When I thought about what I wanted to do on this trip I knew I wanted to take on a series of interesting and challenging activities but I did not necessarily want each one of those activities to be something that would take the entire day to complete. I was really attracted to the possibility of hiking up Cascade Mountain for this very reason. It was noted to be a relatively easy hike for an Adirondack High Peak mountain. The distance was about 5 miles.

When I looked at this hike in my guide book and I saw that it was a nearly 5 mile hike with a little under 2000 ft of elevation gain I noted on a post it note that this sounded like a run-able mountain and stuck it to the page describing the hike in case I wanted a challenging run. Now maybe as you read this you are thinking, “Who does this guy think he is. 2000 ft of elevation sounds crazy.” And that is probably a very wise thing to think. For me though over the years I have been going for a lot of runs that routinely have that much or more elevation. The crucial miscalculation that I made however is that when I read in the guide book that the hike was 5 miles with 2000 feet of elevation gain I forgot that the guide book is reporting the mileage in terms of a round trip, so 2 miles out and 2 miles back. That means that in reality the climb would be 2000 ft of elevation in just 2.5 miles, not 5 miles.

Two thousand feet over just two miles is a very different ball game as I soon found out. I am very glad that I did not end up deciding to run this mountain. I planned to hike it. But I still wasn’t expecting it to be too bad. Wrong. This was the most challenging hike I undertook the whole time I was on vacation. The elevation gain started almost immediately. It did not help that just like most days during this trip the temperature was in the upper 80’s. Maybe I only felt like this hike was so difficult is because my style of hiking is to hike along at a relatively quick pace and not stop unless I need to or to take a photo, but I do most of my photography at summits and on descents. So maybe I just push myself harder and exert myself more than the average hiker that the guide book is geared to.

The field guide noted that since this is a relatively easy hike, yeah right, and the fact that the summit offered amazing views it was one of the most popular hikes in the region. When I got there the parking areas were already filling up. I saw many people on the trails. Some people I passed as I climbed. Others passed me. One guy passed by me so fast that he quickly got out of site and then was on his way back down by the time I reached the summit and I was already half way up when he passed me. Even though this hike was short in distance it as going to make you work. So I was quite surprised at the numbers of people that were there. When I arrived at the summit there were already groups of people there and some were leaving and some were arriving the from the moment I arrived at the summit to the moment I left.

The views from the summit were great. The down side was, it was hot and there was no shade and despite being on a mountain there was no breeze to be had. It was so hot that the rock that composed the summit was hot to the touch. It wasn’t even comfortable to sit on really. It was difficult to relax at the summit of the mountain under those conditions. Especially for me, because as those who know me from running can attest to, I sweat A LOT when I exert myself and I especially sweat a lot in the heat. So I was basically drenched on top of a giant rock that was open to the full sun and it was acting like a nice roasting pan. So I did not stay at the summit as long as I would have liked. I wanted to get back down into the woods.

However, before I headed back down too far into the woods I read in the guide book that Porter Mountain was nearby and could be summitted from a short trek across off of the Cascade Mountain Trail. So I hiked back down the trail to where the pass over to Porter was marked and I hiked what seemed to be a lot longer than what it actually was. The distance was probably only one mile but it felt like a lot tougher of a mile than any of the hiking that as done to summit Cascade. I imagine this was mostly due to fatigue from already climbing 2000 feet and then climbing part way back down and then back up to the summit of another mountain that was also over 4000 feet above sea level.

I was really happy be able to summit to different high peaks mountains in one hike, although the view from Porter was not as grand as the view from Cascade. There was a little bit more shade, which I quickly scurried over to and shrunk myself down as small as I could to stay in so I could try to cool off some. There was only one other person at the Porter summit when I arrived. When they left I took that opportunity to stand at the summit alone and take a photograph, and experience I have not often had on other mountains. It was interesting to be able to use my camera and zoom in to see the other people across the pass over on the Cascade summit. I was literally just over there and now I was on an entirely different mountain watching them. That was a pretty cool experience.

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