Going to Church in the Strawberry Patch

Trying to Grow Up In Spite of Myself

A Memoir by Tom Bessette

Copyright 2009 BessetteBooks

Chapter 10
Peaks, Photography and Friendship 

My mouth is filled with saliva and loose teeth. 
I know I can’t spit them out because then they will be gone for good,  and perhaps there is hope.

I resist the urge to swallow, knowing that the sharp roots will abrade my throat.
I am terrible, worthless, lower than low.

I tongue my teeth around in my mouth, hearing the faint clicking sounds as they scrape together.

What to do, what to do, but feel stupid.
I have to swallow or spit before I choke.

The lure of photographing the mountains was strong. Spectacular scenery was what was needed to produce a great photograph, that was for sure.  I need only hike to these spectacular places and quality images would jump out of my camera like butterflies from cocoons.  I was no longer smoking and was starting to get into shape, so, with Bob DuPuis as my companion and guide, I set off to the High Peaks with hoards of others who had newly found them, and attacked the mountains with manly gusto.

Bob was one of those short, compact, even petite, muscular guys who could eat and drink as much as anybody but never got heavy or sloppy.  He was as neat in his grooming and clothes as he was in every other way.  Neat, precise, intelligent, and distant, a strong runner and steady hiker, innovative and technically creative.  He was constantly working out new ways to decrease the weight in our packs, experimenting with various food options and reading up on the latest available equipment, all in the pursuit of ever more efficient hiking experiences.

It was easy for him to focus on all this technical crap, after all he was a lean, mean, fighting machine, and in great shape, without an ounce of fat on him. He didn’t have to deal with the very real possibility that he wouldn’t be able to complete a hike or other outing.  I was the contrast in our duo, a recent smoker, always with a tendency to be a bit sloppy, and very uncoordinated and un-athletic.  Everything related to sports and fitness that I had ever tried required intense work to do what many others were able to do effortlessly and naturally. 

Also, here I was planning on climbing the highest Adirondack peaks, and I suffered from a raging fear of heights.  Ever since my dad had screamed that the dam had busted at the brink of the falls, I was extra nervous about being high up at the edge of things. All my life, I was afraid of being on ladders, even short step ladders.  Just being off the steady, safe ground was a torment; standing on a chair to change a light bulb brought out cold flop sweat and quivering knees. So, picture me standing atop a five hundred foot cliff on a five thousand foot high mountain.  What an idiot!

The promise of exciting, quality photographs lured me inexorably on, though, through the physical and mental roadblocks, and I was further dragged along by Bob’s enthusiastic and detailed planning.   For the first time in my life I really understood the concept of mixed feelings.  Outwardly and for photographic reasons, I was as enthusiastic as Bob was; excited about the trips and looking forward to the adventures.  I was, however, inwardly worried about actually doing the hikes, and standing up high, and getting in shape enough to do it. In my heart of hearts, I was still a lazy child, essentially unwilling to make the effort.

Bob and Tom Ballargeon were the leaders of our small contingent of runners, into which I was whisked as a member.  We developed a number of running routes and, depending on the mood of the leadership, one would be chosen at least every other night and we would set out on these runs.  One route was three point two miles and left Cohoes from the Ballargeon house and followed a road we called the Dike into Green Island. The route passed the Ford Radiator plant and the Bendix brake factory.  Bendix especially was well known for its toxic aroma; if you’ve ever smelled burning brake pads, you know what we breathed as we ran by.  Getting healthy by breathing toxins was one of the benefits of living in an urban environment.

On tough nights we ran our 5 mile hill route.  We ran up Central Avenue to Columbia Street, meeting it about half way up its moderate hill.  We ran up Columbia about two blocks worth, and then took a sharp right onto Imperial Avenue, which was one son of a bitch of a hill, steep and relentless, Bob yelling, “Charge the Hill,” and we would run up full speed, still in our first mile of this bastard route.  We were allowed to slow somewhat at the crest of the hill and the rest of the route comprised of ups and downs throughout this hilly section of Cohoes.  One of the more interesting aspects of this route was the fact that it traversed a few of the more problematic neighborhoods in our dying city and we would be accosted by toughs and street corner hangers on, especially at the intersection of Vliet and Summit.  Certain of these civilized individuals would yell out, “One, Two, One Two,” at us as we cruised by, you know, like we were in army training; boy were they brilliant.  Dave Ballargeon, being fleet of foot, would often answer out, “Three is next, if you need help counting!” at which one or more of the assholes would set out after us.  If we were fresh enough, outrunning them was easy, but after about six bitch hills by then, I was always worried I’d get caught, already feeling the burn.  Always the slowest, always wiping up the rear.

