Nippletop and Dial
In January I made a lot of summer high peaks plans. But as summer approached and everything started going sideways I started to wonder if I’d get to the Adirondacks at all.
Last week my cousin Jana sent me a message asking when I was planning on hiking and since I didn’t have any specific plans, we made some… for the next weekend. I tried to round up some additional relatives, but everyone was busy so in the end it was just me, Jana, and Jason.
Choosing the Hike
I picked Nippletop and Dial because I knew it was possible to pull off in a day from the AMR parking lot but I had some serious doubts about whether I would be able to pull it off. It would be 13+ miles and more than 4,500 feet of vertical rise and my ankle has been giving me trouble on and off since I started running in January. But I wanted to get some mountains in SO bad and I was pretty sure Jason and Jana wouldn’t hold it against me if I had to turn back.
Sudden Gear Needs
Despite love love loving my Deuter Speedlite 20 pack I decided I had to get a new day pack. I wanted to have my trek poles with me, but I didn’t want to have to use them all the time. I’m slow so I hate making people wait for me to strap my sticks on to my pack or get them off of my pack. My Osprey backpacking pack has this stow-and-go thing that I love. It lets you store your poles without having to take the pack off. I decided I needed that in a daypack. Initially I was trying to modify my pack to make my own but then I realized this is what money is for. So now I have an Osprey Talon daypack too.
Getting There
I drove to Jana’s on Friday night. We got up around 5 a.m. on Saturday and made it to the AMR parking lot by 7:15. I think we were signing in at the Gate just after 7:30.
The Actual Hike
There wasn’t a lot of space at the summit of Nippletop and there were quite a few people there. It was also pretty windy. We hung out there a bit, had a snack and took some photos.
It was 2+ miles to the summit of Dial from Nippletop but the trail wasn’t technical at all. It was just trucking along through the woods over some ups and downs until we got there. We had it to ourselves for quite a while and we hung out there for 20 minutes or so and I shot a time lapse. (I need to do more of these so I get the hang of them. The quality seems to get lost when I upload them.)
On our way down from Dial, I happened to look at my earthmate app and saw that tracks from my failed attempt to bushwhack up gravestone Brook to Dial. It was crazy to see how close we’d gotten. We didn’t turn around because we couldn’t have made it to the summit, but because we might not have made it back to our camp before dark.
Somewhere after Bear Den, we stopped for a long time at a big opening with a nice view. I never did notice when we were on Bear Den. If there was a sign, I missed it.
It seemed like a long way from there back to Lake Road but somehow we hiked the whole loop in 10 hours and 17 minutes. I really thought it would take longer. That’s including hanging out on mountain tops and a couple other rest breaks. And my ankle didn’t bother me at all. Not even once. My knees were a little tender by the end and my hip was a little cranky but it is crazy that something that has been bothering me so consistently didn’t even surface once during such a long and uneven hiking day.
We decided we were too tired to go out for food so we went back to Jana’s and snacked on leftovers. We spent a long time trying to decide on a movie we all wanted to watch, which took up the time we would have watched it, and we all went to bed early.
