Fall adventures: scrambling the Trap Dike on Mt. Colden

This is the first post, from the series of #diggingarchives: the GB's of RAW files from numerous trips. This one is about my solo trip to Adirondacks in the September 2014.

I got quite lucky that last September weekend: warm weather, blue skies, burning Fall colours, and it's actually Monday, so woods are pretty empty. I arrived on Sunday, and took some small hikes up to Mt. Van Hoevenberg for the sweeping area of the High Peaks region.

  Next morning after 6am rise and some buckwheat-tuna breakfast, I hit the trail intending to summit Mt. Colden.

While enjoing the chilly morning light, painting the shadows near Marcy dam, I picked up a company.

Well, strictly speaking, the company picked me up. As it turned out, Karen and R.L., the mountain guides in the region, are writing the book on climbing routes in ADK. So that were shooting their friends, René and Marnie, while doing rock scramble to Mt. Colden. I never heard of the Trap Dike before, so when I was invited to join the adventure, it was impossible to say no to climb this [The picture below was actually taken by Owl at the end of July while descending Algonquin peak. I stumbled upon it just couple of days ago.] 

Our adventure continued to the Middle-Earthy Avalanche pass (dwarves confiscated all the pictures) and towards perfectly still waters of Kheled-Zaram Avalanche lake.

The East-Coast version of Yosemite with grey granite walls was ablaze with the Fall.

More reflections:

There on the left you can see the slopes of Mt. Colden and actually the starting point of our ascent.

The Elf scout on the lookout for orcs. The ranger patrolling the lake (ranger is on the right).

After some bushwhacking  through pine-trees, checking (yet again) Keen's to be lake-waterproof and snacking we start the ascent.

Karen on the trail.

After the scrambling part there is a steep slide, quite scary at first until you get your legs and start trusting shoes (I am not sure I would like to do that in rain though)

View on Mt. Marcy from the slide.

On the slide (more bushwhacking and mudwalking followed after that)                                                

The summit and summiteers:

And some dramatic skies (I love Darktable :))

I drove out the same day, and while exiting to the Highway 73 saw the visual jewel of the day, the sunset over the peaks. (Crappy phone picture :()