The Dix Range, its not for pussy’s

Two weekends ago Joe and I tackled The Dix Range in the Adirondack Mountains.

We drove up on a Friday afternoon.  The Elk Lake Road to the parking area seemed to go on forever and we weren’t sure how well the trail head parking would be marked. We kept scouting for potential alternate parking areas in case the trail head parking lot was full, hoping we didn’t need to add miles to our hike.  We were getting there a bit late in the day.

We arrived at the trail head on Elk Lake Road and were excited to have a parking space available right at the trail head.  There was a gay couple lingering around the map at the trail register when we walked up.  I pulled down the register to sign us in and they exclaimed oh yes, that is where the sign in is!  One of the men had a French accent and outlined a route on the posted map and asked if that was the trail to the mountains.  No. Even I could see that.  Joe showed them the route and we left quickly.  I had no interest in taking responsibility for anyone else on the trail and these babes in the wood were not prepared.

We hiked about 2.3 miles into Slide Brook where we hoped to camp.  We arrived to find about 6 tents already setup.  We noticed the campers next to the only viable remaining spot had a bag of food/garbage hung eye level on a tree. Others had bear barrels stashed right outside their tent or a few paces from their tent right next to the trail.  We decided to camp there anyway and hoped it was just because they were in process of setting up for the night.

We setup our tent and shortly one of the campers, a woman in her 20’s showed up.   She was extremely chatty and interested in hearing our plans and sharing her story about hiking all five peaks that day.  During a break in the conversation I pointed to the bag hanging in the tree and asked if she knew who that belonged to.  She said, yes it was the people in the tent right next to ours.  I said, hopefully they will move it and tried to smile. She said, oh don’t worry its only their garbage.

We found a quiet spot by the brook and ate our subs that we had picked up on the way in.  Reminiscing about the subs we had at Casey’s Corner Store and wondering if they would taste as good today as they did after three days on the NPT.

After dinner we stashed our bear barrel the 70 paces that Seth had trained us to do even though we were surrounded by idiots who thought they only needed to protect their food from the bears not try to keep the bears out of the camp.

By this time it was after 7 PM and we hadn’t brought any cards to play and weren’t interested in chit chatting with the other campers any longer so we went to bed.  The hard ground and anticipation of the next day made for a fairly sleepless night.  Sometime during the night I awoke from a short sleep to all sorts of lights dancing around inside the tent.  It was very disorienting and at first I wasn’t sure where I was.  Joe stepped out to relieve himself and reported back that there was a huge fire blazing up at the lean to and about 4-5 people dancing around it with head lamps on.  Weirdos. We tried to sleep.

We were awake with the birds and laid there for awhile thinking about getting up.  Joe was the first one up.  I followed suit and we went about getting dressed and geared up for the day.  We each had two 1 liter bottles of water and Joe had his small bladder filled with water.  He noticed it was leaking and decided to leave it at camp.  We took the water filter so we could refill our bottles on the trail.  At about 7 AM we struck out toward the bear barrel and ate protein bars for breakfast, filled our backpacks with enough food for two days and off we went.

Well, off we went after I tried to convince Joe we should be going the other way.   Joe is always amused that I still think I’m right after being wrong so many times.  I tell him, the once or twice I’ve been right is enough to keep me confident of my navigational skills and makes it seem important to speak up.  I’m still not sure why I usually end up carrying the GPS and map.

We hiked along at a pretty good pace.  I felt good, prepared and confident for the day. It was disheartening to see the clothing that hikers had discarded along the trail, cotton socks here, sweatpants there and sweatshirt up further. Respect the mountains people!

We were hiking in a counter-clockwise loop.  We came to the Macomb slide first.  I started picking my way up first.  I’d look up for a cairn and then plot my steps to that cairn and stop and then look for the next.  The sand made it a little slippery and occasionally we’d dislodge a rock and hoped whoever was behind us was paying attention.  We chatted on the way up and I said that somehow I didn’t think that this would be the hardest thing we would do that day.  We made our way up the slide without drama.

