Nice bridge crossing Santanoni Brook

By 8:00 am, we hit the rock cairn marking the Santanoni Express Trail to the left, which ascends up Santanoni Peak. We turned onto it, and it had a steady incline, and the usual mud and rocks, but pleasantly, wasn’t all that difficult (or it’s just what I expect by now). There were some boggy areas that we bypassed, and a couple of rock scrambles, but nothing too tough. As usual, Alex and Camryn stayed up in the front  (talking about constructing a language - which they did for most of the hike!), while David H. and I stayed a bit further back, and David R. kept with us, but also periodically stopped to “smell the roses”, then catch up. As we neared the summit, the views began to open, much more than I’d expected them to. We turned left at the junction in the trail, and in just five minutes (after passing the best viewpoint, to make a beeline for the summit), we reached the top at 10:25 a.m., exactly 4 hours after we’d started.

Now that’s a rock!

The summit was clearly marked by a signpost on a tree, and was in a wooded area, so we took some quick pictures, and went back a couple hundred feet to the viewpoint, which was quite good, looking out to the east over several High Peaks. The clouds were above most summits (except Marcy and Algonquin), and the temperatures were probably in the upper 50s, with a bit of humidity in the air. All in all, this was a surprisingly nice hike, and was way better than expected. At one point, however, I was taken off guard, and felt light-headed. I warned my cousin David, and made sure to watch myself & eat and drink enough from that point on. We left the summit area at 10:50 a.m. to make our way downhill towards “Times Square” to the north.

A short way into the descent, we had some great views ahead of us of Panther Peak, and the long ridge downward towards Couchsachraga. “Couch” looked funny, because it was so small compared to the other two peaks in the range. It was also a looong way away. The Davids and I had been commenting on how quiet it was for the majority of the hike—fairly devoid of wildlife. Although we did finally hear one bird, and used the Merlin app to identify it as a golden crowned kinglet (confirmed with a sighting). Around noon, we hit the trail junction called “Times Square”, and took the left, which was lucky for us - because we didn’t even realize it! We thought we were just passing a small trail branch that went to a campsite. Instead of a campsite, that small clearing was, in fact, Times Square. We were amazed we’d missed it, but confirmed with our AllTrails app. Then, it was down, down, down, towards the dreaded bog in the col. While descending, we commented on how relatively gentle and easy this descent was. True - but only for the first half. The second half of the descent was much steeper and rockier. With the usual roots and mud. It was clear that this would be more of a challenge regaining this 800’ on the way back. We saw a few more people on this trail, but throughout the entire day, probably saw no more than 5 or 6 other groups.

We arrived at the bog at 1:00 p.m. Everything we read, and everyone we passed, said to go around it to the left. Luckily, that was obvious from the route of the herd path. True to form, the bog was a large area of standing water and deep mud. Several branches were lying across parts of it to provide a tightrope-like walk across. Poles in the mud easily sank about 2 feet, so it clearly wasn’t a place to lose balance. The five of us managed to get across alright (some more muddied than others), but all in all it wasn’t too bad. It had been somewhat dry the past week, so that probably saved us a bit. This area is likely how the mountain derived its name: Couchsachraga is Algonquin for “Dismal Wilderness”. The climb up “Couch” wasn’t too difficult (a few rock scrambles, but nothing bad), and offered a few points with some views. It took us 40 minutes to get there from the bog. This summit was like Santanoni’s—a wooden sign on a tree in the woods. I’d been hoping to have lunch on the viewpoint I’d read about that’s just below Panther’s summit, but that was too far off, so we took in the moderate views here, and took a break to have lunch. The clouds were lowering, and we could see that the summits of Santanoni & Panther were now covered. That was disappointing, since I'd heard the viewpoint on Panther is quite good.

We left the summit at 2:15p.m. I was again starting to feel a bit light-headed, and my intestines didn’t feel right, so I took a few precautions, and was sure not to push myself. Crossing the bog again was almost smooth. With only about 20’ to go, I managed to completely submerge my boot, and my newly ripped gaiter was useless. My right boot got filled with mud. Ugh! In truth, most of us had very muddy feet at this point. The ascent back up to Times Square was difficult at first, as expected. I was particularly slow and was, without a doubt, the weak link today. At one point, I started playing a mind game… Knowing that we had about 400 vertical feet to go, I started counting my steps whenever I was gaining elevation. I figured on average I probably gained about 6” with each step, and we’d be at the junction when I got to 800. Wow, did that work! I got to 800 about 1 minute before we got to Times Square at 4:00 p.m.

We turned north towards the next junction (“Herald Square”), and got to it in less than 5 minutes. Herald Square has a small cairn and a P with an arrow scratched into the rocks, pointing the way to Panther. There were a few false trails to Panther, but they were easy to identify, and we passed over an open expanse of rock, and up the summit (with its sign, and USGS marker), at 4:15 p.m., just 10 minutes after Herald Square. After more quick pictures, we backtracked to the open rock area. As we’d seen from Couch, this viewpoint was completely fog-shrouded and, looking out, we saw only white air. This was the only point along the hike where I felt cold. We rested a short time, and made sure to stay inside the rock lined barrier that marked off the protected alpine vegetation. At 4:30, we started our long hike down.

The humidity created a fog in the air, and occasional fine mist, for most of the rest of our hike. The Panther Brook herd path to Bradley Pond in the east was long, and involved a lot of rock hopping as we made our way down a boulder-filled stream bed for a good portion of it. We passed a huge expanse of vertical rock face to our left, which we felt was ideal for rock climbers. It was several hundred feet long, and dozens of feet tall. 2 hours and 15 minutes after we began our descent, we came to the junction with the Bradley Pond Trail. I was feeling weak again (something that seemed to happen each time we’d stop for a break). Later, it turned out that I had some sort of stomach bug, so at least I had an excuse for feeling like such a laggard! David gave me a salt tablet, which helped, and we all had some snacks and drinks.

About 20 minutes later, we were back at the cairn marking the junction with the Express Trail, completing our big rectangle, and were back on the trail that we came in on. This ended up taking a lot longer than I’d remembered. It started getting darker, but we all insisted on going as far as we could without headlamps. By 8:20 p.m. we gave in, and fished them out of our packs. The trail here was pretty good, and we knew we’d hit the gravel road soon, so this wasn’t any problem. We ended up having headlamps on for almost 3 miles, so we were glad to have them. The road seemed longer than before too, but we finally got back to the trailhead register at 9:05 p.m. The hike took just under 15 hours, which was just about what we’d expected it would be. We managed to get back to the house by 10:15 p.m., coasting in on fumes, since we didn’t pass any gas stations on the way back. Everyone welcomed us back, and Jean had prepared a great meal for the 5 hungry hikers.

Everyone has unique experiences, of course, but with the conditions we encountered, we didn’t find the Santanoni Range to be anywhere near as bad as we were expecting, and thought it had an undeservedly bad reputation. We may have been lucky, but that was our impression. Our newest member, Dave R did well, and he certainly appreciated the environment. Cousin David even said to him that this was about as typical of an Adirondack hike as you could find. It had a bit of everything - waterfalls, big boulders, moss, roots, steep sections, rock scrambles, mud, multiple peaks, views, clouds, rain, etc. It was all there. Yes, it was quite long, but we expected that. Three more down!