Tabletop Mountain
Date of hike: 11/2/2013
Vertical Ascent: 2500’
Length of Hike (miles): 10.25
Total Time: 7:15
Hiked with: John L and Joe
This was yet another year where this hike had dwindled to only me, John, and Joe. We slept at TMax-n-Topo’s Hostel and ate breakfast at the Downtown Diner in the morning. We decided even though it was a beautiful morning, the forecast looked bad (of course!), so we’d aim for Tabletop today. We hit the trailhead at the HPIC at 9:00 a.m. with very pleasant, dry weather in the 40s, and the usual groups of French Canadians milling around the parking lot.
There were very few people on the trail, and I started out in the lead. We moved at a fast pace, getting to Marcy Dam in under an hour. We quickly reached the trailhead for Phelps at around 3.2 miles, over very gradually sloping terrain the whole way. In about a mile, we got to a main junction with several alternatives. We took the clearly labeled central trail (the trail to the left was a ski trail and the trail to right led towards Mt. Marcy). As we headed up Tabletop’s unmaintained trail, we found this part of the hike seemed to take a lot longer than we’d expected. The terrain changed to a moderate incline over lots of boulders. Then, the air got damper and the stretch in the middle became steeper. Most of our way up, we periodically shouted Joe’s favorite mantra to each other… “We’re burning daylight!” This three-quarter mile long unmaintained trail was a deep rut eroded into the ground, with lot of water running down it. I was feeling very good and was surprised that I needed fewer breaks than the other two on this hike. There would have been decent views behind us, but it was just a solid wall of white cloud.
One of the many stream crossings in these mountains
We hit the top of the plateau and the trail became practically flat and was extremely wet with deep standing water on it. We even saw a small 15’x5’ patch of snow that remained, after everything else had melted in the warm, wet weather over the last two days. There were tons of thin, very dense trees in this forest, and we followed along a few hundred feet until 12:15 p.m., when we hit the summit (clearly marked with a sign on a tree) at an open rocky area. Although the summit was mostly in the trees, there would have been views to one side, if not for the thick fog. We had lunch and took photos, then changed our gear just as the rain and cold began to come in. We started our descent at 12:45 p.m.
Enjoying the satisfaction of another successful hike
It was quiet on the trails, and we only passed a handful of others. We took a very short detour to Indian Falls on our way back, and generally moved at a much slower pace. My feet and body were soaked, and I decided that I needed go buy some new gear after this. We arrived back at the car at 4:15 p.m., drove back to the hostel, got cleaned up, and briefly stopped at Joe’s friend Jean’s house, to introduce her to John. Both had expressed interested in an upcoming owl-tagging event. Then Joe had to leave, and John and I went out to dinner at the Great Adirondack Steak and Seafood Company. I drove home as it began to snow (once again seeing my first snow of the season on this annual hike). I got home at 9:45 p.m.
John at the top of Indian Falls and way too close for my comfort