On the nights that the larger group didn’t run, being home recovering, Tom and Bob and a few other madmen would run the 10 mile route they had developed.  After all, these were guys who were in great shape and considering marathon training, which in fact they both started doing before too long.

Slowly, slowly, I started getting better wind.  I was starting to feel stronger, starting to feel fit for the first time since I was a skinny kid.  I took all this activity as a permission portal to continue stupid eating habits.  I drank lots of beer because I had heard it was a good replacement after running.  I was hungry after these workouts so started eating more and more Big Macs, often three and four at a sitting, along with the requisite large fries and soda.  It was a matter of pride to be able to eat a whole sixteen inch pizza at a sitting, particularly a Purple Pub pie with extra cheese and mushrooms and a few beers to wash it all down.  This was before any of us were really thinking about calorie or fat intake.  Cholesterol?  Trans Fats?  Sodium? Portion Control?  Huh?

Tom was always into the latest health fads.  Right around now, the new fix-all was protein pills, which he would throw down his throat, apparently by the dozens.  Of course we all followed him because he heard about all these panaceas and knew everything, so who were we to argue.  GNC was his supplier, and he bought and bought and bought.  The protein pills tasted pretty much like cardboard (of course we knew what cardboard tasted like) and had the texture of glued sawdust, but we dutifully chewed them up and swallowed them down, telling each other they were great.  Whenever anyone told us we were full of it, we knew they meant healthy protein.  God knows what permanent damage we did to ourselves with all this crap we did.  Probably when we all turn sixty-five, our legs will petrify, or our knees, ankles and elbows will fuse and we won’t know why; a medical mystery.

So, equipped, organized and in better shape, Bob and I set off on our wilderness adventures.  Like everyone else in the hiking boom of the mid seventies, we concentrated on the highest mountains as being the only areas worthy of our hard work.  We added to the garbage and overuse that enveloped our beloved mountains.  In our interest in bagging peaks, we hiked in wet weather, scraping surface soil off the trails with our jagged Vibram soles, and sending it to wash down the trails with our discarded candy wrappers and apple cores.  We’d trample on the fragile alpine sedges the ones that had managed to take root over the last century, obliterating them with one careless, tired step. I say this but it’s not really true.  We were especially conscious of the environmental impact, that is, Bob was, and he saw to it that I at least paid lip service to it.  We carried out our trash for sure, but when the weather got bad or we got really tired, all bets were off.  It was easy to drop a piece of wrapper or an apple core, decide it was too hard to bend over in your pack to pick it up, and decide that one little piece of trash wouldn’t destroy the forest after all.  Philosophy was fine but expediency would usually trump it.

That first time I hiked Algonquin, I sweated and huffed and inwardly bitched and moaned all the way to timberline.  The field guide noted landmarks to mark our passage, and at every one of these, I stopped and savored another bit of the hike over with. I crunched granola bars for energy, chomped apples, squirted Cheese Whiz on crackers, and drowned in cold water, all in an attempt to pull through. 

At timberline, where the trees ended and the alpine summit began, a transformation took place.  The views were unimpeded in all directions, and though still steep, the trail suddenly got easier.  The pain left my legs, the self absorption left my mind, and I forgot to take pictures of what I was seeing, it was all so beautiful.  To the east was Marcy, the high peak of Essex, called by the native Americans, Tahawus, or the Cloud Splitter. In front of Marcy were the slides of Mt. Colden, its naked flanks dropping to Avalanche Lake 2000 feet below.  Immediately south of east was the inner sanctum of Lake Colden and Flowed Lands, two mountain lakes shimmering in the sunlight. To the southwest we saw the notch of Indian Pass, known by the Indians as the He-no-do-aw-da, The Path of the Thunderer, walled by the thousand foot cliffs of Wallface Mountain.  Finally, to the north was Whiteface Mountain, soon to be the site of the 1980 Winter Olympics.

The summit paths were well worn down to bedrock, bordered by tufts of mud and grass and fragile alpine flowers.  Typically, hikers, especially tired ones, walked on the grasses, further eroding the trails.  There were scads of trash in every windproof nook, wrappers ground into what little soil remained, tissues caught in the branches of 200 year old scrub spruce, wads of human shit in clefts in the rocks, enveloped by toilet paper.  We were loving our mountains to death.

Shortly off to the south was Iroquois Peak, a so called “Trailless Peak” that had no maintained trail, though we could see the obvious herd path to it right there.  Bob was all for bagging the peak while we were there but it sure looked like work to me, so I passed on the notion, one of many lost opportunities in my hiking days.  Climbing Algonquin had been travail enough without adding to the misery. 