We didn’t stop for long on Macomb and headed off to South Dix.  The climb was typical of an ADK hike.  Boulders, some tricky bits.  But we kept moving.  Again we didn’t linger on South Dix for long.  Onward to Grace Peak (fka East Dix).

The trail seemed to go on forever.  I gripe that I hated East Dix and didn’t know why Grace would like this peak so much that they named it after her.  She must be nuts.  We were headed down into a valley which meant we had to climb out of the valley at some point.  These first four mountains are “trailless” peaks, meaning there are no markers and no formal maintenance on the trail.  Its what some would call a bushwhack but these mountains have been climbed so much that the trails are pretty easy to follow. And in some tricky spots other hikers have left cairns to guide those that come later.

Finally we stop because it doesn’t seem right.   I look at the GPS and I’ve got it zoomed out to a mile still looks like we are on trail.  I zoom in.  There we are waaaaaaaayy off trail. We are both disgruntled and grumbling as we start climbing back up the giant valley we climbed into.  When we get back to the real trail we notice a cairn in the opposite direction of the path we took.

Finally we reach the summit of Grace.  Here we take a planned break.  I make a video while Joe lays down for a nap.  We eat our peanut butter sandwiches.  No jelly, much to Joe’s dismay.  Hey I figured it would be too messy after a night in the bear barrel and a morning in our packs.  By this time its clear our water is not going to last and we haven’t seen even a hint of a stream.  I can tell that Joe is already conserving water though he doesn’t say anything.  I sip mine but I need less water on the trail than Joe.

We chat about how this is really a six mountain hike not a five mountain hike because now we have to go back over South Dix to get back on the trail to mountain number four, Hough.  I suggest that maybe we should call it quits after Hough.  There is a bypass trail that would could take and skip Dix and head back to camp.  Joe won’t hear of it.  I’m secretly glad because its been some time since we finished what we set out to do.  But I’m concerned about the water situation all the same.

Around 12:30 PM we head down Grace and back over South Dix.  Onward to Hough which I’m ignorantly pronouncing Ho.   Remember the valley we climbed down into on the way to East Dix?  The way to Hough was like this except we were on the right “trail”. So I’m ranting about this Ho of a mountain the whole way.  We come across an older gentleman heading towards us in a pair of pristine khaki shorts, button up fishing shirt and a floppy hat.  He looked like he was on an easy stroll.  I say “Please tell us we are on the way to Ho.”  He laughs and says “Its Huff not Ho.  And yes you are.  Its beautiful up there but beware of the false summit.”

The good news that we are still on trail buoys our spirits and and we move on. By this time we are hot and both sweating like in the Grand Canyon. Joe is slowing down and taking more breaks. He’s starting to feel the efforts of his water conservation.  We reach the top which we can only tell is the top and not a lookout because of the elevation reported by the GPS.  Here we decide to take a longer rest. Joe takes off his boots and socks lays down and I fiddle with the GPS and study the map. We plan to hang here for a half hour which brings us to 3 pm.

Soon a big black Lab appears all by himself from the opposite direction we had come. He’s nothing but muscle.  He goes to the edge and takes in the view for a full minute. Then he’s milling around and I talk to him urging him to wait for his people.  After at least 5 more minutes a man comes down the trail and yells that he’s harmless. I respond that I see that.

The man stops to rest and shortly the other three members of his party and another dog show up.  They are all young and one guy is chatty.  He tells us that prior to Dix and Hough he’d only done three others, Cascade, Porter and another as a kid which he can’t remember. By now its almost 3 PM.  They say they are going on to finish the loop and do South Dix, East Dix and Macomb. Joe says he wouldn’t want to go down the Macomb slide much less  in the dark and with dogs. The guy seems unconcerned. Meanwhile one of the girls in the party notices the other dog a Doberman has a cut paw.

