On Friday, September 20th, we met at 9:30 to pick up to-go sandwiches and then hit the road. We crossed at Ogdensburg, with a stop to eat our sandwiches at the waterside park in Tupper Lake.

Heading to the trail register

New Upper Works parking

We arrived at Upper Works at 2:45. The new parking lot is a tiny bit farther from the the trail register and now leads past an old house which they are renovating to be an education centre. Looks like it will be really nice! There are new educational panels about historic mining operations along the path to the trail register.

Nice trail work

Hiking in

We started hiking at 3pm along the Calamity Brook trail, flagged with red markers. The trail started on gravel, the result of very recent trail work. After about 3.5km of lovely flat, smooth trail, the climbing started (just after we were saying that we didn’t remember it being so easy).

After a while, the trail flattened to more moderate grade. At 5:15 we paid our respects to Mr. Henderson and signed in again at the Flowed Lands trail register at 5:30. We arrived at the lean-to of our dreams just before 6. We couldn’t believe that it was free! Herbert Brook Lean-to is just past the turn-off to Marshall and provides access to the rocky shore of the Opalescent River for cooking and eating (via herd paths through some rough scrub).

We went for quick exploration and ran into our bearded ranger friend from Lake Colden. We also accidentally ratted out some people who had hung a blue dry bag near our camp. Fortunately, it bought us some good will when he spotted our glass prosecco bottles and decided to let it slide. We totally forgot that no glass is allowed in the backcountry.

We headed to the river to prepare dinner, and cleverly left several lights tucked along the scrub path as breadcrumbs, so we could find our way back in the dark. It was a huge help later.

Dinner was a new recipe of tinned chicken and southwest rice and beans in a tortilla wrap with cheese, sour cream and salsa. Delightful! The evening’s stargazing was great. And then it was bedtime.

We all got a good night’s sleep before a 6am alarm. We ate breakfast by the river and left by 8:30.

A promising morning

Ladder down to Colden Dam

Our hike started along the Mount Marcy trail, crossing the Opalescent River on a super bouncy suspension bridge. We remembered this trail toward Redfield and Cliff well, but continued onward, across Uphill Brook, after the turnoff to those peaks.

Steps in rough condition

Going up

The trail was consistently uphill with very little loss of elevation all the way to Lake Tear of the Clouds, where we arrived just before 11 am. This is the where you pick up the herd path to Gray, and it can be a bit tricky to find. It’s to the left of the trail and you have to cross the outlet from the lake.

Immediately, the trail started climbing steeply. This was the most technical of of the day. We came to a big cliff but fortunately the trail led around it, to the right. Just before the summit there was a rocky ledge with an amazing view of Mount Marcy. We could spot people on top. The colours were beautiful, including lots of red moss. We arrived at the summit 11:30 and quickly turned around.

A steep descent

The source of the Hudson

We were back at Lake Tear of the Cloud by noon. Continuing on to the Four Corners, we passed a cool spiral on a rock – apparently an indigenous symbol marking the source of the Hudson River. It was just under 10 minutes of flat walking to get to Four Corners. We took advantage of the rare trailside thunder box!

View of Marcy

Signage at the Four Corners

From this junction, it’s left to Mount Marcy, straight to Panther Gorge, but we turned right to head up to Skylight.

In sight of the summit

We made it!

We reached the summit before we knew it. Only 15 minutes! After passing into the arctic alpine zone, we emerged to expose rock slabs with amazing colourful vegetation and clear pathway of cairns and blazes. We found the survey marker past the biggest cairn, making it official: we were 46ers! We broke out the celebratory bubbles in plastic glasses that made it mostly unscathed. Two girls, excited for us, offered to take our picture. Other hikers saw us celebrating and applauded. So nice!

Couldn’t be happier to be 46ers!

Cheers

A group from Gatineau took more photos for us. We enjoyed the summit for almost an hour, watching Marcy come in and out of the clouds. Otherwise, the views were clear. It was really cool to see Haystack up so close. Since we were socked in on that summit, we had not appreciated how close were were to Skylight and Marcy. We finally left Skylight around 2pm.

It took us three hours to get back down and were at our site by 5. We were happy to discover no new neighbours at our lean-to, even though the ranger had estimated there to be around 80 hikers camping in the area.

Happy hour was hickory sticks and wine followed by broccoli alfredo for a delicious dinner. We were asleep by 9:30.

Happy hour

Our trusty Trangia

The next morning, we awoke to a couple of groups passing our lean-to from the river. We enjoyed a leisurely breakfast as it turned into another sunny, fall day.

It took us 2.5 hours to hike out. Then we enjoyed an amazing lunch at the Park in Long Lake, including two large Newfoundland dogs. What a fantastic weekend!

Fall colours

The journey back out