WE PASS THE OLD McIntyre Furnace on our drive in, and what’s left of the standing buildings of the long since extinct town of Adirondac. The teen-age Boy Scouts in our cars barely notice as excitement mounts for our approaching 18.5 mile backpack trek to summit Mt. Marcy. The mountain has been a rite of passage and personal goal for so many people ever since Professor Emmon’s 1837 surveying crew published its findings declaring the High Peak of Essex now named for Governor Learned Marcy as the state’s tallest. It was a subsequent governor, that of Theodore Roosevelt who set his sights on climbing Mt. Marcy whose footsteps we will follow this Columbus Day Weekend.
As proven by the decaying building we see, including one where Roosevelt lodged ahead of his September 1901 climb, time does not stand still. Roosevelt’s plan to climb Marcy as Governor of New York was botched when he was appointed to President William McKinley’s presidential re-election ticket following the 1899 death of Vice President Garret Hobart. Two years passed before time presented Vice President Roosevelt with another opportunity to return to the south-central Adirondacks. He traveled the Durant Railroad as far as North Creek, and then 13 miles by stage coach to Adirondac at Upper Works in September 1901 to make the climb only after President McKinley’s gunshot wound appeared to be on the mend. Presidential aides thought it would appear reassuring to the country for the Vice President to follow through with his climb to move the nation past the panic set in by the Buffalo assassination attempt.
Roosevelt, who as a teen-ager visited the Adirondacks on multiple camping and birding trips in 1875-1877, first attempted to summit Mt. Marcy in 1874 but was turned back.
As with our 2013 climb, the sky was overcast when Roosevelt, his wife Edith, children Kermit and Ethel, and two Harvard Law Students guided by Club President James MacNaughton left their comfortable Tahawus Hunting Club lodging on September 10th to enter the Forest Preserve backcountry. I make sure everyone in our crew has his raingear packed within easy reach as we depart the popular Upper Works parking lot and begin our trek. Our forecast is for a mid-day shower. The five-hour drive it took us to reach here has placed today’s clock right about midday.
Today the initial trail is level, but gradually ascends and multiplies in tough, rock-strewn sections. Our crew of five scouts and three adults is experienced in mountain climbing. For the past 24 years I have been leading high adventure trips for the troop’s older scouts, but never before have we attempted a climb of Mount Marcy. Unlike other mountains we have scaled, Marcy is remote. She rises in the center of what is today designated the High Peaks Wilderness Area. The mountain can be accessed by numerous trailheads, but no matter where one’s approach begins the distance and elevation gain is taxing.
For all but the extreme endurance hiker, such remoteness makes Mount Marcy too far for an in-and-out day-hike. Adding days to an itinerary means adding pounds to what we carry, including tents, sleeping bags, stoves, and food. While the custom-designed and engineered backpacks that we wear add comfort and ease far superior to the wicker pack baskets carried by Roosevelt’s team a century before, the ruggedness of the multi-day expedition remains just as arduous.
Our trip begins with high spirits, our crew walking shoulder-to-shoulder in groups of two or three on the first half-mile dirt-road walk. Shielded from us by trees, the Opalescent River is audible to our ears whenever our festive conversation lags, or whenever any of us pauses to catch our breath.
We cross a wooden bridge by the nearby outlet to Henderson Lake feeding the creek. The great lake, Henderson, is as wonderful to behold as the man in whom it was named, whose 1826 trek though adjacent Indian Pass trail claimed this land for the McIntyre Iron Works, an enterprise he led right up until his tragic death in 1845. Today’s hike will take us past Calamity Pond, so named for David Henderson’s accidental death. In fact, the hiking trail that we follow – as also Roosevelt in 1901 – was carved out in the forest for the purpose of carrying out his corpse on a balsam bough bier.
Rather than proceed to Henderson Lake and onward to Indian Pass, we turn right. A 3.5-mile hike leads us to Calamity Pond, another 0.8 miles to Flowed Lands, and a half mile more to a lean-to where we plan to spend the night. Come morning we will leave our camping gear in the lean-to and slackpack the uphill climb to Marcy.
Today’s trail crosses over Tahawus Club property that only recently (2003) came under state ownership. Previously hikers crossed the land under an easement. As privately owned land it was legal for the club to lease the land to paper companies to log the forest, a practice forbidden on state land. The open and near desolation of the initial logged portion of the hike is an eyesore. The former boundary marking the start of state land is noticeable. Here, the forest resembles forest. It remains so for the remainder of our trip.
