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8 Climbing log entries Found.


Mar. 20, 2023 (Mon.)
Elevations: 4736 feet, ; Order of Height: 10,
Participants: Andrew Lavigne, Brian Connell
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Brian's 27th, 28th, and 29th winter 46R Peaks: Upper Wolfjaw, Armstrong and Gothics.

A sunny but somewhat chilly and windy day - but with perfect snow conditions - to help Brian achieve his final winter 46R ascents of the 2022-2023 winter season - in style, on three peaks of the Great Range.

Starting off nice and early (in the dark) at the Garden Trailhead, we bare-booted over to the South-side trail and marched up to the connector trail leading up to the Wolfjaws col. Part of the way up was unbroken and required some tiring hiking. Fortunately, at the Range Trail in the col, the track was broken out (although a bit drifted over in places).

Hiking west on the Range Trail was fairly straightforward and quite fun, what with all of the steep twists and turns. The skies cleared up for our first summit of the day on Upper Wolfjaw. Fine views everywhere and lots of clean white snow.

A couple of faster hikers overtook us and nicely re-tracked the Range Trail ahead of us. The steep climb up the eastern side of Armstrong was no problem on firm, clean snow - even though the summer ladder was completely buried. The summit of Armstrong provided a jaw-dropping view of the Upper Great Range in pristine winter condition. Very cold chilly gusty wind here, though.

The hike from Armstrong to Gothics was quite easy, especially given the lack of prominence between the two. Arriving at the lower end of the open ridgeline on Gothics northeastern ridgeline, we stopped to put all of our winterwear on, as the gusts were at time rather strong and any exposed skin needed to be covered up. The climb up the open ridgeline was a sublime as you could imagine, with perfect snow and amazing expansive views everywhere.

After taking a good bevy of summit pictures and congratulating Brian on finishing his 27th, 28th, and 29th winter summits, we continued west, soon reaching the western sub-summit, where we observed the very steep descent trail and decided to do the first part in microspikes and an ice ax. It ended up being pretty easy and soon we were down in the Saddleback-Gothics col. Switched back to snowshoes and began the long, at times tedious, descent of the Orebed Brook trail down to the bottom of Johns Brook Valley.

The final hike back along the Phelps trail to the trailhed was tiring and our feet were sore, but not further difficulties meant we made good time back to the Garden trailhead, completing our outing. Not an especially fast pace: fourteen hours in total. Excellent outing, however.

Trip Reports, Image Galleries or Other References:
 Image Gallery: March 2023 Upper Wolfjaw Armstrong and Gothics Loop Hike


May 21, 2017 (Sun.)
Elevation: 4736 feet; Order of Height: 10
Participants: Andrew Lavigne
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A training hike for upcoming out-west mountaineering, and my first solo hike.

Wanted to get something >20km in, but not busy and away from the main trailheads. Gothics from the Ausable Valley seemed like the ticket. Started off super early to avoid upcoming rain, and enjoyed a nice walk up along the East River Trail on the way in (some really nice waterfalls, too). Trail conditions were not that muddy, despite the NYSDEC muddy trail advisory. Arrived at top roughly around 11 a.m. to an overcast sky but good seeing conditions. Hike over Gothics crest and down the Weld Trail, crossing over Pyramid and down to yet another beautiful waterfall (Rainbow Falls). Contrary to forecast, sun actually came out on my walk back down the Lake Road to the car.

Trip Reports, Image Galleries or Other References:
 Image Gallery: Gothics via Lake Road / Ausable Valley


Apr. 1, 2014 (Tue.)
Elevations: 4736 feet, 4400 feet, 4185 feet; Order of Height: 10, 22, 29
Participants: Andrew Lavigne, Jennifer Innes, Chris Hatko
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A late-winter tracing of the always-scenic loop over the top of Gothics Mountain, one of the Adirondack's premiere peaks.

We did this outing mid-week, tired of being stymied by weekend after weekend of unfavourable weather. Partially we chose this route for our friend Chris, who was interested in increasing his 46R count and for which this loop was ideal, since it involved three of the Adirondack 46: Gothics, Armstrong and Upper Wolfjaw.

Under crystal clear skies and calm conditions, we rapidly bare-booted on a packed trail from the Garden TH to Johns Brook Lodge, where we donned snowshoes and continued on to the Orebed Brook Trail. A set of tracks lured us up the bed of the Brook, instead of on the trail, and we were glad that they did: a deep snowpack and the recently Hurricane Irene-widened Orebed Brook system made for a beautiful open walk with many new views.

