Sept 6, 2010 - Vanderwhacker Mountain

We hiked up Vanderwhacker Mountain today. This was a lovely trail - very Adirondack-y, through mixed northern hardwoods, past several wetlands, creeks and streams, climbing up into fir & spruce... rocks and roots, the whole deal. The trail is well worn in places but pretty well maintained for the level of traffic. Great hike with a wonderful reward upon reaching the summit!
The view from the top is really beautiful and even more so from the top of the firetower. I, with my newly acquired fear of heights braved the climb up only to have my daughter taunting me, after climbing down herself, with "Mom, it is pretty wobbly! Mom it is REALLY high up there!" - Nice!

The roundtrip distance is 5.4 miles, with about half of it being pretty steep. Claire slowed down a bit close to the top but after a bite to eat and sitting for a while looking at the beautiful view, she was ready to go and go she did... running down the entire way! I was beat! It was all we could do to keep up with her! Wow!

September 5, 2010 - Cook Mountain

We headed to Cook Mountain Preserve, south of Ticonderoga and overlooking Lake George. Not a very long hike - 3.4 miles round trip but somewhat steep and scrambly in places. View of the lake and the Green Mts is pretty though it is through the oaks that cover the rocky summit. This picture is my first experimentation with high dynamic range imaging (HDR photography). Very fun stuff - really can capture more of the light in a scene.

August 28-29, 2010 - Camping on Crane Pond

Decided to camp overnight on Crane Pond. Had the camera this time!! Above - Claire in the parking area near goose pond trailhead. We brought the canoe and paddled up Alder Pond/Flow (below), and then carried over to Crane.

DJ paddling up Crane. We headed to the sites that were primarily accessible only by boat at the end of the lake (seems some bushwhack their way there at times). We saw 5 boatable sites by our count. Our site facing north got morning sun, two sites at the northeastern end facing west seemed to get sun much of the day. A fourth on the southern shore had great afternoon/evening sun and one the bay over looked nice but we didn't get close enough to it to really check it out.

Claire at the campsite!

Crane is a beautiful little lake! Popular on this late August weekend, but we did get a site even coming in on Saturday! We had fun and really enjoyed swimming in the crystal clear, deep waters. The water was deep quickly at our site. We had a wonderful rock shore that we could dive right off of. Other campers on the lake left right away Sunday morning so we enjoyed most of the day alone on the end of the lake. After packing up, we threw in a 4 mile loop hike that went by oxshoe pond lean-to which was occupied and then paddled out Alder. Nice couple of days!

August 18, 2010 - Mt Jo

Following a fantastic trip to Michigan, camping in the Wilderness with Aunt Bean and the 3 cousins, the crew came to Glens Falls for a visit. We took the kids to hike Mt Jo and weren't disappointed. The hike to the top was short and fun, complete with lots of rock scrambles. We did not have the camera! Crazy! The kids had a blast and the summit was beautiful. The view was gorgeous. Kids played on the shores of Heart Lake after coming down and they all got their very own Mt Jo patches.