Mudding on St Regis

I went for a short hike on Friday to check out the equipment (knees, neck etc) as it had been a few months since my last outing and there are plenty on my hiking to-do list when I am on vacation. St Regis fit the bill since it was a shorter drive and a short hike with little elevation gain. A fairly wide open summit is always nice too. St Regis is like a smaller version of many Adirondack hikes, several flat miles and then a few miles where you gain all the elevation. In this case 2 1/2 flat miles and then one mile that gains a bit more than 1000 feet. Someone had written in the log book that the trails were muddy and the bugs were bad. Seems redundant to me as I think Adirondack is actually the native indian term for steep rocky trail with an abundance of boot sucking mud. There was a contingent of hikers from a canoe convention at nearby Paul Smith's college. Since the group was spread out I got to make several variations of "I bet you are happy you aren't portaging up this hill". I'm sure they all thought this hilarious!

The summit is wide open and the view probably includes most of the high peaks although they are a long way away and difficult to identify (other than Whiteface). On my way back down I decided to award "hiker of the day" to the young kid (3 or 4 year old) who yelled out "Hi" from a fair distance and then went on to explain with great enthusiasm how he loved all the "goopy mud". The trails were indeed muddy and the bugs were biting if you stopped for any length of time but no complaints here. All the equipment checked out as ready for action!

More pics!