The Great Range Traverse
Thoughts from a 23+ mile solo day hike
Marcy. Haystack. Basin. Saddleback. Gothics. Armstrong. Upper Wolfjaw. Lower Wolfjaw. 8 of the 46 high peaks in the Adirondacks. 23.15 miles. 9,089 feet of elevation gain. Over 13 hours. The Great Range Traverse. It was pretty much on a dare, a suggestion from a hiking enthusiast friend, “You should tackle this, as a long day hike,” and then a link from AllTrails. It’s not like I had anything better to do that prevented me from spontaneously going on a wilderness adventure on a random Wednesday in July. I was in between jobs, in between careers really, and in between states. I had had to cancel a three-week visit to a women’s monastery, and I had gone through a breakup. I was left with an opportunity to sit and think in the Adirondack Mountains in Upstate New York after roadtripping across the US, and on top of that, I’m athletic and competitive. If someone is going to challenge me to some arduous physical activity, I’ll do it, even if it’s just for the pride of saying, “I win.”
The High Peaks Region of the Adirondacks is about two hours from where I was staying, so the night before I drove up to Lake Placid to crash at my brother’s place, where he, the ultramarathon trail runner he is, made sure I had a water-filtration system and enough electrolytes and calories for the coming adventure. He was running the point to point route in the opposite direction. We exchanged car keys so we had cars at our respective finishing parking lots. At 4am, my watch dinged and vibrated. I braided my hair. I prayed. I ate breakfast. I laced my boots. I was off. At 5:55am, I hit the trail.
Oh, for the solitude of the woods at dawn. Shades of pink still glowed in the sky. The earth felt damp and cool. When the sun began its creep over the mountains, the leaves and pine needles glinted gold in the slanted light. The hike started with a nice long gradual ascent up Mt. Marcy. I encountered very few people in the early morning, a ranger descending after a night in the woods, two other hikers beginning their climb before the heat of the day. When I passed a lodge tucked away in the woods for hikers and backpackers to spend the night in a place with running water and toilets, still before 7am, I saw through the windows a man walking across the room likely for his morning coffee. Birds chirped, and the clouds blew over the mountains.
At some point after the four mile mark, the pine trees closed in on the trail, and I soon encountered something I did not expect. The spiders had had a heyday and strung their webs across the trail. Thank God I’m not an arachnophobe, for I went through so many spider webs I was nearly expecting to find twelve incapacitated dwarves whereupon I would not have an elven blade or a Ring of Power to save them. It was also not too much later that the mud reached its zenith. I put my foot down, and I was standing knee-deep in mud. This hike got me to be the muddiest I had ever unintentionally been.
The spider webs fortunately ended when I cleared the tree line, and it was around then that I revenged myself on my health-conscious parents by eating the first of two chocolate pop-tart packets, a food my brothers and I had been nigh on completely deprived of as children. Above the tree line, the trail markers went from colored circles on trees to cairns that created an other worldly scene and yellow splashes of paint on the rocks. The clouds would drift in and out. Especially on the descents, with a vista over the whole land, I felt like I was either in Middle Earth or on another planet. That thought made me pause. I had recently done a lot of hiking, both in the Adirondacks, and in the deserts of New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah prior to going to Upstate New York. In Arizona and Utah, while out in the wild, I felt like I was on Mars. How disconnected are we from the natural, incarnate, world that we feel like we are on another planet while on the untamed regions of our own?
After descending Marcy, I was up onto Haystack, which is actually two peaks, Little Haystack, and then Haystack itself. While on top of Haystack itself, I found a group of people eating lunch, two groups that had merged and had the same idea. I also found myself with the same idea as them, as I reached into my pack for a snack break.
“Here comes a runner,” one of the picnickers said.
“Oh, that’s my brother,” I said. He had started an hour and a half after me, and he was already there, having covered slightly more distance than me and the majority of the vertical. The picnickers up top were quite impressed we were both doing the entire Great Range in one day, just a reminder there was a long way to go.
