| Summary | None |
| Owner | Eric Gilbertson |
| Creation Date | 2013-12-10 21:54:55 UTC-0500 |
| Description | Four Remote Trail-less ADK 46ers by Bike
Eric and Matthew Gilbertson Nov 16-17 Saturday: Allen Mountain (~18 miles) Sunday: Santonini Peak, Couchsachraga Peak, Panther Peak (~18 miles) We camped out at the Upper Works trailhead Friday night, and on Saturday morning started our first mountain – Allen. Allen mountain is considered one of the hardest of the 46ers to bag, because it’s so remote (18 miles round trip, much not on official trails), and for this reason most people save it until the very end. But the remoteness made Allen the most appealing mountain for me and Matthew, so we decided to bag it as one of our first 46ers. Much of the approach looked relatively flat based on the topo map, so we started out on the trail with mountain bikes. Unfortunately we discovered that morning that my front fork had basically broken in half from a rust hole, but we splinted it with my u-lock and it worked just like new. There were a few inches of snow on the ground, but the bikes still helped us out and we rode them for probably half of the approach. We walked them across the frigid crossing of the bridge-less Opalescent River, then ditched the bikes when the official trail turned into an unmaintained herd path. The snow got deeper and we reached the top by 1pm. There’s actually an awesome view of Mt Marcy from just north of the summit. We had a fun bike ride back to the car and finished just before sunset for an 18-mile day. Sunday we put our bikes to good use again. We started up a gated road across the street from the Allen Mountain trailhead, and biked a few miles over snow and ice until we reached the Santonini trail. We then changed into hiking mode for another few miles, and then turned off at Bradley Pond to start our herd-path hiking. Though officially unmaintained, the herd paths see enough traffic that they are very easy to follow, even with a few inches of snow on the ground. We arrived at “Times Square”, and proceeded to climb Santonini, Couchsachraga, then Panther Peak before returning back to the car. A cold 35F rain started falling on our descent, but luckily we had a dry car with nice butt-warmers in the front seats to keep us warm on the drive back to Boston. |