So, after eating a few more apples and granola bars and slurping more water, I set off with my camera, treading alpine grasses to get the best angles, and took a number of spectacular, talent-full photographs, each of which caught the essence of this place and my experience, sure to flood viewers with envy and amazement. Adirondack Life Magazine will crown me their new hero and my career in nature photography will be secured.

I was diligently studying all the technical aspects of photography, learning lens focal lengths, apertures and shutter speeds, film speeds and characteristics and making lists of all the expensive equipment I would have to have to produce ever more successful images: strong tripods to hold the camera steady, bags and vests with pockets to hold accessories, filters to alter reality, extra bodies. I lusted after telephoto zoom lenses and could argue whether Vivitar Series 1 lenses were better than Soligor CD’s.  I knew that f3.5 let in more light than f4.5 and why, and knew further the difference in price and the likely barrel and pin distortion each might exhibit.  I started out using Kodak High Speed Ektachrome (ASA 160) but soon thereafter switched to Kodachrome 25, enduring the lower light gathering capabilities for finer grain and sharpness, even though I generally hand held and the sharpness increase might have been nothing.

I knew composition, and for the most part was making properly exposed and focused images.  My friends and family who reviewed my pictures exclaimed over their quality and encouraged me to submit to shows and publications.  I continued with Dave Ballargeon’s slide show gatherings and was the acknowledged master of our group.  I would continue taking my Forked Lake morning mist shots and tackling these mountains and build up a formidable portfolio of award winning images.  I would submit to Adirondack Life and regional exhibitions.  I would be the best; sought after, admired and revered throughout the state and more.  I would come into my own and own it.  I would succeed.

So, I wandered around the mountaintop, taking the same images I had already seen in magazines and calendars.  I shot the expanse of Algonquin’s south meadow with Wallface in the background.  I did the obligatory scene of Colden’s slides and Marcy peeking above them, Gray and Skylight on either side.  I made the close-up of Wright Peak sleeping below the north summit meadow, its strewn rock top rambling down to timberline.  I had to have these in my portfolio and properly reproduced them all, right down to lying on my belly and photographing Edelweiss.  These were my magazine and calendar illustration shots and Adirondack Life would pay a pretty penny, you bet.

The hike down was easier and harder.  My breath was better and I could look around at the scenery while I walked but going downhill played hell with my knees and ankles, never strong to begin with.  I was sore and limping a bit before we got down to timberline but forged on, not having much choice, being three miles and two thousand feet in elevation from help.  I worked the kinks out after a bit and got back to making photographs: the view of Wright framed by trees, the falls at the resting spot, the birches growing out of rock outcroppings, all the stuff that I missed on the way up because I couldn’t see what was around me.  In the flats, we galloped along, sustained by thoughts of eating at McDonald’s in lake Placid, to replace all we burned climbing the mountain of course.  This was all long before we had any idea that McDonald’s might not have been the most healthy, nutritious choice for strength and long life.  In fact, Bob had worked at McDonald’s while in school and would wax poetic about the nutritive benefits of french fries and Big Macs.  They had lots of vegetable matter in them, after all.

A successful hike, and I made it, and while on it, started on my collection of timeless photographs that would grace a great book someday.  Bob was pleased, even though he would have been happier with side trips to Iroquois and Wright.  We drove to Placid and paid our respects to Eastern Mountain Sports to look at the gear and yonked down some Big Macs and fries and drove home in a stupor, me stiffening up further with every mile traveled.  When Bob dropped me off at home, it was all I could do to crawl out of the car.  My knees were locked and screaming, ankles grating, hips immobile; I was an old, old man.  It was a Sunday and I had to work the next day, dammit!  A few beers and off to bed, wondering what the hell I was doing this for.  Oh, yes, the pictures, the pictures.
As the seasons and years progressed, Bob and I went on many more hikes.  We got more adventurous, adding overnight stays and trying day hikes in the winter.  Hiking companions came and went, but we kept at it, getting bolder and more technical as we went, venturing out in ever more questionable weather to ever more intense backcountry locations.  Sometimes we’d almost get into trouble but always got out of it, eventually, somehow.  We both gradually started hiking alone when we couldn’t find times to go together.  Bob was especially adept at these marathon overnighters where he would hike 20 miles up and down ranges, and find a soft spot of ground somewhere and roll up in a couple of Space Blankets and sleep that way, and then hike another 20 miles out the next day.  I liked my comforts more and hauling a heavy pack was my trade off for a sleeping pad, sleeping bag and tent.  Oh, and my camera gear.