While descending Haystack, and using my water filter for a water refill from a mountaintop puddle, I was pleased to find I had covered half the distance in under five and a half hours although I knew full well with all the remaining vertical of six more peaks, it would take a lot more than five and half hours to do the remaining distance. It was also while descending Haystack that my path intersected with the first of two summer camps. A group of teenagers were led by some young adults who were probably younger than I am. This camp was Canadian. I had thought something sounded different about their accents when I heard them speak. I think it was also around then, while lowering myself down a rock, I felt a pop in my left wrist. I had done something wrong to it that would plague me all hike
The next three high peaks were the worst: Basin, Saddleback, and Gothics. They were steep, they were rocky, and there were many, many times on the descents when I had to sit down on the rock face and slide down on my butt, and other times I found myself staring down a steep long rock face wondering how on earth I was supposed to get down if safely, for I knew no matter what I did, my momentum would get the better of me. Although I had a solid pair of hiking boots, I did not have crazy trail running shoes like my brother that would let me stick like glue to a nearly vertical rock face. While nearly careening toward the bottom of a ledge, my left foot caught, and I pulled on my left ankle. My left ankle’s been bad for over eleven years. I did not need to do something wrong to it.
On top of Basin, some clearly military men were quite happy to see me. They had spent ten minutes trying to get a phone in the correct position to get a picture of themselves with the American flag, and when another person finally showed up on the summit, their lives got a lot easier. I took their photo for them.
Along came the Saddleback cliffs and the most unnerving ascent I have ever done. I saw the yellow paint of the trail markers on the rock, and I wondered how that was even possible. I was being asked to straight up climb a cliff. I had been forewarned, but a warning is never the same as the actual experience. Using my hands and feet, I began the climb. I was by myself. There was not another person in sight. I had nothing to secure me to the mountain. My parents had climbed the Saddleback Cliffs, but they had at least done it together. I would find myself on a ledge, out of breath from the climb and see long stretches of vertical both above and below me, and then I would start again. If my foot were to slip on the rock, I knew I would have a serious problem. My left wrist was not at all pleased with what I was doing to it, that I continued twisting it in multiple directions and putting pressure on it to scale the rock face. On one ledge, I realized it was time for the ibuprofen I’d packed, and while I had stopped to rummage through my backpack for that, my stomach also informed it it was also time for more substantial food, so I ate a protein bar, fully aware it was not carbohydrates, and I had the first few bites of my peanut butter sandwich. I did not stay there long, however There was still a summit to reach and plenty of cliff to climb. When I got to the summit, I took a picture of the cliffs below me, wondering how on earth I had gotten up them. There, I was able to happily finish my sandwich. I was, at this point, not only halfway done with the distance, but halfway done with the peaks.
While back in the woods at the bottom of Saddleback, I came across a couple hiking the Great Range Traverse from the opposite direction. They informed me of the Gothics Cables I had coming up for me, and I told them they would have a lot of fun descending the Saddleback Cliffs. I hope they made it down safely. The Saddleback Cliffs were part of why I went in the direction I did, for I preferred to go up them than down them.
The Gothics Cables were what they were marked up to be, and I clung onto long stretches of cables while attempting to hike up a slope that was really not much less steep than the Saddleback Cliffs. If what I had done earlier on the hike was not a workout, then this definitely was, as I felt like I was practically crawling to the peak; however, as I had something to cling it, it was much less unnerving and much more enjoyable than Saddleback.
From Armstrong onward, the hike got much easier. I ran into the second of two summer camps, another line of teenagers out on a hike. These kids were American, and by their attire and gear, they were out for a shorter hike than the Canadian kids, likely only Armstrong itself. In the absence of a stream, I refilled water again from another mountaintop puddle and met a woman doing about three of the high peaks. Since the descent off Armstrong was much less steep than the previous three descents, and the afternoon was getting on, I had enough air to sing what I had memorized of vespers.
At last, I came to the Wolfjaws, the two high peaks on the route I had already done on a family hike nearly two years prior. Those final two were much quicker than the rest, and after Basin, Saddleback, and Gothics, they straight up felt easy. I did not meet anyone else on the trail on Upper Wolfjaw, but I met an older gentleman descending Lower Wolfjaw sipping his water who said he was working hard, and I passed two girls in their late teens who were also ascending. The remainder of the trail also ended up being the angriest I was on the entire hike, for even though I had knocked out all the high peaks in the range, I was still very much not done. I had over five (five!) miles to go having already hiked eighteen, and was this nice walking over a smooth level path, what my now fatigued body craved? No! I still had steep, rocky ascents and descents. There was even another small peak directly in my path, Hedgehog. And then I had to stop at a stream for another water refill.
