Trail Signs
Trail Signs, a.k.a. wandering, a.k.a. my biggest ever day in the ADK high peaks.
june 2022. on the trail at 4:57 am and the sun is already rising, with endless hours before sunset, not much of a plan, and endless miles of trails to explore. time for an improv session.
decided lots of turns on the spot, based on a rough idea of a loop, some peaks to add to my June grid, trails i hadn’t seen yet, whatever else looked cool on the map. even used an actual paper map and shunned the gps, just to keep it mellow and analog. felt great all day except for some jelly legs on that looong descent from gothics to JBL. i even stopped for a 45 minute break at JBL to lay in the sun, dry my feet, and top off the watch battery. also the JBL caretakers had free ham for everybody??
decided to take a picture of every single trail intersection sign i encountered, because improvising turns at intersections was the game for the day and i quite enjoy trail signs. there were 48 of them! here you go:
the route (*asterisks mark stuff that’s new to me):
rooster comb trailhead, across shoulder of snow to AMR via W.A. White trail* (wanted to see if that was a reasonable connection for some future plans), west river trail, cathedral rocks* (cool!), beaver meadow falls, beaver meadow area*, rainbow falls* (wow), weld trail* to the sawteeth col, sawteeth out-and-back, gothics, down the cables* (forgot they were there! fun!) to the col with saddleback, ore bed trail* (i love a rugged wild trail), short job*, klondike trail* and up yard* (lol), over the ridge* to big slide, down the brothers, garden, down the street to rooster comb inn.
more details on strava.