Gothics and Pyramid Peak: Winter Comes Early in the Adirondacks

Timeline:

• 8:30 AM Start hiking
• 9:10 AM Start the trek off Lake Road
• 12:50 PM Summit Gothics
• 1:50 PM Summit Pyramid Peak
• 4:00 PM Back on Lake Road

• 5:00 PM Back at car

• Tracks: AllTrails, eBird
• Conditions: Cool, mostly sunny. Dirt at lower elevations, transitioning into several inches of snow by the summits.

With all my focus on Catskills hiking the past few years, I haven’t made it up to the Adirondacks. But with my Catskills winter peaks complete, I’ve been thinking more about going north and hiking some of the 46ers. It’s the thing to do after finishing the Catskills! Our friend John has a house up in the ADKs and is also working on his 46ers. We talked about doing a hike this summer but it never quite came together and the plan slipped until fall.

Once we’d set a date, I suggested an eight mile limit to keep this a manageable day hike. John’s family are long-time members of the Adirondack Mountain Reserve (AMR), which lets you park along Lake Road during the off season. This is a real perk—it’s not accessible to the public by car—and it could cut out around five miles of mostly flat hiking to get us right to the business.

We drove up Saturday evening and watched the Listers documentary with John, who’s also a birder. I appreciated that it did not make doing a “Big Year” look at all appealing. It’s fun the first month, then it’s a real slog looking for vagrants and rarities.

We “fell back” to standard time on Sunday morning. This made it easy to wake up early, but also meant we were working with the first 4:30 PM sunset of the year. We had a quick breakfast and were off to the trail.

When we arrived at Lake Road, the gate was closed and there was nobody manning the booth, or even in the club house. So it turned out we had to hike Lake Road after all! John thought they’d stopped manning the booth after the previous weekend. The Adirondacks are full of “summer people” and the AMR club was extremely dead in early November.

It was hard to dress for this hike. I wore a sweater and puffy and regular hiking pants. I brought both light and heavy gloves. Alex wore thermals. Following John’s advice, we brought microspikes. He brought a pair of snowshoes just in case. We brought two liters of water for the day, but should have brought more.

The Lake Road section was mostly flat. It was fun to see all the signs leading off to various ADK high peaks. John has done all of these. He jogs this road in the summer and skis it in the winter.

As soon as we turned off Lake Road, the trail quickly got steep and Alex had to de-layer. Once we’d gone up about 1,000 feet (to around 2,500 feet), we started to see patches of snow and then lots of snow. We eventually put on our microspikes when we started to hit impassably icy patches.

It was a very clear day—unusual for the Adirondacks, in our experience! Some of the high peaks were in cloud, but otherwise it was blue sky. Our “bird of the day” was the Red-breasted Nuthatch. We also saw a few chickadees, including a Boreal Chickadee.

There was a clear point where we went over a ridge and could see Gothics and Pyramid peak. That was our goal! This section was especially steep and rugged. There were a few icy descents and four ladders that we had to descend before making our way back up to the summit.

As we were on the final push, we could see a shroud of mist coming towards us. I announced that I had “summit fever” and charged ahead to try and beat it. It was neck and neck, but the mist won. Fortunately, it passed quickly and we had magnificent views from Gothics peak for our lunch.

Since we’d hiked a few more miles than planned, we were close to our turnaround time when we summited and it had to be a quick lunch. We started the steep, icy descent back in the mist. I was mostly comfortable, except for my toes. Next time, bring lots of toe warmers and hand warmers.

We ran into a few other hikers here, including a young man from Fort Drum who was hiking in “nanospikes” and a sweatshirt. It seemed like he’d bitten off a little more than he could chew with some of the icy sections and he’d backed off of Gothics. I found this a surprising reminder of just how young most people in the military are.

We had great views from Pyramid Peak as well. John says this might be the single best viewpoint in the Adirondacks. We were even able to get a brief view of Mt. Marcy, which I’d like to hike next year.

The descent went quickly. Soon the snow began to thin out and we were able to take off our spikes. We hiked farther along Lake Road, but we were able to make good time and were back at the car right around sunset.

We had pasta for dinner and enjoyed John’s new sauna before introducing him to River Cottage.

It was fun to get back up to the ADKs! I’m at 6/46 now. To make the 46ers feel doable, I really need to complete a big hike along the lines of The Nine from back in 2022. Maybe a multiday hike along the Great Range.

On the drive back, we saw lots of Quebec plates on camper vans that were clearly heading down to Florida for the winter. Our favorite: an RV with a Jeep on the back, with a bike on the back of that! Going north for a hike this time of year felt a bit like we were traveling into the future, into real winter. But the perk for us was that, once we got back home, everything felt warm by comparison.