Snow Mountain Scramble

Are you the manager? I’d like to speak to the manager, please. My name is Karen, and I really need to complain about the Deer Brook Trail. How can you even call this a trail? I broke the heel on one of my Jimmy Choos. My Kate Spade bag is covered with mud. I want a refund.

After the heat wave earlier in the week, we expected various amounts of rain every day in the Tri-Lakes. Friday looked like the most benign weather, so I drove to Keene Valley with Snow Mountain and the Rooster Comb in my sights. As I descended Route 73 into Keene, rain came down like water from a bucket.

I’d passed two dozen triathletes training on the bike route of the Lake Placid Ironman in this deluge, so I kept driving. Just past the Snow Goose Bed and Breakfast, the rain abated as I parked the Fortunate Son.

I stuffed two hats, a fleece vest, and other items into my pack. It might seem excessive for summer solstice, but I got damn near hypothermic on Santanoni over July 4th weekend some decades ago. Better safe than sorry.

I shrugged into my hydration pack. A small green and white sign denotes the Deer Brook trail to Snow Mountain and elsewhere. Crossing Route 73, I hopped the guard rail and went into the woods.

Fifty feet in, a sign admonished hikers to stay on the trail. Most of the Deer Brook trail is traversed via an easement across private property. The next sign, Rough Trail, is the understatement of the year. The first half mile took 30 minutes to complete. Walking on the edge of the brook, and in some places in the middle of the brook, on steep pitches.

On one section, I clambered over boulders the size of Subarus. Wet, moss-covered rock. Not great footing. As your third grade teacher might ask, is that a good choice? Anyway, the stiff vertical should be good preparation for July’s Whiteface Sky Race. I continued uphill, crisscrossing Deer Brook several times.

The good thing about a Friday hike with intermittent rain on an obscure trail is solitude. I didn’t see another soul on the whole excursion. The trail ramped up steeply until it intersected with an old road. I passed a turn for Lower Wolfjaw, one of the 46 High Peaks, and another for the trail head in Saint Huberts. Rain resumed, but I remained undeterred. After another mile, there was the turn for Snow Mountain.

At 2360 feet, Snow Mountain is merely a bump in this part of the Adirondacks. But I’d never been on it… indeed, before this hike I hadn’t attempted the Deer Brook trail either. I veered off the main trail for the 0.3 mile ramble to the summit of Snow. The final bit of the climb involved scrambling up some impressive rock ledges.

The summit was mostly tree covered, and low cloud cover obscured much of the landscape. I got a decent photograph of Rooster Comb from an open ledge. As I prepared to descend, rain resumed. The rock steps that had demanded scrambling required much more circumspect descent. Decaying knee cartilage, being a card carrying member of AARP, excessive caution since I was solo… whatever the reason, any ledge with more than an eight inch drop required a long time to navigate.

I returned to the junction and as the trail followed a contour line, I ran to the next intersection. Here, my choices were Rooster Comb or descend to the trail head by Keene Valley village. Did I want Rooster Comb bad enough to commit an additional 80 minutes?

I’d been on it once before, and in the end, I decided I didn’t. I dropped in to the descent to Route 73, and the 1.5 mile run back to my car. The technical bits on the Deer Brook trail had been nasty enough going up that I didn’t trust myself to get down them safely. Road running sucks, broken bones suck worse.

After benign, non-technical days on Jenkins and Saint Regis mountains, Snow was a wake up call to the realities of walking in the High Peaks. And to get in a really big day, I need to get out of the house earlier. All in, a worthwhile trip on terrain that I hadn’t previously traveled.