A Night in the Adirondacks

The fall season in the Northeast brings crowds of leaf-peepers eagerly driving around, hiking, and gawking at nature's beautiful colors. As the chlorophyll in the leaf degrades as the plant stops photosynthesizing, the other compounds in the leaf become more apparent. Flavonoids give aspens their yellow color, carotenoids produce orange (the same molecule in carrots and sweet potatoes), and anthocyanins give some maples their brilliant red shade.

As I found out this weekend, the Adirondacks are a wonderful place to admire the amazing chemistry happening in the trees.

On Saturday, one of my friends and I packed our backpacks and drove around Lake Champlain over to New York, passing cows and cornfields to get to the mountains. We decided to go to Keene Valley and hike up the Ridge trail to the Washbowl on Giant Mountain.

It was about 0.6 miles to the pond where we set up camp. Relieved of our burdens, we continued up the trail to the "Bump", the false summit of Giant Mountain. We stopped often to enjoy the views and the beautiful weather, it was the first day in a week where the sun shone and the rain held off.

It was amazing to get higher and higher and only see trees and other mountains in the distance, no cities in sight and the only road was the one we had driven to get to the trail. While I love Burlington, for a girl who comes from a town of less than 2,000 people, it's nice to get away from 'city' life and back into nature where your neighbors are maples and pines instead of stacked apartments on Spruce Street.

While the surrounding nature was peaceful, the trail itself was busy, with many other hikers wanting to embrace the beautiful day. A lot of people we passed were speaking French, likely Canadians coming down from Quebec. Hearing a different language on the trails is a constistent surprise to me, one that I enjoy.

After we reached the top, we paused to snack on some trail mix and then meandered back down to the pond. Upon arrival, we found some other campers had set up-and five more tents we coming. While we're friendly people, it was more of a crowd than either of us wanted, so we literally picked the tent up and walked over to the alternate campsite where only one other tent was located.

Tired from the long day, my friend and I painted by the lake until the sun started to set and the temperature began to drop. We built a fire in the stone pit and cooked a rather gourmet dinner of pasta with canned chickpeas, pesto, and carrots. After finishing our meal, we packed up the rest of our food to swing into a tree a distance away in case any bears were looking for a midnight snack, we didn't want them to come looking in our tent. A couple rounds of Rummy 500 with my tree cards (which sadly offered me no luck as I lost the game) we decided to call it an early night and turned off our headlamps.

The next morning we woke to the wind as the weather shifted again and the day turned stormy. Hoping to avoid any chance of rain, we broke down camp and walked back to the car where we had a cold breakfast of farmer's market bread, bananas, and peanut butter. While it was just a short trip to the 'Dacks, I really enjoyed my time in the mountains and definitely want to go again and explore some more. Any recommendations for future hiking trips are always welcome, so if you have any please comment below! I hope you all find time this week to get out, explore, and enjoy the fall season!