dog and I made our way up. Issa was full of energy, and we made a good pace. The steepest parts weren’t any worse than climbing stairs…a lot of stairs. As we got higher, the trees suddenly got smaller, and we were surrounded by small evergreen trees. At about 2 miles in, there was an opening with a great view. I took a few pictures, and we continued on. Radio communication with my wife came and went. Sometimes I could reach her, sometimes I couldn’t. When I could get her on the radio, she would tell me about other groups coming up from behind. I passed one small group coming down, and they told me that the summit was only 10 minutes or so ahead.
We came to a sign that gave us the option of going to either Cascade Mountain or Porter Mountain. We continued straight to Cascade Mountain. Soon over the trees I saw a rock peak jutting upward. It looked like it was still a ways a way. But then as I got through an opening in trees, the rocky peak stood before me.
We made our way up the rocks and soon stood on the top. It wasn’t cold, but there was a nice cool breeze. I didn’t need the jacket though. I took some digital pictures of the scenery. I also took a picture of the little metal marker signifying the summit. I saw many of the other Adirondack 46 High Peaks, but I couldn’t name any of them (I later bought a map the High Peaks region) except for Porter Mountain. My GPS put the coordinates of the summit at 44° 13.117N, 073° 51.607W.
I radio’d my wife to let her know we were on the summit, and that we were coming back down. As I was going back down to the sign, I considered going to Porter Mountain. It didn’t look like a difficult hike to bag the second peak. I had already done most of the hard work. But my wife was down the hill waiting so I decided to pass up the opportunity. I will come back and climb Porter Mountain another time.
I ordered a book titled Exploring The 46 Adirondack High Peaks by James R. Burnside. I am looking forward to coming back and climbing more of the peaks. Hopefully my wife can improve her conditioning and make it up the mountains with me and the dog!
I considered making the summit of Cascade Mountain a Virtual Geocache, but saw that for some reason they removed virtual geocaches from the allowable types.