At three o’clock we are on our feet, say goodbye and head off. I make one last pitch to skip Dix and take the cutoff back to camp. Joe is determined to carry on. By this time our water is very low. I’ve got maybe half a bottle and Joe has less. When we get drinks I make sure he gets my bottle first and tell him just to drink mine cause his is hard to get out.  Which it is.

We make slow work up Dix. Usually it’s me asking to stop and catch my breath but now it’s Joe needing to sit down frequently. The lack of water is kicking in big time.  Finally in one of his breaks I convince him to skip Dix and take the Beckhorn trail off the mountain.  We plod ahead slowly stopping to rest often. We get to the Beckhorn and I make the first feeble attempt. I fail.  I tell Joe you go first. He studies it and then backs up to it and lifts himself up with his hands so his feet connect with the stone. Now he’s backwards on all fours,  then he hops, hops, hops backwards up the Beckhorn. Like a backwards Spiderman.  And he’s up.

I say well I’m not going to be able to do that! I hear voices behind us and I look hopefully backwards for a helping hand. Nobody in sight. So I start clawing at the rock and somehow manage to get myself up enough that my foot connects with stone. I’m clinging to the rock now and I wedge my foot into the crevice and push my body up. Now my foot is stuck and I wiggle, helpless. Somehow I dislodge my foot and I wiggle and claw my way up. It wasn’t pretty and I was glad no one came into view to witness.

At some point we realize we missed the cutoff. Dix looks so close and so easy so we decide to go for it after all.  After the Beckhorn it was a fairly ‘easy’ climb.  We head around a bend and up the last bit to a nice vantage point.  I notice a young man in a red shirt sitting admiring the view from a lookout. He smiles at me as we go by.

We stop for a rest on Dix and agree we aren’t going to take the Beckhorn trail back. We’ll do the full loop and it was a tenth of a mile shorter maybe and we like loops. Another couple shows up while we are on Dix. We chat with them and find out they arrived to Slide Brook that morning and so are heading back to the same place as us. They are a nice couple, probably 10 years younger than us from Schenectady.  They bemoan the lack of back woods skills of our fellow Slide Brook campers, they tell us about an upcoming visit to England to see her family and their plans to hike the Lake District, they tell us they made tea on the top of Hough because tea after all fixes everything.  We never exchange names.  They say they are going down the Beckhorn trail because it’s quicker though steeper. They are anxious to get back indicating some physical issue the man was having.  We talk about catching up later back at camp.  They head off and we check the map again to make sure the Beckhorn Trail isn’t shorter. Doesn’t seem so from where we are. We head off toward what we hope is Hunters Pass.

We are going down very rugged terrain and making fairly good time.  I’m always faster (clarification-faster than myself on the way up, not faster than Joe) on the way back.  I have one goal, get to the tent before dark.  We are finally back on marked trails which is a relief.  I keep talking about the other trail and how we need to make sure we don’t accidentally get on that trail and off course again.  I’m convinced there will be a real sign at the junction but I’m worrying myself into thinking we could be on the wrong trail.  Joe is not saying much, politely tolerating my normal attempts at navigation and preventing a problem by worrying about it.

Finally during a break I pull out the GPS.  It shows us no where near the route I had downloaded.  But the route I downloaded was in two pieces with a piece missing.  We don’t seem to be in the missing piece though.  Joe consults the GPS and map and we decide maybe we missed a turn.  So we head back up Dix, exhausted and thirsty.

Near the top the young man in the red shirt is heading down.  We ask is this Hunter’s Pass.  He pulls out his map and shows us where we are and that we were heading toward Hunter’s Pass before we turned around.  Its easy to see he’s used to helping fellow hikers and likes to.  He tells us he’s going that way too but heading out on the Bouquet River trail.  He invites us to follow him and we do.  We chat and learn that he is a reporter for the Lake Placid paper.  He’s lived in Lake Placid his whole life and loves the mountains. Its clear he’s probably slowed down by us.  Buoyed by the conversation Joe picks up pace and I let him get in front of me so he can chat with Antonio because he can keep up better than me.  We reach the junction of Hunter’s Pass and Bouquet River and shake Antonio’s hand and thank him for the company and help and part ways.

