Made a resolution start working my way through David Goodman’s excellent Best Backcountry Skiing in the Northeast book. Most of the tours in the book are spread out, but the High Peaks offers an opportunity to combine tours since several start at the Adirondak Loj. The Wright Peak tour is ~7 miles round trip and the Avalanche Pass tour is ~10 miles round trip, but look! There’s a nifty whales tail trail that connects the two! So, why not bag both? Greediness is always a good idea for tours, right? So here’s the plan, green track out, blue track return.
First things first, get info from the AMC Welcome Center. Apparently the Wright Peak trail is classified as “good coverage” but also has a note of “rocks and roots exposed everywhere”. Encouraging. Guess the only way to find out is to go for it.
Anticipating a long day, I set my alarm for 6 am to get an early start. Woke up, looked at the weather - 0 F and negative windchill. Hit snooze and settled for a more leisurely 9am start. At least the temperature was positive Fahrenheit. Based on the parking lot, it looks like everyone else had the same idea.
The Van Hoevenberg trail picks up right by the parking lot and connects with the Algonquin and Marcy Dam trails further in. Conditions were excellent - the trail was broken out and slightly packed down, but not yet icy. Progress was brisk first by fishscales and then by skins. Progress was so good that I blew by the turn for the Algonquin train and didn’t realize I was off track until I saw signs for Marcy Dam. Oops.
Fortunately views at the dam were excellent, and in the distance you could barely make out some ambitious lines laid down on angel slides.
The original plan was to do the more difficult Wrights Peak first and then Avalanche Pass, but nothing wrong with reversing that. So might as well continue up to Avalanche Lake. Conditions on the ski trail continued to be excellent, only a handful of people had passed through so still powder to be had everywhere. The climb up takes you past some very impressive frozen waterfalls.
Views at the lake were stunning and I crossed part of the way until I lost shelter from the wind. Temps were still in the single digits, so not wanting to deal with negative windchill, time to turn around.
Skiing back down the trail was a nice sequence of narrow downhills and runout speed checks. Plentiful stashes to bleed speed, but it would be a more spicy experience once packed down and crusty.
Once back at Marcy Dam, it was a somewhat awkward trek following the trail through the middle of occupied campsites to connect with the Whales Tail trail. Progress was easy at first since the trail varied between 10-20 feet wide with powder hip-deep everywhere. It was here that my skins decided to stop sticking, and without tail clips to keep them in place the last few pitches had to be booted up. Ran into some folks coming the other way at the top and had a nice chat while transitioning and scraping the snow off my skins.
Conditions on the trail down was the opposite of the up. It was mostly a narrow steep-ish skin trail with brush on both sides. Only one pic near the top since it was a struggle for my mediocre skiing skills.
At the bottom of the whales tail trail it was only a mile or so to the beginning of the Wright Peak ski trail, but given my deteriorating skins situation I decided to cut my losses and return to the Loj.
Of course I had to make one more wrong turn on the way back. Instead of taking Algonquin back to Van Hoevenberg, I ended up on the Old Marcy Dam trail. Fortunately all the trails in this direction led back to the Loj and this ended up being slightly shorter to boot. Actual out/back tracks below, looked nothing like the plan in the morning.
Final stats below.
All in all a good day - made it back with plenty of daylight to spare and checked off one of the two tours.
Lessons for next time: do Whales Tail from Algonquin to Marcy Dam, and no tunnel vision zooming down trails at the start. Also pack backup skins. And also be even more greedy in tour-planning!
First things first, get info from the AMC Welcome Center. Apparently the Wright Peak trail is classified as “good coverage” but also has a note of “rocks and roots exposed everywhere”. Encouraging. Guess the only way to find out is to go for it.
Anticipating a long day, I set my alarm for 6 am to get an early start. Woke up, looked at the weather - 0 F and negative windchill. Hit snooze and settled for a more leisurely 9am start. At least the temperature was positive Fahrenheit. Based on the parking lot, it looks like everyone else had the same idea.
The Van Hoevenberg trail picks up right by the parking lot and connects with the Algonquin and Marcy Dam trails further in. Conditions were excellent - the trail was broken out and slightly packed down, but not yet icy. Progress was brisk first by fishscales and then by skins. Progress was so good that I blew by the turn for the Algonquin train and didn’t realize I was off track until I saw signs for Marcy Dam. Oops.
Fortunately views at the dam were excellent, and in the distance you could barely make out some ambitious lines laid down on angel slides.
The original plan was to do the more difficult Wrights Peak first and then Avalanche Pass, but nothing wrong with reversing that. So might as well continue up to Avalanche Lake. Conditions on the ski trail continued to be excellent, only a handful of people had passed through so still powder to be had everywhere. The climb up takes you past some very impressive frozen waterfalls.
Views at the lake were stunning and I crossed part of the way until I lost shelter from the wind. Temps were still in the single digits, so not wanting to deal with negative windchill, time to turn around.
Skiing back down the trail was a nice sequence of narrow downhills and runout speed checks. Plentiful stashes to bleed speed, but it would be a more spicy experience once packed down and crusty.
Once back at Marcy Dam, it was a somewhat awkward trek following the trail through the middle of occupied campsites to connect with the Whales Tail trail. Progress was easy at first since the trail varied between 10-20 feet wide with powder hip-deep everywhere. It was here that my skins decided to stop sticking, and without tail clips to keep them in place the last few pitches had to be booted up. Ran into some folks coming the other way at the top and had a nice chat while transitioning and scraping the snow off my skins.
Conditions on the trail down was the opposite of the up. It was mostly a narrow steep-ish skin trail with brush on both sides. Only one pic near the top since it was a struggle for my mediocre skiing skills.
At the bottom of the whales tail trail it was only a mile or so to the beginning of the Wright Peak ski trail, but given my deteriorating skins situation I decided to cut my losses and return to the Loj.
Of course I had to make one more wrong turn on the way back. Instead of taking Algonquin back to Van Hoevenberg, I ended up on the Old Marcy Dam trail. Fortunately all the trails in this direction led back to the Loj and this ended up being slightly shorter to boot. Actual out/back tracks below, looked nothing like the plan in the morning.
Final stats below.
All in all a good day - made it back with plenty of daylight to spare and checked off one of the two tours.
Lessons for next time: do Whales Tail from Algonquin to Marcy Dam, and no tunnel vision zooming down trails at the start. Also pack backup skins. And also be even more greedy in tour-planning!