My brother had written on my hiking instructions to add Roostercomb, another peak that was not a high peak, into the hike, but the trail did not directly cross it, and that would have required a short out and back, so I refused to do it and just continued on the trail. I had already been out on the trail for twelve hours. I was tired. I wanted to go home. I had reached the point where I knew if I were to be on the trail after 8pm, I would probably start crying. There may be some Great Range purists out there who will say I did not complete the Great Range because I did not do Roostercomb, but I don’t care. I still got in eight high peaks in one hike. That was plenty.
The last three miles, I counted the way I would count at the end of the long runs. “There’s a 2 in front of the decimal. I don’t care there’s 99 after the it, there is still a 2 in front of the decimal.” The last quarter mile or so was, thankfully, flat level ground, a glorious welcome reprieve. At 7:16, I finally staggered into the parking lot. My knees felt banged up from all the rock-hopping, my wrist hurt, my bad ankle was weak, and my quads ached, but I was done. I had some Gatorade zero waiting for me in the car. My brother, who had been tracking my location, texted me to say, “Bethany 1 GRT 0.”
I had been out in nature for over thirteen hours. I had rarely had cell service, and when I did, with the exception of my parents texting me to make sure I was still alive, I generally had ignored my phone. So, did I have any revelations, any profound insights on the nature of the universe? Did I come to peace with the world? Did I distinctly hear God speak? No. Most of my mental space was occupied with, “Just keep going. Four high peaks left, you’re halfway done with the peaks. How am I supposed to get over/down this? Ooh, I wonder which peaks those hikers are doing.” I had previously learned I cannot expect to have any sort of spiritual awakening while hiking. Still, with earthly cares set aside in a sense, the hike was an opportunity to clear my headspace.
I had spent a lot of time in the wilderness between June 20-July 20. I had gone backcountry hiking and camping in Petrified Forest National Park. I had gone camping and hiking in Zion National Park. Prior to the Great Range Traverse, I had already gone on two other Adirondack hikes in July which led to a grand total of hiking four other high peaks. The first hike, where I only did one high peak was with my father. The next one, where I got in three was solo. It was probably my favorite hike in the Adirondacks, where I spent the most time in the ethereal landscape above the tree line while the mists were still being blown away. These all had been unanticipated experiences.
When it came to anticipated experiences, one experience I had been anticipating and very much looking forward to, prior to my visit to the monastery being canceled, was the opportunity to go on poustinia. Going on poustinia at that specific monastery would have entailed spending forty-eight hours in a little retreat house in silence to pray. I had never had the opportunity to spend that much time in silence before, had the opportunity to be free from all distraction. While backcountry camping in utter solitude in the wilderness of the Painted Desert of Petrified Forest National Park, I realized I was granted that opportunity in a different way. I was all alone in the desert, on a literal poustinia. Although the Adirondack Mountains are very much not a desert, they are still the wilderness, so the effect was the same. St. John the Baptist went to the wilderness. Christ went to the wilderness. After the Roman Empire was converted, the monastics set up their monasteries in the wilderness, some of which still stand in the Holy Land and Egypt to this day, like St. Catherine’s Monastery. We need to retreat to the wilderness. The wilderness deprives us of comfort and reengages us.
I cannot point to a single moment of my time in the wilderness and say, “God spoke and told me exactly what to do with my life,” but I did experience consolation. When I entered the wilderness with some major decisions still on my mind, I would leave realizing the decision had been made. There had never been a clear moment of decisiveness, but I was at peace at the conclusion, and my spiritual father agreed with my decisions when I shared them with him. With earthly cares set aside while out in the wild, I was engaging in the incarnate world again, and I was at peace.
I don’t anticipate doing any more high peaks anytime soon though I still have thirty-one to go. When I finished the Great Range Traverse, I was very much “hiked out”, and I was sore for days afterward. Then my time in the Adirondacks concluded a week later. The hike, though, was part of why I got what I needed from it.
