Day 2 of March 2024 Trip to Adirondacks, Wright Mountain

The second day of my March 2024 trip to the Adirondacks. I checked out a foggy Wright Mountain.

Waterfall

After the previous day’s trip to Cascade Mountain, there’s no rain in the weather forecast today, so I decided to take on a longer hike. For that I picked Algonquin and Wright Peaks. These two peaks shared most of their trails in common, just like the previous day between Cascade Mountain and Porter Mountain, so I had the flexibility to skip either one in case I was out of time. (In the end, it was all fogged up at the summit of Wright Peak, so I decided to skip Algonquin Peak.)

Extrapolating from my speed on Cascade Mountain the previous day, I estimated I had more than enough time for today’s hike. Therefore in the morning, I headed for Lake Placid and watched a few matches of the CAN/AM youth hockey league that I bumped into the previous day. It’s the last day of their tournament weekend when the finals were held. After witnessing quite a few cheers and excitement, I left Lake Placid and headed for the trailhead.

The trailhead for this hike was “Adirondak Loj” on Google Maps, commonly referred to as “Loj”. The road leading up to the trailhead was paved (also plowed when it snowed, per online comment), but somewhat washboarded and not in ideal condition. It’s also very sandy as the area primarily used sand (instead of salt) to deal with snow, mostly for environmental concerns. Parking was 18 dollars per car per day.

After some warmup, I started my hike at 11:25am. Here’s GPS tracking:

The gate keeper / casher / ranger at “Adirondak Loj” recommended both snowshoes and microspikes for my trip. It turned out, as online comments mentioned, snowshoes, which I didn’t bring, were completely unnecessary as the snow was well-packed along the trail. She also suggested me to depart east from the parking lot, following Van Hoevenberg Trail. Instead, I departed west from the trailhead, following “Old Marcy Dam Trail” to check out Heart Lake first. (In my opinion, this was the better route, details below.)

 
Heart Lake
Largely frozen but beginning to thaw. Nice open view along the trail.

Apart from one muddy section at the campground, “Old Marcy Dam” and “Old Maclntyre” Trails were actually in decent condition. There were a few icy sections, but since this part of the trail was relatively flat, they didn’t present any issues even without traction devices. There were a few water crossings but they weren’t difficult. There was one fallen tree to navigate around, but crucially, most of the trail wasn’t muddy.

 
Trail

 
Maclntyre Brook

After crossing Maclntyre Brook, I joined the main Algonquin Trail. Just like the previous day at Cascade Mountain, the trail started out in a mix of rocks and snow/ice (like p1 below, but started out with much less snow), threaded with patches of mud. I could choose to set my feet on rocks before putting on crampons, and on snow/ice afterwards.

Click here to display photos of the trail.

Trail

Trail

Trail

Ski Trail
One that looked very steep to me.

Trail

Trail

Trail

Trail

The snow cover got thicker as I headed up the mountain into a thickening fog.

2 hours into the hike, I reached Maclntyre Falls, a major waterfall along the trail that’s largely frozen. I took a longer rest here and contemplated whether to head back (as I didn’t expect the summit to offer any views). But with enough time left in the day, I decided to continue.

Click here to display photos of the Maclntyre Falls.

Waterfall

Waterfall
Taken during my descent with less fog.

Around Maclntyre Falls there were two technical/steep sections of the trail. The second one (p3-4 below) was arguably the most challenging of the entire hike. The common route was to take a small detour towards the left (east) into the woods, in order to avoid the large patch of steep ice.

Click here to display photos of the slideshow

Steep Trail
A technical section on steep ice.

Steep Trail
Looking from above of the previous section.

Steep Trail
Another technical section on steep ice.

Steep Trail
Looking from above of the previous section.

Cliff

About 300m before the summit, marking the boundary between snow-packed trail and snow-free rocks. Some scrambling was needed to get on/off this cliff.

The intersection between Wright and Algonquin Trails was also inconspicuous. To head to Wright Peak one needed to make an intentional left-turn, while continuing on the trail (which also made a slight left turn) led to Algonquin Peak. (I only found out about this 50m into the wrong way.)

After scrambling on top of a small cliff (p5 above), the final 300m towards Wright Peak was on rocks. In some places the rocks were damp, likely from the fog (or the rain the previous day). But overall, they weren’t difficult.

As expected, the summit was fogged out, with no views around. Nonetheless, I took a video to mark the moment:

13 seconds, 2160p30fps, H265 only, 8Mbps for a total size of 14MB.

Click here to display photos from the summit of Wright Peak.

Path to Wright Peak Summit

Path to Wright Peak Summit

Summit of Wright Peak

Wright Peak Summit

Faint Rainbow among Fog

The fog was dispersing, as evident in the traces of blue sky above a very faint rainbow (p5 above). Unfortunately, there’s not enough daylight left, so I had to head back down.

On my way back, I tried to follow the official “Algonquin Trail” back to the parking lot, which was different from my morning trail. In short, it’s longer (2.3km vs 1.9km), not as flat (more ups and downs), but most crucially, it’s muddy. The mud likely came from melted snow/ice that saturated the ground with water, and it’s super unpleasant to deal with. The mud also greatly slowed me down, so by the time I got to my car, it’s past sunset.

 
Muddy Trail

In the end, it seemed like the situation I encountered the previous day at Cascade Mountain (snow/ice along the entire trail) was an outlier. For most other hikes in the Adirondacks, much to my dismay, the trails near parking lot were largely snow-free (and hence muddy to various degrees). It’s especially perplexing as “Loj” had similar elevation as the trailhead of Cascade Mountain, but the snow conditions were drastically different.
While I had hoped that if I enjoyed today’s hike to Wright Peak, I might come back to “Loj” early the next morning for an attempt at Mount Marcy. In the end, the mud situation I experienced today certainly killed that thought.

END

Day 2 of March 2024 Trip to Adirondacks, Wright Mountain by Huang's Site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.