HikerNate
08-04-2007, 07:21 PM
Myself, bignslow and his wife were planning on hiking Mt. Colden today, but I managed to leave my boots sitting on my kitchen floor. Since the day was so nice and we had spent the night camping in South Meadows we decided to do a tour of the "we should hike these on the way home some time" summits. I ended up hiking in some spare shoes bignslow had in the car, which were more like hiking in canoes. We started with breakfast on Mt. Jo and enjoyed a fine view of Colden, Wright, Algonquin and everything else. At that hour of the day we even had the summit to ourselves which made the view even better. From there we stopped in Tupper Lake for a second breakfast at the Lumberjack Inn then proceeded to Mt. Arab to grab a fire tower. From the cab of the fire tower we could see Whiteface, the Sewards, and Algonquin. It was also a pleasant hike, the trail is in good shape and makes for an interesting side trip. To finish off the day we hiked the fire tower at the Ranger School in Wanakena. A new trail, the Latham trail, has been blazed to this fire tower that isn't mentioned in the Freeman book. It starts just beyond the gate at the ranger school and meanders through white pine forests arriving at the fire tower and avoiding almost all of the road walking mentioned in the book.