Kane Mountain Redux

I love traveling and I love days trips.  Hiking Bald Mountain a few weeks ago just ramped up my always latent desire to be in the mountains, to be adventuring.  I immediately began scheming about how we could get back up to the Adirondacks.  We have not tested Alden's range yet, and don't want to overdo it and burn him out on hiking mountains.  However, Frankie and I hiked Kane Mountain together back in 2015, and knew from experience that it is comparable to Bald Mountain in both distance and elevation gain.  If anything, it might be a little easier, because there is less scrambling and exposure.  Based on how easily Alden scampered up Bald, we knew he could handle Kane.  Now we just had to wait for good weather.  Ha!

The forecast for today was for solid rain, not the best for a 3-year just getting started climbing mountains, so we made no advance plans.  Frankie was in the midst of one of his epic, hours-long breakfasts, and I had read some and done some chores and was texting Erin.  We had been contemplating taking the boys somewhere, just to get together and hang out, like an indoor playground at the mall.  Neither of us seemed to be able to execute that plan, though.  Ugh!  Then we noticed that the forecast seemed to have improved, and it was no longer supposed to rain in the afternoon.  We waffled a bit about what to do and made the somewhat rash decision to stuff the boys in the car and drive to Canada Lake.  It was around 1:30 pm when we pulled in the small parking lot.  Given our late start, we decided to head up the shorter Red Trail.

setting off

embracing Leave No Trace -- kids take to this quite well!

We ignored the whole pesky idea of lunch for a while, but the kids were hungry so we paused to eat on the way up.  I had brought apples that Frankie and I picked after school yesterday, and cider doughnuts, too, which I came to regret because Frankie begged for them constantly.

Very few people passed us going up, but lots of folks were coming down, so it seemed we might have the summit to ourselves.  Unfortunately, just as we were entering the clearing, a large group emerged from the Yellow Trail right at the base of the tower.  The first few people immediately began climbing, and the rest of the group exploded out of the woods.  It was a nightmare.  We headed over to the observer's cabin and checked that out, hoping we'd eventually get a turn to climb the tower. 

The boys had a blast running around the old cabin, climbing in and out of the windows, but Erin and I were struggling to suppress our annoyance.  The hordes were showing no inclination to share.  Finally, we determined we would just have to climb up and wait on the stairs for people to descend, as necessary.  Frankie led the way up, as usual. 

It was beautiful up there, but very windy and cold.  And so crowded that extracting our extra layers and putting them on would have been extremely difficult.  You can't tell this from my pictures, of course, because I avoid pictures with crowds.  Sometimes I look back and wish I took one or two for evidence, but I only very rarely actually do it. 

After getting a few pictures, Erin decided to head down with Alden.  The staircase in this cab is open, and with so many people up there, it was too hard to keep the little guy safe.  Frankie wasn't ready to descend just yet, poor kid, so we stayed up a while longer -- mostly just so we could enjoy waving to Erin and Alden once they got down.  Once we did that, we headed down, too. 

Back the base of the tower, we discussed our descent options.  Frankie and I took the Yellow Trail down last time, and knew it was both longer and more interesting.  However, given how late it was, I was not going to force that on the group, especially since our youngest is not mine -- this choice would have to be Erin's call.  She declared with no uncertainty that she wanted to go down whichever route the huge party did NOT.  So once we saw them depart via the Red Trail, we knew the Yellow Trail would be ours. 

First we had to convince Frankie that we didn't need to climb the tower one more time... then we started our descent.  The glacial erratics up on the ridge are a fun feature of this trail.  Eventually, the cloud cover thickened up and it got a bit dim in the woods, so I didn't take as many pictures. 

The mud near the end of the hike was deeper and more extensive than I remembered, and ended up freaking poor Alden out a little.  Sorry, buddy!  I think he was getting a little tired because of our late start, but I remember Frankie getting really upset about "quicksand" once at Chimney Bluffs, so maybe it's just a thing they all go through.  Luckily there was a lovely stream within sight of the parking lot, so we could stop and get Alden cheered up again throwing things in the water. 

When we signed out at the register, we saw the monster group had signed in with 22 people.  Oof!  We have now gained a little unwanted insight into the logic behind group size restrictions.  Despite the terrible timing of arriving at the summit at the same time as the army, we had a great hike overall.  There were a few sprinkles, but more sunshine, and autumn is such a lovely time in the woods.  The little guy crashed out in the car on the way home, as to be expected.