Muse by David Teitsma

Today was an exciting day! We spent the day hiking up to the peak of Algonquin, the second highest peak in New York.

Below is one of the many times that we purified water for drinking / cooking.

We had to hike about two miles before the trail started to ascend. Once it started to get steeper, it only got more and more steeper. In fact of the 2,500 feet we climbed, the majority of it was in the last 3/4 of a mile. The trail transitioned from muddy and rock like yesterday, to rock like steps, and then a scramble at the end (the steepest part). Needless to say it was all difficult and technical; it was the hardest trail I’ve been on.

A stream paralleled the trail most of the way up. We saw countless waterfalls and pools. This definitely added to the scenery. For some reason we each took only a liter of water. We desperately needed more so twice I asked several other hikers if we could use there pump to purify more water. In the end I drank at least four liters of water, and we all realized that we should of carried our pump and needed to in the future.

Here I’m pointing to our goal, the peak. About this time, I was ready to turn around a call it a day. We were climbing so much, and it was extremely tiring. Later I found out that almost everybody else had the same thought about turning around.

Here’s the part towards the top were it was steeper. Just a long section of rock we had to scramble up.

Here' we’ve reached the tree line.

The peak on the left in the back is Mt. Marcy, the highest peak in New York.

Here we are at the top. It was great to reach the top and just look around. We could see very very far and we could see many mountains fading into the distance. I would have loved to stay at the top longer, but Kelly was waiting patiently for us and it was getting a little late.

Again Mt. Marcy is in the background.

If you click the below photo, you can see the larger version of this 360 degree shot.

Brian and I are pointing to Flowed Island were we stayed.

Here’s another example of the trail below.

Kelly made it over half way up and decided to wait there. She did incredible considering that she is pregnant, and I’m amazed that anyone that is pregnant made it that far! 

On the way down we saw several people that were still starting to climb up. Calculating how long it took us to climb, these people would be hiking in the dark on the way down. We heard about some other hikers that were hiking for over 18 hours from the trailhead that we started at to the top of Mount Marcy and another peak. Crazy is all I have to say.

The way down went considerably faster, but we were all ready to be back. Once we made it back to camp, we made dinner, and then played card games before bed.