Low Point: Great Lakes Region (600-246')

...But first, a quick spin around the Great Lakes. There are five of them, as I'm sure you recall from grade-school geography:

Formed by glacial activity at the close of the last ice age, these lakes cover 94,250 square miles of land and contain 21% of the world's surface freshwater by volume. This water flows first into storm-driven Lake Superior,

Side Trip: PANIC! on Lake Champlain, NY/VT (100')

The only problem with my pizza-plan, you see, was that there was no civilization within fifty miles of the Adirondack High Peaks.

Though I pulled over in each tiny hamlet I encountered on my way out of the park, none of them had a reliable phone signal, let alone 4G for maps. I had no idea where I was going at this point--all I knew was that Mt. Mansfield, my next high point, was east of here, and that the bridgeless expanse of Lake Champlain lay in between--so getting that data signal was my first priority. But there was none to be had all the way to the interstate. I got on I-87 southbound, thinking I could just head back to town where I'd lunched on the way up. After a few miles I pulled into a "text stop" to confirm my hunch.

Just your typical rest stop... except with French truckers.

While I fired off the usual "Hi Mom, I'm still alive" texts, several emails popped into my inbox. I flipped over to see what they were: spam, spam, newsletter, spam, and holy cow my Gmail account had been hacked. Google had blocked the illicit access, they informed me, but whoever it was had still cracked my password, so I had to-

The data signal blinked out of existence.

Highpoint #22: Mt. Marcy, NY (5343')

I spent the next morning resting and looking up directions to the Adirondacks. After some deliberation, I decided to circumvent Albany and take the long way around to I-87, since I'd set aside the whole day for getting there. So I set out from my motel around noon, under intermittent rain, and headed north. I clipped the corner of Vermont, passed through the lovely towns of Waloomsac and Schaghticoke (I pity the kindergartners who grow up learning to write those names). and finally hit the interstate near Malta. An hour's drive later, just after Queensbury, the road entered Adirondack State Park and all the usual highway services disappeared--including cell.

Like Maine's similarly vast and remote Baxter Park, Adirondack State Park is practically a state unto itself. It encompasses the entire Adirondack range, including six million acres--an area the size of New Hampshire--of mountains, valleys, rivers, lakes, lodges, camps, small towns, ski resorts, and sawmills. Yes, I said sawmills. This weird park is a patchwork of public and private land, the latter being  home to over 100 towns (though none large enough to get a proper phone signal) and 130,000 year-round residents.

The Adirondacks themselves are an anomaly among the Eastern mountains. They’re not Appalachian, for one—they were raised up from the Canadian Shield in a separate, ongoing orogeny. Unlike their neighbors to the east, they’re still growing, so when aliens arrive in a million years to sift through the remains of our civilization, they might well wonder why this blog was so concerned with little old eroded Mt. Washington rather than the cloud-splitting Adirondack High Peaks that loom over it.

Tahawus, or Cloud-Splitter, is already the Native American name for Mt. Marcy, and a far superior name in my opinion. Mt. Marcy sounds like a friendly little hill you’d take the kids up for a picnic (“Come on, Billy, smile! We’re going to Mt. Marcy!”); the deep, savage vowels of Tahawus are much more fitting for the wind-battered behemoth I climbed. The high point of New York, Mt. Marcy is also home to the state’s only region of alpine tundra—and the weather to match it.

Highpoint #20: Mt. Frissell, CT (2379')

I crossed the Hudson River on I-84 around noon, then turned north onto Taconic State Parkway. From the name, I’d expected an arrow-straight toll road, but it turned out to be the love child of the Blue Ridge and Fairfax County Parkways, with Mommy’s meandering curves through scenic hills and Daddy’s kamikaze speed demons taking said curves at 20 mph over the limit. Despite the wackos, I rather enjoyed the drive… so much that I missed my turn (though I swear it wasn’t labeled) and drove several miles farther north than intended. But there's no lack of roads through Massachusetts--even the rural bits--so I soon regained my course.

The correct road wound through a narrow gap in the Taconic Mountains, then slid down a shady rural valley. Much of it belonged to the Mt. Washington National Forest (named for the Massachusetts peak of that name, not the New Hampshire one). Eventually the road turned to gravel, just like in the national forests back home, then arrived after a few miles at the Mt. Frissell trailhead. I parked at the little pull-in, got my stuff together, and set off down the nearest trail.

A hundred feet in I stopped to glance at a map posted beside the trail by the Appalachian Mountain Club, the folks who maintain the AT and other nearby trails in the Northeast. Good thing I did, because I was headed in the wrong direction. That trail led east to Bear Mountain, Mt. Frissell’s next-door neighbor and the highest summit in Connecticut (though not the highest point--more on that later). I reversed course, crossed the road (and the state line), and headed up the correct trail.