story time:
>decide to do Marcy on thanksgiving weekend
>plan a two day 7 miles in, 10 miles out trip via the John Brooks Trail
>make the 6 hour drive up on thanksgiving day
>Friday morning, stop into local outdoor shop to ask about trail conditions
>The clerk says "I dunno, you should bring everything just in case"
>tells me I have to get a bear canister as well or I will get ticketed
>the damn thing weighs 3 pounds and takes up my entire pack, end up packing less food and having an unbalanced backpack.
>first 3.5 miles in not bad, making a pace of 1.5 miles per hour instead of planned 2 miles per hour because of unbalanced pack
>get to John Brooks Lodge at 12PM
>next section of trail requires snowshoes, there's week-old tracks there
>pace slows to 1 mile per hour
>half a mile in, they stop, and the trail is completely unbroken
>it's thicc snow too, even with 30" snowshoes I'm sinking a foot in each step
>even ask my self if I've lost the trail several times
>eventually make it to Bushnell falls at 4PM
>calculate that my pace is an abysmal 0.5 miles per hour
>normally, night-hiking 2 miles to get to the slant rock site would be fine, but with my current pace I'd get there only at 8 or 9PM
>turn back and set up camp at the bushnell site
>next morning, calculate that if I try to make it to Marcy, I'll end up caught in the freezing rain forecast for the night.
>decide I don't want to die and start heading back down
Too bad the Adirondacks are so far away, I guess I'll have to go back in March and day-trip via the Van Hoevenberg trail when there's more sunlight, the trail's been broken in, and there's no dumbass bear canister regulations in combination with all the heavy winter gear. All the bear canister did was weigh me down; there were no bear tracks I didn't even see any park rangers.
>mfw on the way down passed a few people who commented it was nice the trail was already broken in
a-at least I helped someone, r-right?
pic rel my route
