LOCALadk Magazine
Issue link: https://localadkmagazine.uberflip.com/i/1417694
It is July 20th, Father's Day, but from where I am, summer and warmth would be the last words to enter my mind. Despite nearly 24 hours of daylight, life on Denali is not hospitable, something I have learned over and over again for the past 10 days of constant climbing up the 20,320-foot mountain I keep stepping forward, the diminished oxygen at 20,000 feet making each step increasingly difficult. I try not to think about the time, sweat, and effort I had spent to get to this ridge, or about anything else except for where I am right now: the summit ridge to the highest point in North America. But soon the ridge is end- ing, and with it our quest for the summit. In climbing the final feet of elevation, I realize that this is the final few steps to the top of Denali, and all of the uncertainty of our expedition floods away, leaving only the sheer joy that accompanies any summit. I can't help a giant smile from spreading across my face. To me, standing on the summit of Denali feels like a culmina- tion of what completing the Northville-Placid Trail four months earlier had started. In some clichè way, the FKT (fastest known time) my dad and I achieved on the Northville-Placid Trail was the essential foundation that prepared me both physically and mentally for the king peak of North America. It started as merely an idea, or more specifically, a revelation from a family friend, that the 140-mile stretch of trail from the Adirondack towns of Northville to Lake Placid—appropriately named the Northville-Placid Trail (NPT for short)—did not have a record for the FKT to be done in the winter months unsupport- ed. is proposition was considered, forgotten, rejected, trained for, planned for, changed, modified, and even briefly attempted before my dad and I found ourselves driving to Northville on a frigid Monday morning in March. In Northville, the air was crisp and my exhaled in a white vaporous cloud. e town of Northville was quiet, with little activity on the streets. We signed in to the register, and discovered that a team of three skiers had started in Lake Placid and finished in Northville only about a week before. Story by Henry Horvath THE PERFECT ADIRONDACK TRAINING GROUND 58 LOCALadk T H E N O R T H V I L L E - P L A C I D T R A I L T O D E N A L I