April 9, Saturday, Teddy Roosevlt and the Adirondacks

Distance: 5.5 km hike in Adirondacks

Time: 2 hours 38 minutes.

Weight: 20# backpack

Weather: Quite cold, clear sky, 1,500-feet elevation

Elevation gain:negligible

Accumulation elevation gain for 2016: 21,794 feet.

Accumulated distance hiked: 190.63 km
Food consumed during hike:Submarine sandwiches, candy bar minis

Two items of note:

History: Theodore Roosevelt was visiting this area in 1901 the night William McKinley died and Roosevelt became president. More on that below.

Purpose of hike: This was a hike to test clothing and navigation skills. I wore a neck band that can cover my head and face, long underwear and several layers of clothing, as well as heavy-duty gortex gloves. My companions were my brother-in-law, Dean Goodell, and his friend Jay Mohr, who has a cabin in the Andirondacks and served as a sort of guide (however, lacking technical navigation experience). We hiked on rock, snow and through muddy trails. The route took us from the southern end of Henderson Lake North Easterly  along the Calamity Creek Trail, during which I took bearings on Mt Marcy, 1,629 meters. I determined that the peak in view was at 84 degrees, almost due east and Jay said it was likely Mount Marcy. Later, we visited a roadside viewpoint with a plexiglas silhouette matching the landscape that supported this idea. A comparison of the Map My Hike application's map showing our route with the map of the area suggested that, although we had thought we had taken the Indian Pass Brook trail, we were in fact on the Calamity Creek Trail. When I returned to Dean's, I plotted the bearing on the map, suggesting that, at the time I took the bearing, we were close to a falls where a bridge over another waterway had been dismantled and set to one side. Unfortunately, I didn't record enough details to be sure. The bearing on the mountain intersected the trail, but I'm not sure the intersection truly indicated our position.

However, studying the topography and identifying hills in the area, I believe we had clear line of sight to the summit of Mt. Marcy.

I tried GoPro movies, but made mistakes in setting the camera properly due to the unfriendly way it attaches to the harness on my chest. I need to overcome the obstacles. I ended up inadvertently turning off the camera when I thought I was filming, and shooting time lapse when I thought I was shooting cinema.

Here are photos I took during the hike and a screen capture of the MapMyHike app:
(Note: Some images have text that may be small. These can be saved to your desktop and then enlarged in a viewer for easy reading.)

The Red line shows the south-to-north route of the round-trip hike. At the green "push pin" near the farthest extent of the hike there is a bump indicating a short side trip to investigate a route for viewing a small waterfall and a dismantled wooden bridge. The blue area adjacent to the push pin is a beaver pond. Near the bottom portion of the route there is a side trip to the tip of the finger of water that reaches out from Henderson Lake on the west. The topography of this map suggests a clear line of sight from the trail  to the summit of Mt. Marcy, almost due east.

Rich Lake, covered with a thin sheet of ice.

A sign for visitors at the historic McNaughton Cottage, where Roosevelt was staying.

Cast in stone: This plaque memorializes the historic ride of Teddy Roosevelt.

The McNaughton Cottage today.

A nearby cabin, abandoned and decaying.

The way station where Roosevelt changed horses, now boarded up.

Deteriorating interior of the way station.

In the near wilderness of the Adirondacks, a collapsed wooden bridge has been discarded at a waterfall, with no apparent intent to replace it.

Memorial tree: Over the years, the ashes of my wife and inlaws have privately reunited their spirts at the base of a tree known but to the family.