Near the 3300-foot mark on the main Orebed Brook slide, we had to jog left through the trees to reach the also-widened upper slide. The far western side of this slide offered yet more expanded and scenic perspectives, especially across the impressive north face of Gothics.

Rapidly warming temperatures and sticky, soft snow greatly reduced our ascent speed, and it was well past noon when we arrived at the Gothics-Saddleback col. Unbroken trail and lack of traction issues made for another very slow ascent over the last steep 5-600 feet to Gothics' western sub-summit. Fortunately, the fantastic day and views more than made up for the toil.

Gothics' summit was achieved just past 2:30pm, with an ever-building overcast turning the cheery blue sky increasingly grey. A short but beautiful descent down a snow crest on Gothics' east ridge, then some routefinding as we descending along the now-trackless trail into the trees. Fortunately, a lone set of tracks appeared at the Gothics-Armstrong col, and helped guide us along over the summits of Armstrong and Upper Wolfjaw. Arriving at the UW-LW col, we immediately started down along a once-again unbroken trail, noting many additional new slides formed by Hurricane Irene along the way. We reached the valley bottom at 7pm, knowing for sure now that we were going to finish in the dark. In order to minimize this, we chose the shortest possible trail route - along the southside trail - arriving back at the Garden TH shortly after 8:30 PM. Long and tiring, but a very rewarding hike.

Trip Reports, Image Galleries or Other References:
 Image Gallery: April 2014 Gothics, Armstrong, Upper Wolfjaw loop


Jun. 27, 2009 (Sat.)
Elevations: 4175 feet, 4185 feet, 4400 feet, 4736 feet; Order of Height: 30, 29, 22, 10
Participants: Andrew Lavigne, Jennifer Innes, Brian Connell, Julie Moran, Johanna, Mirek, Chris, Joe, Duncan, Rocky
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On this hike, we were invited to join Julie Moran's Hiking Mates Challenge hiking group, on a challenging loop of the Lower Great Range + Sawteeth. The weather forecast looked unsettled, and it delivered! We had several bouts of heavy rain and were socked in on most of the summits - the exception was Gothics, where we had a few brief glimpses of something beyond the end of our noses.

On the plus side, I discovered that during times of rainy weather, there are beautiful cascades and waterfalls along Wedge Brook. And the Wedge Brook Trail itself is pretty nice. Beaver Meadow Falls, too, was spectacular (on the way down). Julie's hiking group are a very fun bunch to hike with, too, and hopefully we'll get to hike with them again.

Please refer to the link below for the full trip report with lots of pictures.

Trip Reports, Image Galleries or Other References:
 Image Gallery: June 2009 Lower Great Range Loop


Feb. 24, 2007 (Sat.)
Elevations: 4736 feet, 4400 feet; Order of Height: 10, 22
Participants: Andrew Lavigne, Jennifer Innes, Roland Hanel, Lawrence, Colin
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This one looked pretty easy on paper but turned out to be quite a toughie! We had two cars and planned out a traverse of Gothics and Armstrong, coming up from the Garden, up the Orebed Brook Trail, up and over Gothics, continuing over to Armstrong, and then backtracking slightly and taking a connector trail down to the Lake Road in the Ausable Valley, and then walking out to the car at the Saint Huberts parking lot.

The thing was, a huge dump of snow had fallen the week before, and there was a lot of fresh snow in the Adirondacks. Things started off well enough, with good and solidly packed trails all the way up to the col between Saddleback and Gothics. From there, though, there was only a faint track, and that only lasted partway up Gothics. The going was very tough, with lots of soft, drifted snow in the steep sections that sucked energy from you at every step. The open bits on Gothics were spectacular, though, and the weather cleared just as we reached the top. A welcome stroke of luck!

Trailbreaking was required all the way from Gothics, over to Armstrong, and down to the Lake Road, and I don't think I've ever had as hard a time breaking trail downhill. Still, it was a great day, with great company and great views, and I now have one more winter 46er peak done! (Armstrong was a new winter 46er for me).

See the image gallery link below for a more detailed writeup and the set of pictures.