All the lands we trek upon this weekend were once part of the 1827 McIntyre Tract that Archibald McIntyre and Duncan McMartin purchased so as to capitalize on the land’s rich iron ore deposits. The region’s natural beauty, once discovered, attracted successive waves of visitors continuing even after mining operations ceased in 1857. So long as David Henderson lived the mining operation was profitable. Upon his death, no one prospered as he did. “Had Mr. Henderson lived in all probability the Adirondacks would have flourished with iron and steel works second to none on this continent. His whole energy was in that direction,” predicted Ironworks employee Henry Dornberg who memorialized Henderson’s death.
In 1920 New York State appropriated most of the McIntyre Tract for inclusion into the Forest Preserve, guaranteeing accessibility to the area’s scenic wonders to future generations. As Governor of New York 21 years before, Roosevelt supported the State’s purchase 69,380 acres of other lands added to the Forest Preserve, as well as used his 1899 and 1900 inauguration speeches to highlight protection from forest fires, introduction of game laws, and a prohibition against the indiscriminate killing of birds. He fought against Utica Electrical Light Company building within the Adirondack Park, resisted railroad efforts encroaching upon wilderness, as well as sought regulations on iron ore mining.
* * * * *
WE CLIMB GRADUALLY on a rocky and rough trail that ascends through a valley, repeatedly crossing Calamity Brook. The stream is scenic. We take short breaks to take in the beauty, as well as retying our boots. I explain how the stiff boot leather softens with use as the day proceeds making it important to re-tie them shortly into a hike to maintain the good ankle support needed for hauling heavy backpacks up mountain trails. Early morning breaks also allow for the shedding of layers as our body temperatures rise so as to control moisture management.
It was on a reconnaissance trip to determine if redirecting the Opalescent River into the Calamity Brook might increase the water supply needed for the iron works that Henderson’s mishap took place in 1845. A mine manager joined David and his 11-year-old son Archie, alongside seasoned hunters John Cheney and Anthony Snyder on the journey. After bushwhacking to the pond now immortally known as Calamity Pond, the men made camp in a pine grove. Some ducks were afloat on the pond, whereupon with dinner on his mind Henderson handed off his pistol to Cheney. The latter advanced upon the ducks, his movement alerting the ducks to their presence. The ducks escaped by flight, wherein Cheney returned to Henderson his pistol, who holstered it on his hip.
The camp heard the sound of gunfire, looking over towards the pond to see Henderson at water’s edge in a fallen position. Henry Dornberg, the mine manager, provides an authoritative narrative:
“Mr. Cheany [sic] knew Mr. Henderson was shot by the movement he made, and he ran to him as fast as possible. Upon arriving at Mr. Henderson’s side the fallen man turned his eyes to him and said: ‘John, you must have left the pistol cocked.’
“Mr. Cheany could make no reply, not knowing but that might have been the case. Mr. Henderson looked around and said, ‘this is a horrible place for a man to die;’ and then calling his son to him he gently said, ‘Archie, be a good boy and give my love to your mother.’ This was all he said, although his lips kept moving for a few minutes as if in prayer, and at the end of fifteen minutes from the time f being shot he expired.”
Using John Cheney as his source, the historian Joel T. Heady wrote that Snyder returned to the Adirondac encampment to commence the trail construction so that the body might be carried out, after which 25 workmen kept vigil with Henderson’s body that night:
“It was too late to get through, and here they kindled their campfire and stayed … ‘Here,’ says Cheney, ‘on this log I sat all night and held in my arms Mr. Henderson’s little son, eleven years of age. Oh! How he cried to be taken to his mother, but it was impossible to find our way through the woods; and he at length cried himself to sleep in my arms. Oh! It was a dreadful night.'”
Although I was in the back of the group at the time our group reached Calamity Pond, I did not need to advise our lead to stop. Instinctively all hikers stop when they reach Calamity Pond, in tribute as much as in curiosity by the memorial that now marks Henderson’s death site.
In white marble, grayed in spots by weatherization, a tall square pillar rests on a three-foot double-decker foundation. Beneath a wreath, and above an anchor, both cut around so that they stand out in full relief is inscribed:
“Erected by filial affection to the memory of our dear father, David Henderson, who accidentally lost his life on this spot by the premature discharge of a pistol, third of September 1845.”
The precise details of the death are explained in Dornberg’s account:
“The theory of the cause of the accident is as follows: Mr. Henderson, it is supposed, took off his knapsack and laid it on a rock and then unbuckled his belt at the same time taking hold of the muzzle of the pistol, and in laying it down on the rock he must have struck the rock with the hammer which caused the discharge of the weapon and as the muzzle was pointing towards him the ball entered his abdomen just below the navel, causing the fatal wound.”
The monument now sits on the exact rock which occasioned the discharge. I recount a little of the unexplained detail of David Henderson’s life and death as my memory recalls to the scouts and scouters in my party, and then we assemble for a group photo around the monument. Not only is it unique to find such a memorial this deep in the wilderness, but it is also testament to the fact that in his lifetime Henderson was an important figure. His memory lives on now also in our photographs.
