LOCALadk Magazine

LOCALadk 25 Skiing the 46 High Peaks of the Adirondacks by Jamie Kennard It was a minefield of rock and ice that stretched before us like a frozen battlefield. On paper, it had seemed the perfect route—a natural landslide as wide as a highway that carved its way from the moun- tain's base to just beneath Lower Wolfjaw's summit. My brother Doug and I had decided this would be our first ski descent, the opening chapter of an audacious attempt to ski each of the 46 High Peaks in the Adiron- dacks. In theory, it should have been a breeze. In reality, that January morning in 2015 revealed a nightmarish 2,000 -foot gauntlet that I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemies. We were here to test our- selves. We needed to find out if our lives' accumula- tions of winter and ski mountaineering skills had mani- fested into worthy matches for the challenge of skiing the Adirondack 46ers. What made this challenge so grueling that no one had skied them all in nearly two decades? Did we have the moxie to see it through? If we harbored any lofty expectations that skiing the Adirondack High Peaks would be straightforward, that notion was brutally kneecapped right out of the gate. And if we somehow managed to survive this initial descent unscathed, forty-five more mountains still loomed in our future. All I could think was: Welcome to hell in the backcountry. Left: Jamie and Doug Kennard atop their final peak, Mt. Colden, in their quest to ski all 46 high peaks of the Adirondacks. Right: Doug Kennard skis along an icy ribbon of snow near the Gar- den trailhead in 2023. Photo credit: Jamie Kennard Traditionally, our LOCALadk "Epic Journey" article has been a tale of one of our own going off into the world for an "epic" experience. However, this particular story from our own back yard was too epic to pass up. We will let our author, Jamie Kennard, take it from here.

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