We climbed Mt. Marcy that same summer, adding Phelps, Skylight, Colden and overnight stays at Marcy Dam as a staging point.  Marcy was even more desecrated than Algonquin, as was the wayside stop of Indian Falls, and this was after the major organized expedition to haul out tons of accumulated trash.  The scene before had been somewhat similar to what I hear tell about the Everest Base camp, in which all this stuff is hauled in and then left there, in piles, because everyone is way too tired to haul it out.  Even the corpses of fallen hikers are left to freeze in perpetuity on Everest, although in the Adirondacks, someone will carry you out when you die. 

The evidence we saw was not so much trash but the evidence of thoughtless abuse:  worn spots on the ground where the piles had smothered the vegetation, rotted lean-to floors, partial outhouses.  Evidently, when firewood was scarce, certain hikers thought it OK to tear the walls off outhouses and heat themselves that way.  Since the outhouses at Indian Falls and Plateau were no longer ‘private,’ it was easy to see scads of toilet tissue and decomposing turds surrounding the campsites. I guess it was more private to squat and defecate at the edge of your tent than it was to sit on a wall-less outhouse. The mountain summits had the same deep rutted pathways at bedrock level.  Most people seemed to be able to look beyond and through it all and see only what they wanted to see, but I have to admit the wear and tear kept catching my eye.
While on the summit of Colden one sparkling summer day, I photographed Lake Colden and Flowed Lands from that vantage point.  In September, as we were making a fall foliage ascent of Algonquin, I made an image of Bob trudging up ahead of me (as usual) above timberline in the fog.  These two images were among the initial slides I sent into Adirondack Life later that fall for consideration for the next summer issues.  All ‘public confidence’ aside, to my shock and consternation, the images showed up in the July/August issue in a piece titled, ‘The Inner Sanctum.’  I think I got a paltry hundred dollars for the two, maybe even less, but it was proof positive that my stellar career in Photography was well launched.  My name was in a regional magazine under photos that I had taken. A new day was dawning.

We did our first winter hike the next year, choosing the relatively benign Cascade Peak as our goal.  We came equipped with snowshoes and crampons, winter clothing and parkas, facemasks, goggles and gloves, ready for intense summit conditions.  The trail was packed down so well that we were able to go barefoot, which is a mountain euphemism for not wearing snowshoes and hiking instead only in your hiking boots.  The day was crystal clear and balmy; the temperature got all the way up to near 30 degrees and we were able to sit on the windless summit in the sunshine, bareheaded, parkas open to let out the steam we had generated on the way up, enjoying our apples and leisure.  I made these sharp images with deep blue sky, thanks to my polarizer and crisp white snow, because I knew to overexpose the scene to account for bright light.  I shot Whiteface in the near distance and also summit scenes with frosted outcroppings of striated granite. We glissaded down the trail on our keisters whenever it looked safe and made the descent in record time.  It was so warm that our asses got soaked through to the skin and we rode itchy all the way home.

Another weekend hike was up Phelps late in the winter season, after a fresh snow.  The scrub spruce was thickened with rime iced snow and icicle drips.  I shot Marcy and Algonquin framed with crusted trees and Bob on the trail with a hearty, healthy grin.  On the way out, the huge Marcy Dam camping area was deserted, unlike the crowded place we had experienced that summer.  We had heard about the Noonmark in Keene Valley and stopped there for comfort food and great pie, before finishing the over two hour drive home in the dark.

We wanted Algonquin in the winter but were scared to death of a true timberline and the extra thousand feet it had over Cascade and Phelps.  It was steeper, more treacherous and more exciting than the other two.  In the end we opted to wait until May so that the chance of snow would be gone.  We got there early on May 5th that year, checked in at the Hiker Building at Heart Lake and started our ascent in balmy partly cloudy weather.  As we climbed it got colder and cloudier until we got to timberline where we found ourselves in a full scale blizzard, winds howling, snow driving, sight down to nothing.  We were not really prepared; we had ponchos and sweaters and hats but no parkas or snowshoes. We couldn’t see and got ourselves completely turned around on the summit.  I have an image from that day that shows a mass of white cloud with Bob enshrouded in snow and wind, his features completely obscured, and it makes me cold to look at it.  After about an hour, visibility cleared and we were able to find our way back to the trail at treeline and, painfully and coldly, made our long, hard way down the mountain and out to our waiting car.

By that summer, our confidence growing, we started doing overnights.  We’d hike into Indian Falls, set up camp, and then head off to Phelps or Marcy or whatever our summit was that day.  We did not make fires on these nights, not wanting to gather wood or, for that matter, to use up the firewood that was there in case someone might need it more than we did.  We tended to spend our daylight hours hiking and limited our cooking to boiling water to reconstitute freeze dried dinners, and make hot cocoa.  We started with our not so trusty Svea stoves and graduated to various competitors in search of one that didn’t look and sound like Liquid Oxygen boosting a moon shot.  Those things, when you got them going, which was NOT guaranteed, could literally burn water.

