Hiking Mount Marcy, Adirondacks

As I’m trying to prepare for my big Kilimanjaro hike coming up this December, I came to a conclusion that training at the gym is not enough. I added two additional workouts, the first is running on Mount Royal (233m), a mountain that is located on the island of Montreal. The problem is that I’m not a fan of jogging, due to my short span before getting bored with it.  And most importantly, I’m not good at it! So I go with a friend for support. It’s the only way I can motivate myself to do it.  The second workout is hiking, obviously. On our Canadian Thanksgiving (Oct 11), I headed to Mount Marcy located in the Adirondacks, in New York State. For those of you who are not familiar with the Northeast region of the US, the Adirondacks is a natural reserve of 6 million acres of nature, with over 3,000 lakes and 3,000 km of hiking trails, snowmobiling and skiing. This is a hiking paradise for hikers!

The day began to the sound of my alarm clock at 6:30am on my day off. First thought that went through my half-asleep brain? What the hell am I thinking! And so, packing my bags  half asleep, I later realized that I forgot a few important items to pack. Let’s start with what I did pack: one long sleeve top, one fleece, one light jacket, hiking pants, two pairs of socks, hiking shoes, gloves, hat, 1L of water and Kleenex. My friend was kind enough to make the lunches since I didn’t think about it on the previous night! So half asleep, I left my house, picked up my friend and drove 2.5 hours to Adirondak Loj in the Adirondacks.

We arrived to the Loj at approximately 10am to be told the hike takes about 8 hours for the average hiker. The guy at the information booth asked us if we had a flashlight and a light bulb went off in my head. I forgot to bring the flash light! The last thing you want is to be stuck on a mountain with no light. But anyway, we bought a map of the region and told each other we’d hike the mountain rather quickly to make it to the top and back down before 6pm.

Mt Marcy

The first part of the hike is rather easy until you reach the Marcy dam. The trail begins a steady incline once you hit 4km (2.5 miles) with some flat areas until you reach the top at 11.9km (7.4 miles). All in all, we hiked a total of a23.8km. The hike did have some challenging sections although it wasn’t too difficult. We did encounter some ice towards the top of the mountain which slowed us down a little but other than that, we didn’t run into any other problems. Definitely consider Mt Marcy for a full day hike!

For more information on hiking Mt Marcy, consult High Peaks Climbing site.