View of Chapel Pond below, just a short way into the hike

We quickly got to the next junction with the Nubble Trail, then up to a great clearing, with awesome views to the west. We rested here for a bit (still lots of climbing so far) and talked with a couple who were also here resting and were also from a nearby development in our hometown! Although the trail seemed consistently steep, with little relief, we had excellent weather and many, many open vistas to make the hike quite enjoyable. My heel started to hurt, but I ignored it (lesson learned - I should have taped it!) and continued. We took the left trail around the “bump”, hit the next junction, and the trail got steeper and rockier. We were thrilled to hit the junction with the trail to Rocky Peak Ridge and the sign that indicated we had just 0.1 miles to go.

Some great views at a rest about 1.7 miles

We summited at 11:19 a.m. (3 hours for 3 miles) and found about ten others at the top. We rested, took in the great scenery, then I was shocked to see Dave B (whom I used to work with) arrive at the summit! There were a bunch of others, and he was telling them all about the hiking history in this area. Once the others left, we talked with Dave a bit. He’d also hiked the 46 peaks with his son, and was now doing them for his fourth round of the 46! We had him take our picture, and left the summit at 11:35 a.m., heading for Rocky Peak Ridge.

View from the top of Giant Mountain

On the top of Giant Mountain

The descent of Giant to the col was much steeper than we expected, and my toes started to hurt. It was an 800’ descent, and we knew it would be a tough climb back. We took a (very short) side trip on a herd path to the left, about a third of the way down. Dave told us to keep a look out for this, and take it to see the unique vantage point. It has a great view looking east into the valley, out over a slide. The trail was much drier than I had expected. From the bottom of the col, we ascended the 600’ to Rocky Peak Ridge with little problem, as this was a gentle climb. We reached the summit around 12:19 p.m. Again, there were about 10 people here (many the same as we saw on Giant), and more great views. There was no marker at the top, but it was marked with a large rock cairn. From one vantage point, Giant Mountain was very clear, but a short walk to the east provided views of the Champlain Valley and Lake Champlain in the distance. We had lunch on this east side, looked at the cool ridge further east, and noted what a beautiful hike that would be. (Note: Oddly, the summit here is called Rocky Peak Ridge, and if you travel further west along the actual ridge, there is a lower summit called Rocky Peak). Many people park cars at each end, and do a traverse from New Russia to the lot that we parked in. We also talked with a husband and wife who’d just competed their 46 here. We took pictures on the summit, and left the way we came in at 12:45 p.m.

View over the landslide from a short spur on the east side of the descent of Giant

Alex discovered that many of the evergreen trees here had bubbles on the trunks. He had fun popping them, and watching the sap shoot out. We talked a bit with a red-haired guy from Pennsylvania who was a student at Clarkson University. Then, we had a torturous climb back up Giant. It was VERY slow. We finally got to the junction at 2:19 p.m. and went to the nearest view to take a break. Lots of people were on the trail by this point.

The descent was extremely difficult for me. My boots were killing my feet and my toes were in a lot of pain. Unfortunately, that made this part very slow, but we finally made it back to the sign-in board at 5:30 p.m., and to the car by 5:35 p.m. Two of my toes were pretty banged up. Alex and I wanted food before heading back home. We decided to pass on a handful restaurants in Pottersville and Chestertown, and were thrilled with the place we ended up—George Henry’s in Warrensburg, where we had great burgers and I spotted someone else I knew—Ralph, another Capital Region resident who works in my profession. He was up at a summer camp he owned here. Very refreshed and very dirty, we got home around 9:00 p.m., showered and went to bed. Great day and hike, but very tough on my feet.