August 4th, 2018
Today we woke up at 4:15am! We stayed about 1.5 hours away in Potsdam the night before so we had to make the drive and be early enough to get parking at the HPIC. The drive down was so nice and seeing the fog rise off the lakes in the morning is always worth waking up before the sun. Before we knew it we were driving down my favourite pothole-y road, the Adirondack Loj road. We arrived at the parking lot just past 6:30 and got one of the last few spots.
With less than 4 hours of sleep it took us forever to get ready for the hike. We had breakfast number one and made our sandwiches for the hike out of the trunk of our tiny car. By the time we were all set to go it was about 7:15!
We headed off on the trail towards Mount Jo and signed into the trail register. We saw the sign for the old Nye ski trail and started on our way!
The first part of the trail was pretty flat and even went downhill a bit. This always makes me wonder “when the hell do we start going up?” After about 30 minutes of uneventful walking we reached Indian Pass Brook. It had been a bit rainy but we were able to rock hop across pretty easily. This was our first herd path so I was a bit nervous about getting lost but the trail was pretty obvious.
After crossing the brook we started to climb up a bit and made our first semi wrong turn. The trail split in two and we went left but it just ended up meeting the main trail anyways. There were two more small water crossings and then we passed by some old lumber camp artifacts.
After this is where the trail begins to really start climbing and then you get to start walking over downed trees and blowdown. It is still pretty obvious which way to go. About 3 hours into the hike we reached the split for Street and Nye. We sat on a downed tree and had breakfast #2 and some gatorade then decided to tackle Nye first since we heard Street had better views.
We reached the summit of Nye at 10:50 after about only 10-15 minutes! Out of all the high peaks I’ve done so far I’d say Nye has been the easiest. There is no view at all from the actual summit of Nye but there is a nice rock you can sit on and chill. We decided to just take some pictures and continue onto Street to take our real break. Just before the summit there is a clearing where you can see out and there are some pretty nice views. Although there weren’t any views I kind of enjoyed Nye.
We headed back down towards the split between Street and Nye and headed up to our second peak of the day, Street. This trail was a bit harder and the humidity was really starting to bother us. I wasn’t enjoying this trail very much. It was narrow and I kept getting scratched by bushes and was getting a bit tired. It took us about 45 minutes to get to the summit of Street but it felt like forever! Again the summit is wooded and there isn’t much to see up here. If you pass the summit sign a bit there are some views to be had though.
We spent maybe 15-20 minutes relaxing and eating up here then we decided it was time to get the hell off this mountain! After climbing over what felt like 47 logs and downed trees we got back down to the split and had yet another snack. We were starting to feel pretty drained and the humidity was getting to us again. We made our way back down and just around the first stream crossing we started to hear thunder pretty close! The woods started to get dark and we were booking it out of there. After Indian Pass Brook we almost lost the trail since we were rushing so much.
We forgot about the uphill around here so running up was tiring at this point and of course I have the worst blisters on my toes too! Around the sign in it started to really down pour. We got soaked! By the time we reached the car of course it was sunny and nice out again too…
Total hike time including breaks: 8 hours!
Distance: 8.8 miles
Elevation Gain: 2621 feet
High peak ranking so far:
- Giant
- Cascade
- Big Slide Mountain
- Rocky Peak Ridge
- Porter Mountain
- Nye Mountain
- Street Mountain
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