Jay Mountain

“The Adirondacks never looked so good from this view”

August 16th, 2018

It was a wonderful start to a gorgeous Thursday morning in Lake Placid. We made our journey over to the Jay Mountain Trailhead, grabbed our gear, and proceeded to do another vigorous mountain day hike.

As we prepped to do the hike, I hurried and ran over to the trailhead and up the trail to check the terrain. At that point, it was deemed a necessity to apply a decent layer of deet defense as it was humid and bugs were a distinct probability.

We set off to a great start. This 3,600 foot summit was in our minds from the start. Notably, this mountain day hike was no Franconia Notch. The difficulty level was lower, but still presented it challenges.

As we blazed up the trail, Brian had zoomed right by this little guy. His color stood out to me as I was able to avoid stepping on him. I then took this photo as the handsome fella posed for me.

At last, we exited the forest, and came to an opening. The sheer beauty was absolutely stunning.

After soaking in that view, we turn around and see our goal has become much closer. At approximately 3,000 feet, we bravely took turns standing on the cliff’s edge.

We made our way through the mountain brush, scrambled over large stones and boulders, and carefully climbed higher and higher. We actually did pass a handful of others on their way down. One pair were a set of young 20’s females. It was clear to me that they were not experienced. Wearing low cut tennis shoes, they were being very risky when climbing over boulders, not thinking before attempting the moves. I stepped in and offered a suggestion to make sure they came over this 8 foot boulder safely. I did overhear one of them complaining of her soar ankle that she rolled minutes earlier.

A few hundred feet higher, we came to this earthen made shelter where a fire was made days prior.

Just around the corner, we came to an opening.

Only a few hundred feet to the summit, I put my phone away as the terrain got very technical and required 100% focus and stability with both hands.

At last, we made it to the top. The grand cairn was absolutely a feature of magnificent proportions being surrounded by several other Adirondack peaks.

I would love to leave with this image. However, I cannot leave out what we ran into next. As we were headed back down, we ran into two more hikers coming up. It was a 78 year old grandfather, and his 11 year old grandson. At 78, he was in better shape and spirits than both us. One amazing conversation we shared.

Jay Mountain in all was a superb mountain to climb. I would definitely recommend it to physically fit amateurs as their first mountain to hike. It will provide you with an idea of what to expect within a challenging day hike quest.