Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Last Weekend's Hike

So, we had this plan . . .

We were going to park at the Garden Trailhead in Keene Valley on Saturday, check out the Bennie's Brook Slide for a possible winter adventure, hike it up to the top, and come down the Lower Wolfjaw Trail, and chill out back at the car with a couple of beers. Sounds good, right?

Well, The Garden parking lot was full, so we decided to attack the mountain from the W.A. White Trail via the Rooster Comb and Hedgehog Trails.  This was a lot more difficult than we anticipated.  Still though, it was a good workout, and a good way to get in shape for the ski season.  We felt good when we saw our first glimpse of the slide:


Like a freaking ski run!!!  And it looked even better once we were on the slide:


The snowy, icy, rocky slide was pretty tough to walk down, but we just took our time and made sure that we didn't do anything stupid. There were some nice terrain features further down:


Rocks, drop offs, natural knolls: This is going to be SWEET this winter.  We hiked down to the sunny spot in that second picture and ate our lunch.  It was a nice view back up the slide:


Anyway, the slide looks a lot different than when Jeff went last August.  And it now goes all the way down to the Southside trail (on the south side of John's Brook).  We took that back towards Keene Valley (having to take a few reroutes due to parts of the trail that were washed out in the hurricane).  

All in all, it was a pretty sweet adventure. 

3 comments:

  1. Great looking pictures Matt! Amazing what a clean sweep it is in the last two pictures.

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  2. That is a sweet adventure. I think the amazing thing is that the slide now extends all the way down to John's Brook and the Southside Trail. That is one L-O-N-G slide.

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  3. Wow. That slide looks awesome. Great scouting trip!

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