Cascade Mtn & Porter Mtn

Date:08/01/2011

Hikers:Frank, Matt, Danny, Me

Peaks:Cascade Mountain (4098') (#36), Porter Mountain (4059') (#38)

Trailhead:Route 73, Cascade Trailhead

Trip Time:4 Hours (20 minutes on each summit)

Our friend, Danny, was coming into town from San Diego and wanted to join us on a hike in the Adirondacks. He's been accomplishing a lot of hiking out west, along with rock climbing, and had never done anything in the Adirondacks before. So we planned a hike to ascend Cascade and Porter. Ok, so it's the easiest hike of the 46 peaks, but we wanted something that would only take a few hours so we could grab a drink and relax afterwards. We departed from Albany at 5:30AM with a goal of getting these two peaks done before lunch time. We arrived at the Trailhead on Route 73 just after 7:30 and popped the hood to Frank's car. Frank had noticed his RPM's started to jump during the drive up and with a minor inspection under the hood and under the car, we found that he was leaking Transmission fluid. There wasn't anything we could do at that point in time so we decided to go on the hike and fix the issue when we got back. We strapped on our packs and Matt signed us into the registry.

Danny, Frank, Matt, and Me

The ascent up the Cascade trailhead wasn't difficult and because it is a very popular andwell-travelled trail the conditions are very well maintained. After 2.1 miles we connected with the junction to Porter Mountain which we decided to hike first. Porter, only .7 miles from here, is a very small ascent around 270 feet.

View of Great Range from Porter Mt.

We reached the summit of Porter at 9:45AM, with Danny logging his first of his 46ers; Matt, Frank and I have now hit 12. We relaxed out on the summit and had a small snack and soaked in the nice weather. We were the only ones there, which made it peaceful. After a nice 20 minute break we decided to push on to Cascade. We all had thoughts of lunch with a beer after this hike and Frank was probably thinking about his car for the past 2 hours.

Frank, Me, Danny, Matt on Porter Mt. Summit

We hiked back to the junction and finished off our ascent of Cascade. Cascade had about 20 people or so on the summit and we officially arrived at the summit around 10:30AM. Clear skies helped show some amazing views Cascade had to offer. We spent about 20 minutes deciding to head back down to check out the car and get some lunch. We reached the registry around 12:00 and Matt signed us out.

Matt, Me, Danny, Frank on Cascade Mt. Summit

After a look over (or should I say under) no additional transmission fluid had leaked while we were hiking so we decided to drive over to Lake Placid for lunch and to pick up some transmission fluid as backup just in case. We had lunch at the Lake Placid Pub & Brewery. Lunch was delicious! I highly recommend the UBU Ale, along with the 46ers Pale Ale. It was a great way to cap of a short day of hiking!