Nippletop and Dial – 7.8.18

On Sunday I spent the day in one of my favorite places, the high peaks of the Adirondacks! It had been since October since I had hiked in the high peaks when I hiked Marcy with my friend Skyler. I wasn’t sure how I was going to feel because I haven’t hiked since hiking Alandar back in February. My friend Brendan invited me to hike Dial and Nippeltop with him–two peaks I hiked back in December 2014–with no views! This time would be different. I’d have views! We started at 9am from the Ausable Club lot (or rather–the parking lot for Giant across Rt 73). I had planned on taking the exact same route, a counter-clockwise loop, hiking up the steep Elk Pass to Nippletop before hitting Dial and Bear Den. I’m always a fan of starting out steep when legs are fresh. I’m also a fan of a shorter road-walk out.

We arrived at the first junction for Nippletop at 10:51 am, we’d already hiked about 4.5 miles at this point. There is a vertical swamp located along Elk Pass-I remember seeing this in the winter. It looked much different this time.

 

The trail does get pretty steep, but it wasn’t anything I hadn’t done before. It was one of the easier “steep” trails, in my opinion.

We arrived at the summit of Nippletop at around 1pm. We took a short snack break (about 20 minutes) before heading back down and over to Dial.

 

Hiking along the ridge to Dial was nice. It was a little rolling, but nothing terrible. We got there around 3pm and were rewarded with some more great views of the Great Range.

We stayed on top of Dial for about 15 minutes to have another snack and assess our water levels. The hike out was going to be interesting. We still had to go up and over a little mountain called Bear Den before reaching the end of the trail at Lake Road.

The trail continues with some ups and downs (more ups than we’d have liked), but we finally reached Lake Road at about 5:45. With a short jaunt back to the car now, we were thankful to see that road. My watch had died at mile 12.7 but I estimated we hiked a total of 13.5 to 14 miles.

Overall I felt really great on this hike, considering I haven’t hiked in ages! Brendan now has single digits left for his 46er status.

Nippletop and Dial Mountains
Time: ~9 hrs, 15 minutes
Distance: ~14 miles
Ascent: ~4,134 ft

Gear used: Altra Lone Peak trail runners w/Trail Toes anti-blister balm, Ultimate Direction Fastpack 20, Black Diamond Distance Z hiking poles, Osprey 2.5 L bladder + 20 oz bottle of Scratch recovery drink mix, Blenders sunglasses, Garmin Vivoactive GPS watch