As many of you may know, Markus is also working on his 'ADK 46'. He had wanted me to wait so that he could catch up to me, with an eye to finishing off our 46ers together. He hadn't yet done the Dixes, and from doing it before I knew it was a great hike, so I decided to do it again with him. Ewart also came along for the fun of it (as this would be his third time at least on each of these peaks), and worrying about being too slow, he went down in advance and started 2 hours before us. We had FRS radios for communications so that we could meet up at some point.

It was no problem finding the herdpath turnoff, right after Slide Brook. Unfortunately, the low clouds had not lifted, and we were soon ascending into cloud. The trail was followable but somewhat tortuous, winding around and up and down, sometimes through annoying blowdown. Eventually the trail descended into slide brook, which soon turned into a real slide - but this one was different, being full of gravel and scree. Very unusual for the Adirondacks, but very interesting.