We soon ventured into the Johns Brook Valley, camping at Bushnell Falls or Slant Rock and exploring the Brothers, Big Slide and the Great Range.  It often rained and we’d get good and muddy, but Bob always was good at keeping at least relatively clean, whereas I always looked like I’d been in the woods for a week after only a few hours on the trail.  I just have that way about me, that, and the ability to sweat like no one else before or since.  I started sweating as soon as we started walking, my back would be sopping where the pack rested against it before fifteen minutes on the trail, and this only increased as we ascended, and barely let up when we descended.  I would perspire profusely in the winter, at rest, just thinking about heat.  When hiking, I would glisten with moisture, not looking like models that they spritzed in swimsuit ads, however, but rather like a short stocky hairy guy who just stepped out of the shower, bedraggled and belly shaking. Sweet!

Tom Ballargeon had met Jerry Pruitt who had moved onto Central Avenue in Cohoes and Jerry had become part of the fitness Rogue Gallery.  Jerry was married and had two young sons and seemed to try to spend as much time away from them as possible, though he claimed to love them all to distraction.  I remember him as the first person I ever met who actually freely admitted to maintaining a subscription to Playboy Magazine and reading it in public without shame. He was about ten years older than us and as we got to know him, he said he’d like to go hiking and camping with Bob and me.  Cousin Joe was hiking at this time, too, and had done a few solo hikes in the High Peaks.  So, we planned a weekend overnight hike to climb Marcy and Haystack for mid September.

We expected good weather and it started out nice early Saturday morning.  The four of us, Jerry, Joe, Bob and I set off from the Hiker Building and in short order passed through Marcy Dam and headed up into Avalanche Pass. In the pass we saw the northernmost stream source of the Hudson River, flowing from a spring in the side of Mt. Colden. Along Avalanche Lake we struggled down the rocky shore with numerous old, deteriorating wooden ladders and bridges, because in places Avalanche Mountain dropped sheer to the water and there was no place for a trail.  ‘Hitch up Matilda,’ a shore bridge spanning about twenty feet or so, clinging to the side of the cliff, was partially detached at the far end and undulated in the water with our weight, dipping low enough to wet our boots and threaten us with an inadvertent swim.  The story goes that the bridge is at the site where the mountain guide Old William Nye had to carry Matilda across so she could continue, way back when.

The shore along Lake Colden was pretty muddy but we slogged through OK.  The trail up the Opalescent River was beautiful, laden with cascading waterfalls flowing over huge granite boulders, moss and ferns framing the stream.  The walk required some big steps with our heavy packs and I was getting tired to the point that I was starting to enjoy the walk less.  Bob and I had our usual well packed and compact packs, everything securely lashed and the weight properly distributed.  Jerry’s outfit was all borrowed and hand me down, and parts of it were continually on the verge of dropping off on the trail, needing constant attention. Joe had his outfit pretty well packed but he had his binoculars and camera always at the ready, full hard leather camera case bouncing off his hip, metal canteen clanking with every step, a wild cacophony of sound.  We saw no animals to photograph and, since Bob was worried about getting up to Lake Tear of the Clouds before dark, he discouraged us from stopping to take pictures too often.  Plus, I was tired, as was Joe and we were now just on our intense ‘get this the hell over with’ hiking mentality, continuing our trudge with down turned heads, just plodding on, hoping for it to end.

Past Uphill Lean-To and up the Feldspar Brook trail, the hike got tough. The 1.2 miles between Feldspar and Lake Tear seemed interminable, and the walk was through a dark forest, muddy and rocky, under a thickening sky.  The thought of getting to the dry Lean-To at Lake Tear was all that was urging us on; we felt we wanted to drop right where we were and curl up and go to sleep.  It started to drizzle, one of those cold prickly ones where your clothes were soon wet to the touch and drops were dripping down your back.  After what seemed like hours, we hauled up to the Lean-To, the inviting smell of wood smoke in the air and sure enough, the Lean-To was taken, crowded, no room at the Inn.

The rule of the peaks was that Lean-To’s had to be available for up to seven persons before the occupants could send you away.  There were only five there but we would have made nine so we were out of luck.  We briefly considered pitching our tents in the vicinity but there was another Lean-To at Four Corners, a half mile away, so we set off for there in the gathering dusk.

