We were climbing pretty much right from the beginning, but after an hour or so, the trail leveled out. It has a long middle section that's pretty flat, but in the Adirondacks a flat trail means a swampy trail. There were lots of mucky parts with "corduroy"– skinny logs laid lengthwise along a muddy section, to walk on. It was not really possible to get through that cleanly. One side of Whiteface is a skiing destination and at one point, we passed the top of a ski lift.
On approaching Whiteface's peak, the going got steep again. At one point, the trail comes to a huge, man-made stone wall, which you soon realize is the retaining wall of the highway. After skirting that, we came to the peak, which had more than a dozen people on it— none of whom, I'm pretty sure, had hiked there.
The clouds were so thick– and below us– that we couldn't see any scenery at first. But there was a good wind moving them along, so before we left, everything became visible.
On the way down,we branched off the main trail to climb Esther. This was only about a half-hour trip each way. Unfortunately, just before we got to the peak, we were swarmed with gnats. There were also no good views from there, so we took our peak photo and hurried back down the trail.
