Miles to go before we sleep.

This morning I decided to take a look at the Adirondacks high peaks region map and write down some hikes that can be done in the backcountry. These obviously take a great deal of planning. The main objective is to be realistic to how many miles you can hike with full heavy packs before you can set up camp. Which makes it more difficult is that there are restrictions on where you are allowed to camp in the backcountry.

First restriction that you encounter is that interior camping areas are picked by park rangers to ensure that the areas flora isn’t being repeatedly destroyed. The other is that these areas have to be approximately 100meters from water ways to help in the deterrence of a friendly bear taking a walk into your camp and so that we hikers won’t be polluting the water way.

The other thing is that you are only allowed to camp in designated areas and never above 4000ft. Anything above 3500ft is the alpine zone and must be respected by travelers to ensure environmental sustainability. Plus the exposure at 4000ft can change within minutes and a nice clear night of camping can turn into a grave outcome.

Deciding before you leave home is your best option as you can decide on attempting to summit at the end of the day or camp in an area that you can summit the following morning. With multiple peaks to be bagged in a 2 or 3 day trip this can get tricky. Luckily the available lean-tos are labeled on the high peaks region map. These lean-to areas are also located near many tent camping sites.

The other thing I realized this morning is that we don’t have as many peaks bagged as I thought we had. Two summers of injury has put us way back as we presently completed only 16 leaving us with 30 to go. That was not where I thought we were for some reason and believed that we were half way.

The good news is that we plan on many hours and days in the ADK this summer using stat-holiday long weekends, extended weekends, and day trips to bring that number way down. Whatever is left over will be completed throughout the winter and hopefully by the following summer we will have the pleasure of purchasing 46er badges for our packs -it’s the small things in life that seem to mean the most.

All in all it should be a great summer filled with wilderness, nights sleeping under the vast sky, many hours, miles, and elevation gained and lost. Can’t wait.