North East Adventures
Mt Marshall 10-15-2016
It was starting to feel like winter with the temperatures finally dropping and snow in the forecast soon. With chillier temperatures in the air we decided to head out to the Adirondacks again. We were planning to tackle Mt Marshall one day and the next day would be street and nye.
As always the Adirondack Loj fills up quite quickly so we were determined get an early spot. This adventure featured a third , Eve. Eve was a friend of Simon who was in the same outdoorleadership program. We started off early at the Adirondack Loj. We signed in at the all too familiar ADK trail register, and we were on our way. It was still dark out so we had our head lamps shining the way. Our packs were light but ready for anything that we might face. We made our way to Marcy dam with good time hoping to catch a bit of the early morning glow. Instead we caught sight of silhouettes of the mountains in the background. We took a short break at Marcy dam. We had the dam to ourselves, It still dark out. You could heard the wind blowing whispers through the trees. After the short break we continued to make our way to Avalance lake via the Avalanche pass trail. We were making great time, we soon came to a little outlook that lets you look out toward avalanche lake from the mouth of a inlet. There was a light mist coming off of the semi frozen lake. The sun was hitting the lake just right it provided such a mystical sight. Moments like these no matter how many pictures you take or how great of a camera you have never capture the moment front of you eyes. After sauntering in the mystic moment we continued on the the trail passing over the icy hitch me up Matildas. We soon hit the junction for Colden via the Lake Colden Trail.
We continued on the Lake colden trail, and it was beginning to slight warm up just a bit. We delayer ed and continued to make our way. We passed campsites and a couple of leantos before we made it to Colden dam which provides a view that never disappoints. The weather was still holding up as we continued our way to the well tracked Herbert Brook trail. We took a quick break by the Cairn before we headed up the herd path. The path went side by side a brook for awhile and then we it shot straight up for a bit. We were now working our way up the brook. We decided to make it a bit interesting and bush wack our way to the summit. It was pine city, we maneuvered our the dense pines until we reached a sudden 30 Foot drop off. We climbed down the drop box and then we shot straight back up. For some reason we were having a loud conversation and all of a sudden we hear someone shout, with a thick russian ascent , ” The trail is over here.” We made our way over the 20 feet and before we know it we popped out at the wooded summit. We all share a chuckle as we approached the summit area. When we arrived we saw the summit marker attached to the top of a tree. We all touched/ tagged the tree and then proceeded to take a break. Soon after we sat down we heard a hiker approaching us and she nervously asked us ” Is this Iroquois?” We replied , “Well welcome to Mt Marshall, If you look behind you and to the left, that is Iroquois peak.”
We then chatted about some other topics before she went back down and we finished up our break. We took our time going down the herd path as sections were a bit icy. We soon reached the cairn where we had taken our break before we went up. We made our way back to Colden dam where we enjoyed the stillness of the surroundings and the warm sun overhead. Before we got too comfortable we decided to make our way to Uphill leanto a couple of miles away. As we made our way to uphill leanto all of the bad jokes that you could imagine got said. Just when you thought the jokes couldn’t get any worse we reached uphill leanto. Shortly after that we reached the junction to cliff and redsfield.
Soon upon reaching the junction of redsfield and cliff. I found out that one of the group members was tired and didn’t want to do Redsfield and that we should continue and she would turn back. I knew this was an awful idea to split up the group. The mountains would be there another day and we decided to turn back. We made our way back via the lake arnold trail which led us to marcy dam after a couple of miles. When we reached Marcy dam we reflected on the whole day and started to plan for the next day. It was only a short hour or so depending how we were feeling from the day. After random conversations to talking about pizza and dinner we soon made it back to the trail head to end another amazing adventure in the Adirondacks.