The Four Corners Lean-To was also taken, even more crowded than Lake Tear was.  At the junction of the Marcy, Skylight and Panther Gorge trails, there was no place to set up a tent and Bob opined that it would be cold up this high and we should try to get lower.  He was the leader, so we set off for the descent into Panther Gorge.  The trail was steep and rocky and the light was starting to go, but we pressed on, slipping and tripping on tree roots and rocks and getting wetter and wetter.  The Panther Gorge Lean-To was also packed with people and this time there was nothing else but to pitch our tents and make the best of it.

Bob had us fan out to look for a clearing in which to pitch our tents.  Jerry noted we were in thick woods and there were obviously no clearings anywhere near here.  Clearing is a relative term.  It was near dark but we found a place with fewer trees and were able to place our tents near each other and string a tarp between them. The tents weren’t tautly set up because the ground was uneven and the tarp was only an extra poncho which wasn’t all that big.  We organized our gear and Bob set about getting the damned Svea stove going and cooking supper.  Jerry wanted a fire and couldn’t seem to understand that it was already dark, finding wood would be hard, and that same wood would be well wetted now anyway.  He grumbled but quieted down. 

Bob got a bucket of water boiling and reconstituted dinner, which was freeze dried stroganoff.  For those who have never sampled the pleasures of seventies era freeze dried food, thank your lucky stars.  The stuff was pretty much putrid, tasting faintly of salt and sawdust, the contents chewy and lumpy.  Joe chimed in, “But I don’t like stro-gi-noff” and Bob said, “That’s what’s for dinner, eat it or don’t, for Christ’s Sake!”  We sat huddled together under the dripping poncho, spooning glop into our mouths.  Joe, refusing to subject himself to ‘stro-gi-noff,’ pulled out some snacks from his pack and made do, probably better then the rest of us, although ours was at least hot.  We finished, packed the cook and eat ware, unwashed, into our packs and crawled, muddily, into our tents and sleeping bags.  Jerry snored mightily all night, so nobody slept.

Next morning had turned cold but the rain was easing off.  We got up stiffly and numbly, realizing that the climb up Haystack Mountain from Panther Gorge was considered one of the steepest in the Adirondacks.  Didn’t think of that last night!  At any rate, we packed up our wet stuff and saddled up, so to speak, not having horses obviously, and set off on the trail.

The climb started intensely and immediately, setting off our grumbling and glumness anew, but we soldiered on. Towards the summit the air was easily 30 degrees colder and the rock of the mountain itself was covered with glare ice.  Some snow had accumulated here and there, obscuring the paint blazes that marked the trail.  We, actually I should say I, kept getting sidetracked off the marked trail, ending up at the bottom of icy cliffs that I couldn’t get up, and then would have to backtrack to the rest of the group and get back on the safe trail.  Bob was unerringly leading the way, possibly I should have followed.  It was a slippery and hair raising ascent, but we made it to the top, crowding together on the summit boulder that just barely fit the 4 of us.  The mountain was steep on all sides and I had to keep my eyes closed now and then to ward off the heebie-jeebies.  I took pictures here and there but was so cold, wet and tired that I was decidedly uninspired, forgetting that my time on this mountain was fleeting and who knew when I might get up here again?

The sun came out and warmed the ice so the footing was better and we swept off the summit cone, down below timberline and into the undergrowth.  The trail was eroded and muddy anew and we slipped and crashed through the brush that lined the path until we got lower into the woods.  The trail was steep the whole way and our knees and ankles were screaming in a half hour.  Down into a col (a pass between two mountain peaks) and back up to the junction with the Phelps and Van Hoevenberg trails.  Three of us campaigned to bypass Marcy and just head down the Van Hoevenberg seven miles to the hiker building but derision crept into Bob’s voice and we shamefully turned towards the highest peak, less than a half mile away.  The day turned glorious and the trail was pretty easy and in the end, tired and sore as we were, we were glad we’d made the extra effort.

We got to the Hiker Building just about dark, totally beat.  Jerry was still grumbling about the lack of a fire and Joe continued sullen about the ‘stro-gi-noff’, but other than that we were in reasonably good spirits.  We hit McDonald’s in Lake Placid, yonked a few Big Macs and large fries apiece and drove home in the usual stupor, deadened by the activity and the greasy food.  A good time all around, but I needed a beer.

That winter, we continued hiking, getting ever more cocky and contemptuous of the cold and winter weather. We did our favorite, Algonquin, and had one of those ice cold crisp, clear days after fresh snow.  The higher reaches of the mountain were frosted with the fluffy stuff and I have pictures of Wright Peak coated in clean white, framed by frost rimed trees while Marcy and Colden stood in stark contrast to the royal blue sky.  As we tarried on top, we saw the clouds advancing from the southwest and waited until they enveloped the mountain, leaving us sitting on an island floating in white, the lowlands obscured.  Other than in a plane, this is the way to find yourself atop the clouds.  Only Marcy, Haystack, Skylight and our perch were sticking out above, everything else was a sea of cloud, soft and inviting.  We hiked down to timberline and entered the cloud layer; suddenly visibility was low and we walked down the trail through the fog, marveling.

