Interesting trees on one of the many “glacial erratics” along the trail

We made very good time and hit the 2-mile junction in just 1 hour. We took a short break here, and decided to bypass the side trail to Rooster Comb’s summit for now, and maybe do it later. We continued south to the summit of Hedgehog Mountain, which was a real disappointment. There were no views, signs, or even markers to note this peak. We weren't even sure we were there, until we verified it with the GPS. From there, the trail dropped to a col, where we got our first bits of views (with Whiteface prominently to the north). We passed only two solo hikers over the first few hours, which was very surprising. There were lots of horseflies and several black flies on the mountain, mostly in the brighter areas, but we were lucky, and they weren’t really biting. We ascended the first summit bump, “the chin” of Wolfjaw, and walked along this ridge, which was heavily treed (though we could make out bits of views to the north and south). On our descent of the chin, we could make out a pretty good view of the narrow Bennie’s Brook slide to the north, which was enlarged in 2011 by Hurricane Irene. The descent into the col was pretty steep, and we could see our goal looming ahead of us. The ascent up to the summit had one extremely steep section, but these were the only real challenging parts of what was otherwise a somewhat simple hike. Parts of the trail even looked like they were landscaped with woodchips, with all of the crushed pinecones on the ground, and lined with white bunchberry flowers.

We hit the summit at 10:53 a.m.—good time for this 5-mile hike. We had the peak to ourselves for about ten minutes, and broke out some lunch, which we enjoyed on a rock, taking in views of Big Slide and Yard Mountains to the northwest and Marcy, and Basin to the southwest, with just a handful trees slightly obscuring the views. A French-Canadian couple joined us for a few minutes, then we decided to head on to Upper Wolfjaw Mountain at 11:15. However, about 15 minutes into our descent, we realized that the hike would take us too long, and get us back home much later than we wanted. I’d already done that peak, and we determined that we could do Upper Wolfjaw in the future anyway, with Armstrong, so we turned around, and returned to the summit, about 25 minutes after we’d first left it.

By now, the temperature had warmed quite a bit, (the 85-degree high for the day was significantly warmer than what we’d expected it would be, but it was nice and dry). On our return trip over the chin area, we could see great views of the steep cliffs of south face of Rooster Comb far below. We hit the junction with Rooster Comb at 2:00, and decided we’d take this detour, since we’d passed on the other high peak option. Great choice! We got to the summit just 20 minutes later. This was a large expanse of open rock that afforded us excellent views of the mountains and valleys including Giant Mountain, and our recently conquered Lower Wolfjaw, with its distinctive double hump. We took some photos here, then went back down and took another spur trail to the viewpoint of Keene Valley. Although the view wasn’t as good here (you’re basically looking down into the village), we rested a bit, had some food. At 3:00, we started down once again. I couldn’t keep up with the two 19-year-olds, but was okay tagging along in back, and they never let me get too far behind. At 4 p.m. we arrived back at the car. It was 9 hours total for the 11.5 miles that we’d hiked for the day. We returned to the lake house to get our stuff and Alex’s car, and returned home.