Trip to Gothics, Adirondack Mountains.

The trip to Gothics had been cancelled twice. Once because it was tough for people to find two continuous days to spare on a long weekend. Other time we had a more stupid reason, but I don't remember now.This time, for the sake of Gothics, we decided to drop those who were not "free" enough. Still we had 9 people in our group, 4-5 more than the optimal size. It is not optimal because, you run a fatal risk of having everyone who reads your Facebook status message, with you right there. Actually this didn't deter some of us from updating their status from the top of the mountain. I hope they got lots of "likes" and "+1's" for their additional effort after climbing the mountain.

Coming back to the trip, in preparation for these 9 people, we booked lean-to at JBL (John's Brook Lodge) for Saturday night's stay. It can be reserved beforehand (all the state owned ones are first come first served) and was wild enough for our taste (thankfully not wild enough for the bear's taste that day). On Friday night we stayed at a motel in Glen Falls. In the morning, after having a little too much of the breakfast, we left for the garden parking lot. Because of the frequent download breaks, we reached late and couldn't find a spot. A word of advice, be there before 7 on long weekends. Since we didn't follow this advice, we parked in a close by parking lot and took a shuttle to garden (that took almost half hour extra).

We started the hike around 8:30 and reached JBL at around 10:30. In preparation of a long hike ahead, we had lunch. At this point I discovered that our zealous friends have packed some avocados, "boondi ke ladoo" and around half the BJ's for the 2 day trip.
With a heavy stomach and without avocados we started the hike to Gothics. The area around JBL is filled with trails and it is advisable to have a clear picture/map/idea of what trail you want to take. We went towards Lower Wolfjaw from the registration post. After around 2 hrs we reached the fork, where we changed our direction to go towards Upper Wolfjaw. The other direction leads to Lower Wolfjaw. It was an intelligent decision to skip the round trip to it and it will be soon clear why.

The ascent to Upper Wolfjaw was really tough, but that was just the beginning. The views from the top were decent, but the climbing ordeal forced us to take a long break. From there we went to Armstrong. The view of Gothics from there was awesome and intimidating at the same time. That was one of the moments when you say to yourself " How the hell am I planning to climb this thing ?". Few people had told us that Gothics is the real prize. But according to me the views from Armstrong were also quite good, except that from Gothics you get a 360 view.


From Armstrong to Gothics was not very difficult and we reached at the top at around 5. Gothics was worth the wait and had amazing views. In the immediate neighbourhood, it is the tallest peak, so give you 360 views. Also you can look at Marcy and Algonquin (the highest peaks in Adirondack) from a distance and appreciate the scene.

The toughest part of Gothics hike is supposed to be the chained part which takes you towards Saddleback mountain. You have to go down a bare rock face with a 45 degree slope. It is more scary than dangerous. Except few casualties, we had no major incident. Actually all of us were able to come down injury free, but it took almost two hours to cover that section (all because of the able guidance of few pro hikers in our group).

That delay ensured that we traveled last two hours in darkness and last one hour without knowing what was 1 meter away from us. Ultimately we ended in the lean to at around 10:30, completely battle wounded. Some point before that we realized that the one bottle of water-purifier we had given to some hikers was the only bottle we had. The other one had just cotton. So we had fresh untreated Adirondack water, and till now everyone is alive (at least till one week back).

The food tasted really good. But surprisingly we were not able to finish avocados and around 50% of the food we got. Then without further ado, we went to sleep and no bear or snake was able to disturb us. In the morning, after having Maggi (the best breakfast), we came out to Garden parking lot. Few of us came back to NJ and few visited Lake Placid etc. close by.

Overall the trip was fun and made possible by the help of this website. They have detailed topographic maps and lot of information in general about the Adirondacks.
http://www.adirondackjourney.com/
The trip we did is mentioned as "Lower Range" but traveled in opposite direction.