Another weekend we planned an overnight to Marcy.  We hiked in under leaden skies and made camp at Indian Falls.  The sky cleared and the night got crisp and cold.  Bob, prudently, as always, went to sleep but I stood out without my parka, watching the stars and yakking with other hikers who were camping as we were.  I was chilled but manly, and stayed out until the others went off to their tents.  I crawled into my sleeping bag and shivered much of the night, and when daylight came, my forehead was warm.  I shrugged it off because I thought Bob really wanted to make the mountain today and I felt I was enough of a disappointment to him, what with my slow gait and all.

We hiked on snowshoes up past the Plateau and saw the summit cone of Marcy right ahead.  We knew the trail looped around the cone to the left but, dammit, there it was, near enough to touch, so we set out directly towards it.  The snow was drifted deep, possibly fifteen feet in places and we started foundering as we ascended the cone.  I kept finding spruce holes with my legs; these were spots where the snow gathered around a dwarf spruce tree, not packing in, but leaving considerable air space interleaved with the branches.  An unsuspecting hiker, seeing no evidence, would step on one and promptly sink that particular leg up to his crotch, or deeper depending on his flexibility.  I found I was more flexible than I thought, one leg impaled deeply and the other stretched out on the surface, hamstrings pulling cruelly.  Bob would come back (he was always ahead) and yank me out and I would promptly step into another one.

I was feeling woozy, cold and confused.  I got the chills and a headache, and my hands started getting cold.  I went slower and slower and started feeling very disoriented, wandering away from Bob’s tracks and falling.  Snow started spitting down on us but I couldn’t think to put on my hat.  I was finally so cold and confused that I sat down, bob plodding up ahead, until some point when he turned around and noticed that I was nowhere to be seen.  He retraced his steps, for about fifteen minutes he later said, and found me clueless in the snow, slowly being covered by accumulation.  I don’t remember much of this but he somehow got me up and going, and back to the trail and all the way down to Indian Falls.  He got the tent back up, sleeping bags laid out, food heated on the damned Svea and into me and me into bed.  Classic case of beginning hypothermia, and my friend got me warm in time to avoid any damage. We hiked out the next day and I felt fine.

That was the same year that a guy died up near Marcy, right in the same area that we got sidetracked.  Back then there were two Lean-Tos in the Plateau area at around four thousand, five hundred feet elevation.  The weather on those highest Adirondack Peaks is similar to that of Northern Canada and Alaska.  In wintertime, the winds can howl like demons, it gets cold like you wouldn’t believe, like often forty below zero at night.  This group was camped at Plateau and one of the party hiked away to watch the sunset and was never heard from again.  The Plateau area is not far from the headwall of Panther Gorge and about as wild an area as one could hope to find in the east.  I understand that bones were found in the gorge two summers or so later and it seemed clear that the hiker wandered off the trail like we did but had considerably less luck.

We were sobered by the experience but not put off.  A year later a few of us, including Jerry Pruitt again, hiked into Lake Colden for a February overnight.  We stupidly set up camp in a Lean-To and it got hellish cold overnight, dropping to twenty-seven degrees below zero.  Jerry had a lightweight bag.  Bob and I had brought extra Space Blankets for emergencies and used them to wrap Jerry’s sleeping bag to ease his shivering.  We ate dried apples all night to stave off the cold and no one slept.  Bob thought it through and decided we would have been warmer in a tent because this was one of the larger Lean-To’s and there was too much cold air circulating through it.  Clearly! Properly humbled, we hiked back out through Avalanche Pass the next day through sleet and freezing rain, Jerry grumbling because we didn’t make a fire.  Jesus Kee Ko it was cold.

