Ampersand is all mine

I took Friday off to extend the long weekend and to take advantage of the best looking weather day of the four. This turned out to be an excellant decision as it was a nice hiking day, sunny yet cool. Ampersand is a great hike to choose to start the season for several reasons. It has all the features of a longer Adirondack hike but is only 2.5 miles and 1750 elevation gain. The bald summit has great views, especially the up close perspective of the Sewards and Seymour. The added bonus, when driving from Ottawa, is the short drive of 2 1/2 hours.

Taking advantage of the shorter drive I left home at 7am and was at the trailhead by 9:45. One group signed in ahead of me and I met them about 3/4 of the way up. This hike starts with a nice walk in the woods. It gradually gets steeper and becomes rockier until it gets to some well built staircases. You definitely do get a workout but it is a fairly short climb and well worth it when you top out and have a south and east view of many of the high peaks. Seymour and Seward dominate the view to the soutn as they are just a few miles away. You can see parts of the Santanonni ridge behind Seymour. Off in the distance to the east is the MacIntyres and way to the east you can see Whiteface. To the north are the Saranac lakes. I had this vista all to myself for about an hour. Enough time to eat, have a short nap and snap a few dozen pics. On the way down I met five hikers and two dogs.

All in all a great start to the season. The black flies were out but not biting. My legs still work and do so at about the same pace as last season. My calfs seem in mid season form although knees were complaining after the hike. I highly recommend this hike!

Best hiking day...ever

I've been known to throw around superlatives when it comes to various hikes (often the hike I am currently on). That said, Algonquin is my favorite mountain of any that I have hiked and Wednesday was about as perfect a weather day as one can get. It was cool (low 60s), sunny and crystal clear. A day made for hiking peaks and taking photos! I managed to talk Bryan out of going to work and joining me on a hike up Algonquin Peak instead. It is a long drive from Ottawa to the Adirondacks to day hike but the advantage is that you can cherry pick the weather.

We were approaching the border when we saw that there was a mass of clouds blanketing the Adirondacks. Luckily it was early and soon to burn off. We took some cool photos in the early morning light and stopped for break in Saranac Lake to fuel up and to sit at a favorite spot.

We hit the VanHo trail at about 8:45 from a mostly empty parking lot. The hike starts out a comfortable pace and is mostly flat for the first mile. It gets gradually steeper and rockier as it ascends. It is only a four mile hike but you do have to watch where you step on and around the rocks. We stopped at the waterfall which marks the half way point and were passed by the first of several hikers with dogs for the day. All were well behaved and gave us the opportunity to chat up their owners.

Past the cutoff to Wright there are some interesting steep slabs and once you get above Wright you start to get views to the east of Pitchoff, Cascade, Porter, Big Slide and eventually the Great Range. You really see the the full effect of Big Slide from this angle. Our pace slowed as we were taking lots of photos and videos. Above treeline the summit grass were a particularly colorful shade of gold and the views in all directions were crystal clear. I particularly enjoyed getting photos of the Santanoni and Seward ranges that I had hiked since the last time I hiked Algonquin.

We stayed on the summit for almost two hours and for such a perfect day there were not many people up there so it was nice and quiet. We took even more photos on the way down, at least until we hit tree line. It was great to stop at the falls and dunks our heads in the cool water. We met a few hikers on the way oot (out as pronounced by Canadians eh). One from the Buffalo area identified us as Canucks based on our accents. We talked photography for a while before he took off back to the LOJ as he was late for dinner.

A perfect day hiking Algonquin. It may take as long as the hike to go through all the photos!