To get an early start, we stayed in the Blue Ridge Motel in Schroon Lake. It was a good location– close to our turn-off from the Northway– and it turned out that they had serve-yourself breakfast already set up when we got up at 5am.
We reminded ourselves not to leave our lunches behind like we did the last time we stayed in a motel and were feeling like we had gotten off to a good start, but that was not to last for long. We found the designated parking area easily enough, but didn't see where the trail started. Another group had arrived and then headed back down the road we come up, so we headed that way too. After 1/4 mile, we realized it couldn't be down there, so we came back to where we started, plus a few more feet, and there was the trailhead. Duh!
The trail starts off pretty level and almost wide enough for a 4-wheel drive vehicle, though probably too bouldery. After about three miles, it goes through a campsite and the junction for the trail up Macomb is supposed to be nearby. We kept walking and walking until, after 30 minutes, we decided to backtrack. When we got back to the campsite and talked to some people, we learned that the trail we wanted was a skinny little path at the back of one of the tent sites, marked by a little cairn. So now we had wasted an hour and a half by not knowing where we were going.
Almost immediately, the trail up Macomb became steep and long. I had to stop a few times to catch my breath and was pretty well soaked when we reached the top.
We moved on toward South Dix, which we reached in another hour (?), then left our loop trail to head towards Grace Peak (until recently known as East Dix.) We'd gone downhill for a while when the trail leveled off a little and there seemed to be a choice of paths. One path had a tree trunk over it, so we figured that must not be the right way. Dumb! We kept going down, down, down, until we figured it was not right, then had to climb back up, up, up to the junction. Almost as soon as we took the other path, it was clear that it headed up Grace Peak. We were starting to learn the value of taking a little time to figure out where you needed to go.
The rest of the hike went well, but I found it to be really strenuous. Before we were halfway through, I was overheated and exhausted. I started thinking about whether there was any way I could just give up, but there was no such option. It would be nearly impossible for a rescue squad to come for me and we had no way to contact anyone anyway. I didn't have warm clothing or food to spend the night. I had no choice but to just keep putting one foot in front of the other. In hindsight, I was probably not nourishing myself enough and my new synthetic-fabric shorts were making me too hot.
Dix Mountain was a bit of a tease, because there are a couple of bumps between Hough and Dix, but we finally got there and the views were nice. We still had a few hours of daylight left, but unfortunately, had more than a few hours of hiking ahead of us. It took at least an hour to descend from Dix and a couple of hours before we got back to the campsite area. By then it was dark and we had to get out our lights. The trail from that point was mostly level, but very rocky, so as tired as I was, I still had to be careful where I made each step. This last part seemed to go on forever and Ian was probably not appreciating the whiny mess that was dragging along behind him. It was after 8pm when we got back to the car and well after midnight when we got home.
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