Relieved to have seen a sign with Slide Brook on it we head off on the trail.  Soon Joe is lagging again and stopping frequently for rests.  We’ve not had any water for some time and its now past 6PM.  We have literally one swallow of water left and Joe finally breaks down and drinks it.  I’m mostly hungry but without water eating a granola bar will just make me thirstier so I don’t eat.  We press on.

We are following the markers and living on trust that we are still on the right trail because the GPS route I downloaded doesn’t match the route we’ve chosen and there is no map on the GPS for some reason.  But the paper map reassures us that there are no other trails around we could have gotten on.  The trail goes on forever and I wonder should we have taken the Beckhorn?  Maybe there was water there.  We think we hear water.  Its like that mirage in the desert though, the wind playing tricks on us.

Around 7 PM Joe stops and lays down on the trail saying he just needs to rest.  I think oh boy this is not going to help, we’ve been resting very frequently.  I know we are in trouble.  Joe is tough as nails and if he’s laying in the trail he’s not in a good place.  My mouth is dry and I’m tired but I feel like I can make it back to camp.

I still think I hear water.  I tell Joe to give me the water filter and I’ll go find water.  He refuses, says he’ll be fine in a few minutes.  I wait a few heartbeats.  Then I say in my firmest voice give me the water filter and he relents.  He sits up barely off the ground and I can’t get the filter out of his pack.  I make him sit up further.  I pull out the filter and he falls back prone again.  I take off on a brisk walk/run with the filter in my hand down the mountain.  I hear the water but I know my limitations.  There is no way I’m running off the trail towards the sound of water.  I will never make my way back. I plow ahead and not very far down the trail I KNOW there is water running along the trail.  I keep going till I can see it from the trail and then with relief I push my way to the stream. I pump about a half cup and drink it.  Then I start pumping and pumping.   The pump should have been primed I think but its not working very well but I inspect it and it looks clean.  I try again.  Then I hear Joe calling me, where am I he asks.  I yell for him to keep walking on the trail and he’ll see me just off the trail.

He appears and plops on the edge of the stream.  I’m relieved to see him and tell him so. He said he could not bear the thought of me having to walk back up that mountain to him.  I give him a half liter of water with electrolytes and tell him to drink.  I keep pumping and we both drink more.  Joe gets stomach cramps and then the shakes from all the cold water hitting his dried up body.  He pulls off his sweat soaked clothes and puts on a fleece he had thankfully brought.  I try to eat a Builder Bar but one bite is all I manage.  My body is conserving the energy it needs to chew.  I shove the rest of it in my pocket.  I fill up two bottles and we get back on the trail to get him moving and warmed up.

We plod on what seems like an endless trail.  Stopping less frequently to rest but more frequently than we usually do on the way back.  Finally we pull out our head lamps so we are ready for the dark.  Its that time of night when every quarter mile a fallen, rotting log looks like a baby bear in the distance and your heart skips a beat.  Baby bears scare me.  Not the baby but the mama whose probably near by and would ignore us but for the babies.  When we turn on the head lamps the shadows play tricks and we start to see things coming at us from the woods.  I tell myself that no animal is going to want to come near us and with our head lamps shining, poles clicking, feet tromping and occasional griping, we are not exactly stealth and animals will easily avoid us.  So I force myself to stop jumping at the shadows.

We walk what feels like a bazillion endless miles.  I contemplate what is the best place to hunker down if we get stuck out there?  On the bank of a stream?  It seems sheltered a bit.  But I imagine its a hang out for thirsty animals as well.  I think about what is in my pack and how uncomfortable a night that would be.

