This week me and my biggest little Bradley packed up our backpacks and headed out to the Adirondacks for a mother-son trip before school starts!
I wanted to take him with me to do Marshall because there is a neat historical plane wreckage that is right off the trail close to the summit of the mountain. A solo pilot crashed there in Aug 1969 and survived, but it took 32 hours to rescue him!
After a busy morning we made the 5 hour drive to the Upper Works parking and trailhead and started our hike at just after 6pm. I knew it was a late start but we were prepared! We were intending to get to a lean-to for our shelter. We brought a tent just in case, but we were looking forward to the lean to experience.
At about 8pm we stopped to put on our headlamps and kept on going. The path got more muddy and rocky as we advanced deeper into the mountains. At about 9pm we reached a junction where we looked around the corner and there was the shelter! Even better--no one in it!! We jumped for joy then started unpacking and making dinner.
Dinner was mac and cheese with BBQ pulled pork. Yum!
We got to bed by 10pm, then woke up around 7am the next morning to begin our day. After a breakfast of oatmeal we tidied up our shelter and grabbed our daybags for an adventure of mountain climbing!
Our shelter was right by the Flowed Lands lake. It was a bit too stagnant for getting our water supply, so we waited until we reached a nicely flowing creek.
After we filled up on water, we continued on down the trail past Lake Colden. Another beautiful sight!
Shortly after that we reached the Cold Brook pass junction to start our ascent of Mt Marshall. Most of this trail was marked so it wasn't too hard to follow it as we criss crossed Cold Brook. There were several crystal clear pools along the creek where we happily stopped to cool off. It was a very hot and humid day! The water was ice cold and was very refreshing.
We reached the plane wreckage just after noon, and decided to have our lunch there and check it out.
After lunch we continued on to our next junction which was an unmarked trail to the summit! Not much farther....
We summitted the mountain just before 2pm! It was a wooded summit with just a few peekaboo views from rocks. Not much place to sit and rest, so we grabbed a few pics, caught our breath, then headed down the other side on another unmarked trail.
The trail down followed along Herbert creek and seemed a bit more steep than the Cold brook pass. It was also more muddy, so we had to take care to hop on rocks and tree branches or else we got a bootful of muck!
After about 7 miles that day, we happily arrived back to our shelter around 5:30pm and rested for a bit before having dinner. Some other hikers set up camps behind our shelter so we had neighbors on our second night.
For dinner this night I made Spanish rice and fajita chicken burritos. Delish!! A hearty meal after a long day.
The heat and humidity continued into the night, and we got up the next morning ready to pack up and head out. We reached our car by 11:30am and after finding a gas station we made it home just in time for dinner at 5:30pm! Another successful hiking trip!
Total miles hiked: Apprx 17 miles
Total elevation gain: Apprx 3,120ft
Marshall puts my total high peaks at 14/46 and Bradley at 3/46!
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