The Dix Range

September 18, 2010:

Macomb | 4405 ft. | 21/46 in height | 19th peak
South Dix/Carson| 4060 ft. | 37/46 in height | 20th peak
East Dix/Grace | 4012 ft. | 42/46 in height | 21st peak
Hough | 4400 ft. | 23/46 in height | 22nd peak
Dix Mountain | 4857 ft. | 6/46 in height | 23rd peak – halfway to 46!

After last week’s parking lot disappointment, we gave the Dix Range a second try this week, with a few adjustments.   The overall plan was similar, though:  a counterclockwise loop from Elk Lake Trail head, doing Macomb, South Dix, East Dix, back over South Dix, Hough, and then Dix; camping at Slide Brook.

To ensure that we’d get a parking space, we drove up Friday night instead of Saturday morning, arriving at

Golden!, right?  Alas, the parking lot (with its welcoming signs demonstrating tolerance of creative parking)

looked like this:

Get out.  Really?!   At 6:30 on Friday!?

We did manage to snag a space, and saw one other party snag one too, after a group of hikers who were finishing up a week-long traverse came and picked up their car, freeing up a space.  But we also saw one or two parties turn around disappointed — 6:30 on a Friday, and the lot was already packed for the weekend.  Whew.

Memo to Hikers:  NO, you DO NOT need 3+ feet of space between yours and the car next to yours.  We saw it last week, and we saw it again this week.  A Mini Cooper with 4-5′ of space on both sides?  That’s uncalled for.)

We packed in the 2.3 miles to Slide Brook Lean-to, which as you might guess from the state of the trailhead, was occupied.  We pitched our tent along Slide Brook (which was actually not as hard to do in the dark as we were afraid of), ate the sandwiches we’d carried in, and headed to bed.  It was chilly, probably low 40′s overnight.

We woke up shortly before the ~6:30am sunrise, chomped through our instant oatmeal and instant coffee (note to self:  try Starbucks Via next time?), filtered extra water, pulled snacks for the day out of the bear canister (which we now own instead of rent – we are Serious Campers now), and headed off.  We started up the herd path at the cairn marking at 8am.

The morning was misty and cool, with some low hanging clouds and a bright sky behind them.

As we made our way up to the slide on Macomb, the clouds started to burn off, and we could see Elk Lake behind us.

The slide itself, on Macomb’s western face, was a pretty cool feature to climb up.  It’s supposedly about 1/3 mile long as the crow flies, with lots of elevation gained.  Lots of loose rock and soil, but great views.

Above, Chris provides some size perspective on the sheer size of the slide.

Since the route to Macomb’s summit (as with South Dix, East Dix, and Hough) is unmarked and unmaintained, these cairns are all there was to navigate by.  Up the slide, they were just pleasant reassurances that we were going the right way.  At other points during the day they were less helpful – they might point out an intersection, but surely don’t tell you which way to go.

Once we reached the top of the slide, it wasn’t much longer to the top of Macomb, apparently alternatively “McComb,” our 19th peak.  We reached the summit in under 2 hours from Slide Brook, summiting a few minutes before 10am.  After a quick rest and snack on the summit, we headed off over the top and down the north side over to South Dix.

South Dix is being renamed Carson Peak, after Russell M.L. Carson, who wrote Peaks and People of the Adirondacks.  I guess former NY Secretary of State John A. Dix doesn’t really need 3 mountains (Dix, South Dix, and East Dix), the wilderness area, and the whole range named after him.  Fair enough.

South Dix offered some beautiful southwestern views, and some fun boulders just shy of the summit, but the summit itself was unremarkable and easy to miss:  an “x” shaped axe cut in a pine tree at about eye level and a yellow disc high up on the same tree.  Coming from Macomb, it’s immediately next to the herd path, on the right side.  We passed it at 11:05, just over an hour from Macomb’s summit.

The summit on South Dix, our 20th, was kind of a walk-by, and we headed straight on for East Dix.  Like South Dix, East Dix is also being renamed – Grace Peak – after Grace Hudowalski, who passed away in 2004 with the distinction of being the first woman to climb all 46 high peaks.  (Apparently Hudowalski is too hard to say?)

The col between South & East Dixes is considerably longer and deeper than that between Macomb and South Dix.  We got to the top just after noon, and were treated to some nice views to the south and east, and blue skies:

The much-taller Dix was visible over our right shoulders as we hit 21 peaks.

From East Dix/Grace, we retraced our steps back to South Dix, to the unmarked junction of herd paths near the summit.  Of the 3 directions to choose from, the eastern direction heads to East Dix, the southern direction heads to Macomb, and the western direction heads to Hough via Pough (which, at 4,068 ft., would be a high peak but for its proximity to Hough).  Either a compass and map, a clear day to navigate by landscape, or both are necessary to navigate this intersection and the subsequent variety of herd paths that seem to go nowhere up and down Hough.  We had both, and were lucky not to make any navigation mistakes.