We had more experiences as we expanded our mountain repertoire, but one remains with me today because it was indicative of my long term relationship with Bob.  We were out one wet spring day during what was called up there ‘mud season.’  It rained incessantly over a number of days, very little snow remained and I can’t even remember which mountain we were planning on climbing.  At any rate, I was getting cocky, feeling I was in great shape, knowing that I was bigger and stronger than Bob.  In the past he would hike ahead and I would lag behind, barely able to keep up.  Now I had been running for a couple of years and considered myself a seasoned mountain man.  I felt great that day and set the pace briskly and Bob, for once, was hiking behind.  I spoke confidently of how I loved it all, including the rain and mud and everything about it.  As I flew along, I looked back and asked Bob if I should slow down, was the pace too fast.  He didn’t answer, but instead went into high gear, quickly passing me, and would have left me in the dust had it been at all dry enough to leave dust.  I strove mightily to keep up, but at my best speed he just kept getting smaller and smaller on my horizon until I finally called out to him to wait up.  I huffed up and he said, “I guess the pace wasn’t too fast.”  Shit.  An hour later the rain was coming down heavy and we couldn’t see a thing anywhere.  We were soaked and the machismo display had sapped my energy.  I meekly suggested we turn around and head back to our dry car and he quickly said, “I thought you loved all this, the rain, the mud, everything?” Damn him, anyway.

Our hiking days with Jerry soon came to an end.  One late summer night on Algonquin, camped just below timberline, we finally tired of his whining, and I collected the scant firewood I could find, up so high, and we built a fire, against our better judgment and wishes.  He was happy, we were pissed. He had acquired a dog by this time and had named him Bo.  We had always brought Mr. Buck hiking and camping with us and Jerry insisted on bringing Bo.  Bucky was a great trail dog, civilized and obedient.  Bo was a wild hair and took off every minute, and insisted on crawling, all mud, onto our sleeping bags, not Jerry’s.  A few weeks later we were making a day hike up Giant Mountain.  We had been trying to tell Jerry to leash his dog so he wouldn’t scare and upset other hikers, which the dog regularly did, being a pretty wild Doberman.  We stopped for a rest and two young kids happened by; one reached out to pet Mr. Buck, who was sitting, being friendly, and Bo slid in and bit the kid’s hand.  Not a terrible bite, but it scared the bejesus out of the kid, who went screaming to his father, who started screaming at Bob and me, Jerry listening quietly and unobtrusively a ways up the trail. 

In the car on the way home we told Jerry that Bo could no longer come on our hikes, and he frowned and said, “Where I go, Bo goes,” and that was that.  He stopped running with us, stopped hiking with us and a short time later his wife left him and took the kids, and he kind of dropped out of sight. He would stop over regularly to the Ballargeon’s house to visit Tom.  Jerry would stay and stay; drinking coffee or beers, and one by one the Ballargeon’s would excuse themselves and head off to bed.  Night after night, Jerry would be sitting at their kitchen table, melancholy, sipping beer or whatever, the whole family zonked out in bed, and sometime after midnight Jerry would finally leave to go home, locking the door behind him.  He had had a job at a bank, some sort of junior executive, but right around this time he lost it, and last I knew he was a toll collector on the Thruway.

Bob and I continued hiking over the next couple of years, at least two weekends a month usually, a bit less in the wintertime. We started to realize that there were other places that promised great hiking.  We expanded into the Ausable lakes region just east of the High Peaks area and also into Cold River country just west, visiting Duck Hole, the Seward’s and the Santanoni areas.  We spent tons of time together; each other’s regular companion, but I don’t know just how close we really were.  There was always this reserve on both our parts, as far as I could tell.  He seemed a bit distant, not the person you could tell anything personal or embarrassing to.  For my part, I sensed the reserve and the slight unfavorable opinion he had towards me, and so never really opened up.  It was, essentially, a working relationship insofar as our hiking and camping and necessary planning for those outings required.  We were narrow in scope, fixated on the outdoors, and the occasional pizza and beer at Purple Pub.  Best friends with an asterisk.

Hiking companions came and went.  We led trips that included old friends and new, but no one joined us regularly.  There was a rowdy Irish bar on Eagle Street in Albany that was always packed wall to wall with bodies on Friday nights.  We had a hike up Algonquin planned for that Saturday and I had ventured to the Grinch that Friday night, against ROB (Rules of Bob).  This was when the Irishman Hugh Carey was governor of New York, and the Grinch billed itself as the second largest drinking emporium on Eagle Street, referring, of course, to the Governor’s Mansion as number one.

Anyway, I was surging through the crowd and started chatting to this young lady, pretty attractive in a granola sort of way, and I know we talked about a lot of things but the beers were working and I have no idea what we said.  I do know that I invited her on tomorrow’s hike and she said yes, and somehow I managed to pick her up and get her to the rendezvous point to meet Bob, Tom and Theresa Ballargeon and whoever else was going.  She didn’t seem quite as pretty the next day. She kept up well on the hike, me thinking that maybe this was a keeper, and on the way down told me how amazing I was, here she was pregnant and I was still nice enough to bring her on this hike and introduce her to these great friends, and most guys wouldn’t want to marry a woman who was pregnant with someone else’s kid.  Pregnant?  Marry? Goddamn beer!

And so it went.