Its dark now and we hear a brook in the distance, hopeful its the one at our camp but I know its not.  The trail becomes harder to follow in the dark. The markers seem further apart.  We spot a camp fire in the distance.  Our trail veers away from the fire we think but we are not sure so we head back to the camp fire to talk to the people there.  As we get close we see its the gay couple we met the night before.  The one with the French accent is wrapped up in a blanket and pops up to tell us there is a lean to and he points. We thank him and head that way but the sign is not a lean to sign it is in fact a no camping sign that they have misread.  There is however a privy so I take advantage of it though due to lack of water I had no urgent need.  We carry on trying to follow the trail in the dark.

We come to Lillian Brook.  I know this because there is a giant sign.  A man near the brook tells us we are close.  We say we are camping about 1.3 miles away.  We tromp on past the campers relaxing and doing camp chores in the dark.  Its muddy but relatively flat which is a relief.  About a half mile from Lillian Brook we see headlamps coming at us in the distance and a man yells, “Black dog coming at you.  He’s friendly”.  Then there is the black Lab we encountered on Hough, looking as strong as ever.  I’m grateful for the warning because in the dark that would have been scary.  We greet the foursome and the other dog.  They ask how far to Lillian Brook and we say not far at all.  I say “Boy am I happy to see you guys!  I was worried about you.”  The chatty guy says “Really?!?”  We continue on without any more words.

The dark is disorienting and it makes it harder to tell how far you have gone.  We walk what seems an eternity.  Constantly asking each other if we missed something.  We see another camp fire off the trail but continue walking, thankful for the trail markers.  We arrive at another camp site and think it must be ours but we don’t see our tent.  There are a couple of people chatting by the fire and we ask them if this is Slide Brook.  They say yes.  We still don’t recognize our tent.  They point to one and say is that it?  Why yes it is.  I guess I’ve never seen it at night, it glows.  I joke that we have been gone so long we forgot what it looked like.

We head over and strip off our mud caked pants and boots before crawling in the tent.  I hope the tent is hiding me somewhat but I really don’t care at that point.  It was 10:30 PM.  We had been gone 15.5 hours.  We left our food in our backpacks and put them under the rain fly. Neither of us cared.  We were surrounded by idiots anyway.  I remember the Builder Bar with a bite out of it.  I dig around outside and find it in my pants.  I try to get Joe to eat it. He won’t.  Joe puts it up by our heads in the tent.  Its a warm night and we are clammy and gross feeling but so grateful to be back in our tent. Just after we are dozing off something is nuzzling the tent by our heads and scratching around.  Joe slaps at the tent and yells and it goes away.  Throughout the night Joe suffers massive leg cramps from the dehydration that send his whole body into a clench.

We are up with the birds and breaking camp as quickly as we can.  Joe goes to filter water while I take down the tent.  We pack up and head out towards our car and civilization.  Its wonderful to walk during the day light.  We are walking at an easy pace, not killing ourselves.  I hear a couple gaining on us chatting away.  When they get close enough we stop to get a drink and let them pass.  Its the couple from the top of Dix.  They stop to chat a bit and tell us they got back to camp at 8:30 PM.  The Beckhorn trail was killer and when they got off the Beckhorn and to the flatter trail back to camp they fell apart, felt like they couldn’t continue and thought for sure we had beat them back.  We were not so lucky we told them.  They were faster hikers than us and we soon parted ways.

We are elated to reach the car.  I thank Joe for another death defying experience.  We get in the car and head to Schroon Lake to get some breakfast at Pitkins.  We chat about the hike and promise that we won’t bite off more than we can chew next time.  We agree we will both carry more water and not count on streams.  We talk about scaling back the plans for HaBaSa in August.  Promises, promises.

 

PS:  Joe insists I mention that after arriving home we weighed our packs and Joe’s was 45 and mine was 25 pounds.  He’s claiming chicanery.