Trip Reports, Image Galleries or Other References:
 Image Gallery: February 2007 Gothics-Armstrong Traverse


Jun. 26, 2004 (Sat.)
Elevations: 5344 feet, 4960 feet, 4827 feet, 4515 feet, 4736 feet, 4400 feet, 4185 feet, 4175 feet; Order of Height: 1, 3, 9, 17, 10, 22, 29, 30
Participants: Andrew Lavigne, Markus Wandel, Pu Chen, Caroline Doucet, Luc Alary
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Back in November of 2001, while Markus and Lorraine and I were watching the Leonid Meteor Storm on top of Noonmark mountain in the Adirondack Mountains of New York State, we learned, through some other star gazers, of a famous and challenging hike known as the "solstice hike". This is a hike where one traverses the entire Great Range in a single day. Yes, you heard right - in one single day, usually around the summer solstice, when days are longest. Eight of the highest peaks in NY state, around 35 kilometres total length, and all in one day. We were impressed at such a hard hike had a name and a following. However, at the time, it just seemed like a crazy outing for folks with more stamina than brains.

As a few more years slipped by, and, as we got more into ADK 46er hiking, the thought of this legendary outing took on a more tangible and attainable quality - but, for one reason or another, we were never able to pull together the right conditions to tackle it - until this year (2004). We managed to cobble together five enthusiastic challengers of this legendary hike: myself, Pu, Caroline, Markus, and Luc.

Now, I won't go into a large amount of detail in this trip log - a very complete writeup is available via the image gallery link below. But, in summary, suffice it to say we did it, and we did it in good style, not injuring anyone, keeping well hydrated and fed, and experiencing some of the best summits of the Adirondacks on a cool and beautiful June day.

Trip Reports, Image Galleries or Other References:
 Image Gallery: June 2004 Solstice / Great Range Hike


Mar. 21, 2004 (Sun.)
Elevation: 4736 feet; Order of Height: 10
Participants: Andrew Lavigne, Caroline Doucet
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The original plan for this weekend was to do an outing to the White Mountains in NH. However, the weather was not co-operating. Still, I felt like doing a mountain somewhere, so I picked the best weather day of the weekend (Sunday), and decided to do something in the Adirondacks. As it turned out, only Caroline could make this one, so we tackled something she needed for her 46er quest: Gothics.

The drive down was through some pretty yucky and tricky winter weather, but we made it to the St. Hubert's trailhead in one piece. We decided to use skiis to help ease the passage of the boring section along the AMR lake road. Snow conditions were excellent and we made good time skiing up the road. At Lower Ausable Lake we switched into snowshoes. Weather was actually pretty good. Lots of sun and blue sky mixed in with clouds. After donning our snowshoes, the long and high slog up to Gothics began (2800 foot ascent from the Lake). I had obviously snowed over the past week, but only a few inches worth at the lower elevations, and we could follow an old snowshoe track up the trail to the Sawteeth/Panther col, no problem. However, above this col, at 3500+ feet, there was a ton of new snow, and no tracks were visible at all. Breaking the trail up the very steep section up Panther was agonizingly tiring. This slowed our ascent and we ended up summitting Gothics around 2-ish. Unfortunately, the weather had also closed in again and the summit was socked in and windy with blowing snow. Still, felt good to have made it to the top - and because of the ADK winter 46er rules we managed to bag a winter 46er summit even though it was technically spring on March 21 of this year!

Also at the summit were two hardy climbers that had just finished an ascent of the North Face of Gothics - impressive! The way down was MUCH quicker than the way up, and soon we were back at lower Ausable Lake, where off went the snowshoes and on went the skiis. The ski down the Lake road was heaven... mostly a nice swift glide all the way back to the gate. Took us only about 30 minutes to do the whole Lake Road!

Trip Reports, Image Galleries or Other References:
 Image Gallery: March 2004 Gothics Climb


May 25, 1998 (Mon.)
Elevations: 4736 feet, 4400 feet; Order of Height: 10, 22
Participants: Brian Connell, Andrew Lavigne, Andree Plouffe
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Don't remember too much about this one... Started from AMR club and up along the Lake road. Summitted both Armstrong and Gothics. Summit of Gothics very nice, especially the great lookout to the southwest, where Brian found his trademark 'orthopaedic' spot on a rock and went for a nap. Clear day, good views. We descended via the trail down towards Sawteeth (recall one or two short ladders) and down by Cascade Brook. I distinctly remember reaching Rainbow falls right at dusk and taking a couple of long exposure snaps of it. From there we hiked out in the dark along the Lake Road.

Trip Reports, Image Galleries or Other References:
 Image Gallery: May 1998 Gothics hike


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