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The Flowed lands shortly after arrival, I would estimate around 4:30 or 5 PM. It got dark by 6:30. It was a lot nicer looking this time than two years ago. |
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Mom in front of the Flowed Lands. It's called that because this entire area used to be underwater, but about 20 years ago they breached the dam and brought the water level almost back to its original level. |
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Me... same spot. The weather was gorgeous for the hike in. When we took these photos it was probably about 45 degrees. The mountain behind us is Mount Colden. |
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Looking a little bit to the left. |
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The next morning, I decided to climb Algonquin. The weather looked quite promising. Looking up at Mount Colden from the lake was a little bit intimidating, as I knew I'd end up over 300 feet higher than that one... |
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The stream that flows from Lake Colden into the Flowed Lands. |
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Lake Colden... and Mount Colden again. Mount colden is pretty famous for its very large slides and the famous "Trap Dike" Which Jim, Adam, Jason and I climbed in 1998. |
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One of the leantos on Lake Colden for future reference. |
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Starting up Algonquin greeted me with a nice waterfall. |
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The trail parallelled this stream for about a mile. It was pretty nice. |
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There were tons of little drop offs all over the place. |
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This is "Peanut Butter Slide" Where Me, Mom, and Aunt Lisa bailed in our attempt 2 years ago. Mom's peanut butter slid down this rock when she dropped it, hence the name. |
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At the top of the slide, looking down. |
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As I went up further, I began seeing more signs of old man winter making an appearance. In many places the trail was worn into the ground, and where water would normally be seeping out of the mud on the sides, instead, it would squeeze out and freeze, then squeeze out and freeze, creating a growing ice formation. They were so fragile that the wind from you walking by would take them down. |
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Fragile but beautiful. |
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A little further up I found these icecycles, which definately did not form overnight. |
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And then I hit some snow. |
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Looking up towards the summit. Unfortunately, I never checked my lens, but there was some water on it which messed up the next few photos. |
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Looking back towards Boundry and Iriquous which I didn't climb as it was so cold and windy. |
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Getting closer... |
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Me at the summit. You can't tell from this photo, but it was unbelievably cold. Probably 20 degrees with 30-40MPH wind gusts (you had to struggle to stand against it at times). Everyone was walking around with thick gloves on and I didn't want to impose and ask someone to handle my camera so I set it on this crooked rock for these photos. |
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You get the idea though. I was COLD, but also excited that I'd made it to the top. You can see the grass blowing pretty much sideways here. |
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Looking towards lake placid, you can see the ski jumps. |
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The Benchmarker. This is the second time I've done this mountain, the first was in '96 or '97 when Josh (my brother) and I did it. |
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Looking down on Mt. Colden. The hump behind it is Mt. Marcy (the tallest in the state at 5344 feet). |
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Some alpine tundra and mountains. I didn't have much will power to shoot too much up here as it was frigid. |
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Looking back towards where I came from. The lake on the left is Lake Colden, the green spot to the right is the Flowed Lands, where our leanto is, about 4.5 miles away. |
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From the summit, looking back towards boundry and Iriquois. I should have bagged them, but the cold turned me back down. |
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Going back below treeline, the temperature definately increased, I got a few more shots of Colden and Marcy. |
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This one, zoomed in shows the "Trap Dike" - the big crevasse on the left side of Colden. It's like a 4.6 difficulty (I have read) basically - you can climb it without protection, but be careful! You're supposed to climb up it and then exit to the slide on the right and summit from there. |
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Back down to the flowed lands. I can't believe I was looking down on that mountain! |
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Looking back up the flowed lands. |
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A wide shot, the mountain I climbed is the one in the center. |
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Zooming in on Algonquin. |
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We decided to check out this waterfall called "Hanging Spear Falls", and we had to cross this cobblestone bridge. Mom didn't like it too much, but made it without any trouble. |
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This is the partially breached dam that created the flowed lands. |
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The falls were about a half mile down. They were big, the big dropoff is probably 60 feet tall and made a pretty thunderous roar. |
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Mom in front of the falls. |
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Me... |
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Me again. |
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Lots of logs in the water, probably used to be trees here before the flooding in the early 1900s. |
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Looking back at the cobblestone bridge. |
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As the day progressed, the weather worsened. These clouds promised something. |
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One last look at the mountain I smoked. |
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And then we saw it... snow started blowing in. |
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We had to pump water quick before dinner, and the snow was piling on Mom's pile. |
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Our leanto arrangements. |
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Mom enjoying the snow, frolicking (almost) |
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View from our leanto. |
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Snowflakes. |
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Mom holding a particularly large one. |
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It kept coming... |
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And coming... |
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And coming. We got almost an inch of snow that night, which made for slow going in the morning, as all the rocks were wet. |
Trip Statistics: Dates - 10/13-10/16 2006 That is all. |
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