Hough was exhausting.  It was fairly steep, with lots of up & down thanks to Pough on the way.  The herd path was easy enough to follow with daylight and no clouds, but I can see how it’s hard with any complicating factors.  We reached the summit at about 2:25, more than 2 hours after leaving Grace.  We stopped for a snack and took our boots off in favor of dry socks while enjoying the western views, now about 8 miles and 4 peaks into our day.

With 4 down, but the biggest to go, we got ready to leave Hough for Dix via the Beckhorn:

That is an imposing looking ridgeline, coming up the right/east side from Hough to Dix.

We left Hough about 2:45, and headed on.  We’d caught second winds, or maybe just a sugar rush from some chocolate on the summit, and up we went.  The Beckhorn offered some huge boulders that were legitimately difficult to get up and over – admittedly more so for the 5’2 member of our party than the 6’2 member.  It was kind of fun, despite how tired I was.  From the top of the Beckhorn (which looks like it might be the top of Dix when you’re coming up, but surprise! no it’s not!), it was a quick run over to the top of Dix.  When we got to the top of the Beckhorn, we saw a trail marker for the first time all day – what a luxury!  Paint blazes and yellow discs marked the way to Dix’s summit, our 5th peak of the day, the halfway point in our 46r quest, and the 6th tallest of the high peaks.

Colvin Range (foreground) and Great Range (background) from Dix

Dix Mountain summit benchmark

Elk Lake & Dix Mountain Wilderness from Dix Mountain

How far we’ve come:  in the foreground of the picture below, the Beckhorn.  The three bumps along the ridge about a third of the way from the right edge – those are, L to R, East Dix, South Dix, and Macomb, where we summited earlier.

Although the views were great, we knew that with a 4:30 summit on Dix, we couldn’t linger for too long.  We opted to take the yellow trail back to the Beckhorn, and then southwest from there toward Elk Lake, rather than the blue trail for Hunters Pass looping down from the northwest side of Dix.  The yellow trail is much steeper, but 2 miles shorter.  We were taking a little bit of a gamble on being out of the steep stuff in daylight, but not too much.  We knew it loses elevation really quickly over the 2.3 or so miles, gets progressively less and less steep as you descend, and that sunset wasn’t until 7pm, giving us between 2-3 hours of daylight left.

The yellow trail wasn’t too bad.  Some big boulders up top, but after that it’s just a relentless straight downward shot.  No real views, just down.  We were glad we were descending such a grueling trail rather than ascending (as you’d do for a clockwise loop) — our ascent had been marked by periodic views of the valley, Elk Lake, the Great Range to the west, and other pretty features, whereas this was just trees and effort.

We hit the junction with the red trail to Elk Lake Rd. about 2 minutes before the 7pm sunset, and 30-45 minutes later we reached for our head lamps.  This section of red trail contained a lot more up & down than the way into camp from the other direction had, and we were exhausted.  We moved carefully but steadily along, past Lillian Brook and on to the Slide Brook lean-to.  Our tent was hard to find in the dark, but we just went to the brook edge and followed it down until we found it.  We made it back about 8:20, over 12 hours of hiking after we’d left.  Dinner was as fast as possible; we were glad to hit the sleeping bags.

In the morning, we woke up around 7 to gray skies.  We ate granola bars and skipped the instant coffee (I was not crushed) for speed, and packed up our mountain house.  A little bit of rain sprinkled on us as we hiked the 2.3 miles out to the car.

One of the rocks in the path partway out to the lot had a benchmark in it that I’d missed on Friday night – who knew?  Never saw one of those not on a summit before.

When we got to the parking lot, chaos appeared to reign.  When we signed out at the trail register, there were nastygrams in the margins with notes like “LEARN TO PARK!”  One hiker resorted to parking another car in, leaving the keys in his car, and a note in a ziploc bag under the parked-in car’s windshield wiper describing the location of the keys so that the parked-in could move the car to get out.  Another hiker opted to leave his Ford Expedition smack in the middle of the lot, figuring everyone else had enough wiggle room to back and maneuver out around him (thank you very little, sir).

The trailhead closes in 2 weeks for hunting season, and it seems everyone wants to get in before it does.  It’s hard to blame them – the Dix Range was a really fun hike; beautiful views, new navigation challenges, and the ability to cover a lot of summits in a short period of time.  It would be nice if the lot were a little bigger – but that might spoil how peaceful and quiet it was there, another plus to the Dixes.

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