Best laid plans right? What's the rest of that saying?
We started this year with two hikes left to finish our Winter Lake George 12ster: Erebus and Buck. Since last year, I knew I wanted to finish with a sunset hike on Buck. We were able to squeeze Erebus in in January during the stretch of really cold weather. From that point, we kept waiting until the perfect weekend to complete Buck. However, that perfect weekend never seemed to happen. We were either plagued by cloudy days, really cold days, had other plans on the nice days or insert whatever other situation that kept us from tackling Buck. So here we were on our last weekend of the winter season, lots of rain and cloudy days predicted, we embraced the fact that this wouldn't be a sunset hike.
As of Saturday morning, we still didn't know at what point in the weekend we would attempt this. We woke up Saturday morning, and the washout that was originally planned for the day, wasn't going to happen until nighttime. So we quickly made snacks, packed our bags and off we went!
We arrived at the trailhead about 10:15 and there was only one other car in the lot with another pair of hikers getting ready to go. It's nice to arrive to a near empty trailhead but also nice to find we wouldn't be totally alone. Last time we were here we did a sunrise hike to Buck which we had to ourselves on an October weekend. By the time we returned to the trailhead that day around 10am there were cars everywhere searching for parking! Not today though.
We signed in and were happy to see with the warm weather most of the snow had disappeared other than some icy spots here and there. This also means that mud season is beginning. On that note, always walk through the mud, not around it to avoid widening of the trails and destroying the landscape off trail.
About .3 of a mile into the trail you'll come to this sign guiding you to Buck our Inman pond. If you were to take the Inman pond trail, that will take you all the way to Sly Pond Road which is another access point for Buck.
A little bit past this point, you'll come to a stream. This time of year, rock hopping and avoiding getting wet is going to be a challenge as we soon found out.
You'll cross this stream a couple more times but this was the widest section.
The trail continues to be very gradual. With the snow melt you'll come across many pretty waterfalls, these reminded me of the Gill Brook trail at the AMR in the Adirondacks.
The trail switches back and forth between rocky and dirt terrain.
You know you're close when you reach the open rock slab. We knew we weren't going to get any views with the weather but don't forget to turn around when you're climbing this slab because this will be your best view!
You'll continue a little bit further to weave your way amongst rock slabs and trees. You'll also see some trail markers guiding your way as the trail twists and turns. Before you know it, you'll reach the top!
There's a lot of open space to sit and relax. We were also lucky to have the other hiking pair arrive not far behind us who were able to take our picture for our completion of our Lake George 12!
We sat up here enjoying a summit beer and sandwiches a little bit before making our way down, cognizant that the weather was supposed to take a turn for the worse.
It was a pretty uneventful trip down other than we realized Luke left his jacket at the top. Again, not wanting to turn around based on the weather predictions, we were able to notify other hikers going up and one kind soul found the jacket and mailed it to us! The kindness of other hikers on the trail never ceases to amaze me.
And that concludes our Lake George 12! Buck is one of my favorite mountains so even though we've completed these, I know we'll return for that sunset hike one day.
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