The trail continues for us through forested flatlands for a half mile, during which at last the clouds burst with rain. I cover my camera slung around my neck with a shower cap I take from my pocket, but otherwise pretend that the drizzle will not endure. When we reach a hiking kiosk just shy of Flowed Lands, we all acquiesce to the inclement weather attiring ourselves in raingear. Our path leads west and then north around the waterbody, but I entice everyone to first take a short walk to the grassy knoll at the pond’s edge. Somewhere in ecological limbo between a marsh and a lake, Flowed Lands is eclipsed as an object of interest by the wooded dome of Cliff Mountain rising about it. To our band of rising peakbaggers I mention that Cliff is on the list of the Adirondack 46 High Peaks that must be climbed to earn the patch as it was originally believed to be above 4,000 feet, but that later surveying finding now places at only 3,944 feet.
A side trail leads alongside East River from Flowed Lands’ outlet to 75-foot tall Hanging Spears Falls, but as spectacular at it is rumored to be I find no takers for the detour in our group. Everyone is slightly sore from the hike in, and anxious to reach our lean-to destination. Andrew talks of slinging a hammock. Aloysha is enthusiastic about the dinner menu he planned until, mid-speech, he stops. The most contrite puppy-dog face replaces his smile as he realizes and then confesses, “I think I might have left the meat and cheeses at home in the fridge.” We all take turns punching him in the shoulder before assuring him we’ll make it through with whatever provisions we have.
Returning to our trail we meander around Flowed Lands headed to lean-tos adjacent to Lake Colden Dam. Unbeknownst to us, a bike of hornets have built a nest directly in the exposed dirt of the trail. Our group passes through with only two stings. The throbbing has all but ceased when we come to the first of the two lean-tos, both vacant. We opt for the second, as it means less mileage tomorrow.
Out comes Andrew’s hammock; mine too. Aloysha is still fretting over the food situation, but as our hike requires more carbon rich pastas for fat-burning tomorrow than protein-enriched strength to sustain us, we recognize there is little harm done. Plus, the pasta and ingredient add-ons arrived with us such that no one will go hungry. Still, Aloysha speaks of this trip years later as memorable not just due to the great wilderness climbs, but of the lessons learned regarding the food.
* * * * *
THEODORE, EDITH, KERMIT, and Ethel Roosevelt also camped in the vicinity of Lake Colden the night before their intended 1901 Mt. Marcy Climb. The traditional Adirondack lean-to, as a permanent structure, did not exist then the way the three-sided, roofed dwelling has become emblematic of the wilderness experience today. For the Roosevelts, camping meant staying in one of the two cabins constructed on the shore of Lake Colden., the lake named for one of the main investors in the Tahawus Iron Works. Cabins still exist today in a variance capacity for housing forest rangers in emergency situations, but otherwise cabin structures are impermissible in the Forest Preserve, but not lean-tos (!), based upon modern interpretations of the State’s constitutional “forever wild” amendment. Recently the push has been to relocate lean-tos away from shorelines and out of sight, thereby precluding tree-loping that in years past provided some lean-tos with incredible mountain views.
The cutting down of trees in the Forest Preserve is expressly forbidden by the text of Article 14 of the State Constitution. The barren wastelands left behind by loggers in the Nineteenth Century that denuded forests causing run-off to contaminate drinking supplies was a major problem that led to the creation of the forest preserve. Even in Roosevelt’s time, a few decades after the “Forever Wild” provision’s passage, he was vocal about the cutting of trees on the adjacent, privately-owned, Tahawus Property that we hiked in on. Roosevelt was an advocate for the sugar-maple, American beech, and yellow birch that grew near Adirondac, although it was his successor as Governor in the Twenty-First Century, George Pataki, who signed the land transfer that added such lands into the Forest Preserve giving such species – and all trees – constitutional protection.
Although recreational exploits into the Forest Preserve were nowhere near as popular as they are today where the Adirondack Park is a major tourist destination, even in Roosevelt’s lifetime over-use and oversight were risks that begged for management. “What the [Conservation] Commission considers the ‘recreational features’,” Arthur Masten criticized in 1923, “has resulted in bringing into the county many people, neither sportsmen nor forest lovers, who regard the woods much as they would Coney Island and treat them accordingly. They are the sort who leave campsites smoldering and whose route through the woods is marked by a trail of tin cans and tattered newspapers.” Today, there is a ban on campfires in the High Peaks Region. The State has long endorsed a marketing campaign teaching, “Carry it in, carry it out.”
