September 17, 1999
Hurricane Floyd moves through the Adirondack mountains Friday September 16. Joe and Alan follow the storm to Lake Placid. The roads are just a little wet. Doesn't look like much damage.
Next morning they head up the north side of Whiteface. As they reach higher elevations there are a few trees in the trail that still have fresh soil dripping off their roots. No problem. Just scoot around, under or over and off they go.
Finding the herd path to Esther is easy but very soon Alan has a question for Joe that reveals his inexperience. "Hey, Joe. Why does the path go right up to that wall of pine needles? Is this a dead end?" Well, sort of. Floyd uprooted several very large trees that completely blocked the herd path. That slowed them down. But they did have the honor of clearing a path for the others that followed later.
Editors note (Aug., 2001): It turns out that Alan and Joe were indeed very lucky. The route they took had only minor hurricane damage. Early on Friday, entire sections of trails all across the High Peaks were made totally impassable. Two years later, some trails, like the one to Allen, are still closed due to blowdown. The trail through Avalanche Pass, a very popular route, was impassable for three weeks and several new slides occurred on the mountains.
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Alan finds the canister on Esther, thinks it has food hidden inside and is greatly disappointed to find a log book. |
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Joe finds the canister on Esther but knows better than to look for hidden food. He eats the log book all the while mumbling something about roughage. |
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Alan gets one last shot of log book before Joe has it for lunch. |
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Practicing for a new career as a teacher, Alan explains the meaning of the numbers on the Whiteface summit marker with the pointer he has carried to the summit. Later he uses the pointer to smack Joe across the head for falling asleep in class. |
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Lake Placid from Whiteface summit. The restaurant visited later that day by the intrepid hikers is to the top left side of the lake. |
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Adirondack Great Range from Whiteface summit. |