New York
#8 Mount Marcy, elevation 5,344 ft.
Our long wet weekend in the High Peaks.
Marcy was the first serious hike I did—with a group of friends—in support of the quest.
Outfitted with old boots, basic supplies, and a bad night's sleep in a musty lean-to, we trekked off into the Adirondack wilderness for a 16-mile calf-buster up an overly popular trail to the summit of the Empire State. We drove up 5 hours, spent the night, did the hike, and drove home again. Madness.
A summer hike up Marcy is an experience you will share with hundreds of strangers. The alpine zone is breathtaking, but so are the crowds, and the trail is W-E-T. As in damp, moist, soggy, and mud-spattered. Actively trickling. I have since done harder hikes and gained much more altitude, but Marcy remains a touchstone as the inaugural "big hike" of my highpointing career.
One of the unfortunate side effects of Marcy's popularity is the environmental degradation of the summit area, hence the stewards stationed on the summit by the ADK Mountain Club: hardy souls who huff it up every day and admonish you not to trample the alpine vegetation. The High Peaks are home to a variety of rare plants, and the summit area is lined with carefully placed rock barriers to alert you to their proximity.
Some sources claim Marcy's name in the Algonquin language is Tahawus, for "Cloudsplitter," but others say it’s a pseudo-Algonquin appellation grafted onto the mountain by early white settlers. The mountain's Anglo namesake is William Learned Marcy (1786–1857), three-time governor of the State of New York (right). Marcy was later secretary of war under President James K. Polk as well as the twenty-first secretary of state under that pillar of presidential ignominy, Franklin Pierce. He is credited with the phrase "to the victor belongs the spoils," whence the "spoils system" was coined to describe corrupt political patronage. A Jacksonian Democrat in an era of much greater diversity among our nation's politcal parties, he belonged to a number of curiously named factions and counter-factions, from the Bucktails to the Hunkers.
After our hike, my compatriots and I wanted pizza, our traditional post-hike feast. We drove into Lake Placid, the nearest town, and got a table outside Caffe Rustica, in the same shopping plaza as the Price Chopper. The walk across the parking lot, after our legs had begun to seize, was the most painful 20 feet of the day.
Marcy Follies
One of my first edited hiking videos, with much monkeying about in iMovie varying speed, mitigating poor-quality video, and manipulating sound, all of which had to be stripped out when I put them online (copyright!). Cherish your stunted darlings.