Four Adirondack 3K peaks in a single day?! All of them in the West Canada Lakes Wilderness Area?! Is that even legal?! Can I quote Game of Thrones for a minute?!
“Mothers will name their sons for us!”
Bet.
“Girls will think of us with their lovers ins…”
…they already do.
“We will be crucified by black flies!”
Bigly.
My buddy TBPDPTI and I arrived at the Brooktrout Lake Trailhead a few minutes before 7:30am, following a 2h55m drive from Rensselaer County. I was able to take 5 minutes off my drive time from last year when we did Northrup Lake Mountain, nice! Road is definitely in rougher shape than last year. The black flies were swarming within minutes. Off we went!
Took us about 40 minutes to hit the junction with the trail to Deep Lake. This side trail began pretty well-defined but was borderline non-existent by the end. Plenty of trail markers though, so we knew where to go. Deep Lake is a quiet and pretty place. We followed the shoreline for a bit and then pushed our way into the woods to head up toward Deep Lake Peak. Woods were a bit thick initially by the water but they opened right up and stayed that way until the summit.
TBPDPTI led us on a highly-optimized traverse from Deep Lake Peak to Kitty Cobble, our second peak of the day. Along the way we found open woods, some bear tracks in mud, and increasing levels of moose scat as we got closer to Kitty Cobble. The very top of Kitty Cobble was a little thicker, but nothing we couldn’t handle. Some nice views to be found if you poke around a bit. The black flies made their presence known on the summit so we only stayed for a few minutes.
The crux of the day felt like the traverse from Kitty Cobble to West Lake Peak. Straightforward descent through easy woods from Kitty Cobble. We visited each shorelines of both Twin Ponds down in the col, finding some scratchy woods by the shorelines. We took the ascent of West Lake Peak at a steady pace. The woods gradually closed in as we climbed here, but even the summit ridge wasn’t too bad in terms of thickness.
We didn’t stay on the summit of West Lake Peak for very long and instead made our way a few hundred feet downhill to the massive cliff line that runs on this peak. Satellite imagery made this easy to find. Barbara McMartin has a section on these cliffs in her book on the West Central Adirondacks. Unfortunately, vegetation grows right to the edge of the cliffs virtually the whole way, which limits views. However, we were able to find a few openings with views good enough to pull out the phones and take pictures. The drop-off is STEEP.
Our final and steepest (insanely so!) climb of the day was up Brooktrout Lake Peak. But we made it. The contour lines are on top of each other here, but we ultimately found a weakness in the cliffs. Felt good to know that our 4th peak was in the bag. We were getting tired of bushwhacking, but we knew the end was within sight. From there, it was a steep 0.7 mile descent down to the trail along Brooktrout Lake, which we reached in about 30 minutes.
The best part of the day was our 20 minute break at Brooktrout Lake, knowing that we had successfully climbed 4 remote mountains and just had a straightforward 5 mile hike out. There was even a nice breeze to keep the bugs at bay. I enjoyed a Mexican Pilsner from the Burlington Beer Company to celebrate. The hike out was long, grinding, muddy but otherwise uneventful.
Car-to-car was a hair under 8 hours, which was much better than we had been planning for. I took an insane number of spider webs to the face…I’m talking hundreds throughout the day…perhaps made worse since I forgot my baseball cap today.
Bug Report:
They’re all out. Over the course of the day, we encountered black flies, deer flies, horse flies & mosquitos. Black flies were only bad on the summits if you lingered too long, also by Twin Ponds. Deer/horse flies were bad near Brooktrout Lake and on the way out. Never needed a headnet, though.
Wildflower Report:
Several pink lady slippers along the Brooktrout Lake Trail, near one of the open, swampy beaver areas. Lots of star flower, some foamflower, lots of violets. Saw a lone spring beauty early in the day but it wasn’t open yet.