LOCALadk Magazine

Fall 2017 LOCALadk Magazine 45 LOCALadk snow pickets, rock climbing hardware and protec- tion, harnesses, helmets, slings, and so forth. Some people elect to also carr y a harder-shell mountain- eering boots for the summit day, but we simply wore sturdy hiking boots with gaiters over the top. Our scheduled camping permit put us eight miles up the valley the first evening, but feeling like beasts of burden subser vient to our heavy back- packs, we knew that mileage wasn't going to hap- pen. Merely five minutes in we passed a ver y wea- r y-looking mountaineer coming out. His second pair of boots strapped to the back of his pack swung side to side with ever y step, whacking him in the back of the knees, but he looked too tired to care. "That won't be us on the way out!" we thought. My approach to dealing with a heavy backpack is to find ever ything and anything along the way worth of photographing, so that I have a valid excuse to take off my backpack and rest. Josiah obliged by posing on the trail while I took 360 -degree panora- mas in the old-growth forest. Ever ything about the West is just on a grander scale – the mountains are bigger, the trees taller, the distances longer. It is an amazing experience to hike under 200 -foot-tall old-growth pines and cedars. While I love the Ad- irondacks and will always call this place home, I am also enamored with the grandeur of the West. We made it about three miles the first day and when darkness fell we couldn't pass up the (non-le- git) trail-side camping spot underneath massive Western red cedar trees. Despite the rain and wet- ness ever ywhere else, it was dr y under the cedars, so we were spared that terrible feeling when you have to take apart your perfectly-packed dr y back- pack, on the first day, in the rain.

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