Poke-O-Moonshine - The Blue Trail

I finally made it to the summit of Poke-O-Moonshine. The attempt in May got me as far as the cabin ruins. This time we took the new blue trail. Details about this alternate trail are here: http://www.adk.org/Hikes/Poke-O-Moonshine.aspx
The new trial is longer but less steep and rocky. It joins up with the original red trail at the cabin ruins.

The first picture is of Damon near the top of the fire tower located at the summit. The second picture is of the fire-tower itself. And finally is a shot of me (way down at the bottom of the photo) on the summit taken by Damon from his spot up in the fire-tower.

We started on the trail at 8:15am. We made it to the top around 10:00am, and made it back down to the trail-head by 10:55am. So we made the round-trip in under 3 hours.

The day was cloudy and we had a very light sprinkle of rain for about 5 minutes early on, but it was dry the rest of the time and in the upper 60s.

My First ADK Mountain

I finally got around to 'hiking' an Adirondack peak. It only took ten years to get around to doing it. The Conference on Instructional Technologies was on campus this week and as part of the pre-conference activities was a group hike up Poke-O-Moonshine. We were a small group - apparently the 90 degree heat scared some off.

Having grown up in a very flat area of the world, I have been very poorly prepared for the sort of 'hiking' done here in the mountains. The hike up Poke-O-Moonshine is real more of a climb, scrambling over rocks and pulling your self up using small trail-side trees.

I blame the heat for not making it all the way to the top. But I did make it to the ruins of the cabin that the fire tower watchers lived. The photos I took do not do justice to the trail. It is very steep and I was glad that we had a guide, because the trail looked more like a dry stream bed. I would not think it was a trail at all with all the rocks. The ruin is just the fireplace and the foundation of what was a log cabin. The fire tower is still at the top of the mountain.

I figured that the trip down would be less strenuous, but I was surprised at how easy and quick getting back down the trail was. It took us about 3 hours for the trip from top to bottom.