Finishing the 46

Seth Lang, Kyle Lang, and Thomas Tubbs on Mount Haystack. Photo by Seth Lang.

You might think climbing the forty-six High Peaks is no big deal. After all, more than 6,200 hikers have done it.

But I’ve got news for you: those peaks are as big as they were when Bob and George Marshall and their guide, Herb Clark, climbed them. The Marshall brothers and Clark completed the first round of the forty-six in 1925, inaugurating an Adirondack tradition.

Taking a break at Slant Rock. Photo by Seth Lang.

What’s more, no matter how many people preceded you, when you climb the High Peaks for the first time, you see the mountains fresh, just as the Marshalls and Clark did.

I was reminded of this when Seth Lang, a Crown Point photographer, sent me images of his recent hike up Mount Haystack with his brother, Kyle, and Thomas Tubbs. Seth, who is twenty-seven, and Kyle, who is thirty, were finishing their forty-six. They had climbed their first High Peak, Cascade Mountain, in 1994 but didn’t start seriously pursuing all the peaks until 2004.

“My personal feeling was one of pride and accomplishment,” Seth e-mailed me after his round. “Not only do I feel a deeper connection with nature, but also with my family back home. I feel that I am far better at solving problems now. I would argue that climbing the forty-six has as much to do with mental fortitude as anything else—maybe more.”

Why did he finish on Haystack?

“I was told by a very wise man that it had the best view,” Seth said.

He didn’t reveal the identity of the wise man, but it’s interesting to note that Bob Marshall also prized Haystack’s view as the best in the High Peaks.

“It’s a great thing these days to leave civilization for a while and return to nature,” Marshall once wrote with this view in mind. “From Haystack you can look over thousands and thousands of acres, unblemished by the works of man, perfect as made by nature.”

That holds true today just as it did in 1925.

Incidentally, you can see more of Seth Lang’s excellent photography on his website.

Looking from Haystack across Panther Gorge at Mount Marcy. Photo by Seth Lang.

Harbingers of fall

American mountain-ash berries. Photo by Phil Brown.

We should be hitting peak foliage soon. Last weekend, I climbed the slide on East Dix and saw lots of color, mostly yellow, in the forest. But what really caught my eye were the succulent red berries of the American mountain ash.

 E.H. Ketchledge, in Forest and Trees of the Adirondack High Peaks Region, calls the mountain ash “one of our loveliest trees.” In June, it blossoms with clusters of white flowers. In the fall, the flowers transform into berries (actually, they are pomes, a false fruit) that resemble cranberries. The fruit can last into winter.

 ”A stalk of mountain-ash ‘berries’ lightly coated with fresh snow in October seems to mark the end of each growing season on the higher slopes,” Ketchledge writes.

 He also writes: “The fleshy seed is heavy, and it can travel great distances only via the stomach of the Canada jay or a few other birds.”

As its name suggests, the mountain ash grows on our upper slopes, along with balsam fir, red spruce, and paper birch.  But the name is misleading in one sense: this tree is not a true ash. Its narrow leaves, arranged in pairs along the branch, resemble those found on true ash trees, thus accounting for the common name.

 As a story in the next Explorer will point out, an invasive insect, the emerald ash borer, threatens to destroy all the ash trees in the country. (Less than 5 percent of the trees in the Adirondacks are ash.) Fortunately, the insect does not attack mountain ash.

Cliffs at the top of the East Dix slide. Photo by Phil Brown.