Our lean-to is located a quarter mile off the trail, and quite a ways from Lake Colden. Still, I mosey down there – after some hammock rest – to purify water as well as take in its magnitude of views. Similarly, when James and Meletus stayed back in camp, I intentionally dispatched both down to the lake to gather cooking water to make sure they had time to witness and absorb the grandeur. Simply put, the 41-acre Lake Colden is one of the Adirondack Mountain’s scenic splendors.
In morning we return to the Colden Dam, descend its six-foot wooden ladder, cross over the concrete dam, and begin our day-hike to Marcy. We cross the Feldspar Brook and then roughly parallel the brook its entire length as we climb steadily to its source at Lake Tear of the Clouds.
Feldspar Brook and the Opalescent River that feeds via Flowed Lands are all precursors to the Hudson River, as is Lake Tear of the Clouds which surveyor Verplanck Colvin labeled as the “Summit Water of the State and the high-pond source of the Hudson River.” The trail we follow this morning was first blazed by Colvin in his 1872 survey, a route he called the “Lake Tear Pass.” The “pass” itself is the culmination of the trail in a slight valley sandwiched between the State’s highest mountains that today serves as trail intersection known by hikers as “Four Corners.” Just beyond Lake Tear, trails diverge at Four Corners leading left to Mts. Marcy (5,343 feet), right to Skylight (4,925 feet), or straight to descend to Panther Gorge with a side trail to Haystack (4,960 feet). Just shy of Four Corners, and rising above Lake Tear, is Gray Peak (3,960), also on the official “46R” required peakbagging list, a list that strictly adheres to Colvin’s original survey.
Like Roosevelt who was a staunch critic of bird-poaching, deforestation, railroad expansion, and unregulated mining but also a wild game hunter, Verplanck Colvin also straddled the line between the needs for conservation and sensible development. His geological surveys served two masters. The research he compiled identified lands and waterways in need of protection, but it spurred the placement of bridges, roads, railways, and settlements. At a time when Governor Roosevelt was looking to regulate the iron mine industry, Colvin served as their advocate. “The working of the iron ores would in no way interfere with the preservation of forest,” Colvin wrote early in his career, a position that was interlocked with the need for railways. “Without railroads, neither the ores nor the products of the ore-beds of the interior can be brought to market.”
This same development-conservation duality marked Colvin’s surveying efforts when it came to the Lake Tear Pass trail that both Roosevelt and my scout patrol follows to Marcy’s top. “Close behind our exploring footsteps came the ‘blazed line’ marked with axes upon the trees,” Colvin predicted in 1872, “the trail soon trodden into mire.” Nowadays plastic discs have replaced the axed blazes, still as Colvin observed, “The first romance is gone forever … I find following in the footsteps of my explorations the blazed-line and the trail; then the ubiquitous tourist … where first comes one – the next year there are a ton – the year after fell a hundred. The woods are thronged.”
“Thronged,” which means a multitude of people crowded or assembled together, will be our experience atop Mt. Marcy later in the day. Our goal, like numerous people today and every day of the year is to summit the State’ highest peak. From our lean-to it will be a full-day out and back. As a number of our crew are aspiring 46Rs – one of the lures that attracts the throngs of hikers – the carrot of also “bagging” Skylight and/or Gray following the Marcy descent waves in the wind. Although each peak adds only hardly a mile to the roundtrip distance, the sum when combined with the elevational strain on leg muscles can be the difference between an enjoyable hike that returns before dusk or one that strains. To keep our peakbagging options open, each of us carries a headlamp in our packs.
Vice President Roosevelt also followed the Indian Pass Trail blazed by Colvin in his 1901 trail. His hike began in a fog. The trail was so slippery that Edith and the kids turned back early. Theodore proceeded alone alongside two guides including James McNaughton whose name now graces the mountain hovering above Lake Henderson now surveyed to be above 4,000 feet but not on Colvin’s original list. Today many 46R’s return to the High Peaks to climb Mt. McNaughton in something of a bonus hike.
Theodore had announced a desire to swim in the Summit Water of the State upon reaching Lake Tear of the Clouds, a goal that went unfulfilled. Not only is the Hudson’s source water shallow and somewhat marsh-like, making wading – not swimming – the more accurate verb choice, but as we shall see at 12:25 pm while eating his lunch at Lake Tear, just after summiting Mt. Marcy, the Vice President received an urgent dispatch from Buffalo, New York. There was no time to experiment with swimming as his presence was needed urgently in Buffalo.
The week before, on September 6th, President William McKinley was wounded by an assassin’s bullet. Roosevelt was then in Vermont, giving a speech near Lake Champlain with plans to vacation in the Adirondacks afterwards. Instead, he traveled to Buffalo to be with McKinley. When the President’s health improved, Roosevelt joined Edith in Adirondac continuing plans to climb Mt. Marcy. It was unforeseen then that a messenger would follow Roosevelt to the Adirondacks, and all the way to the base of Mt. Marcy, soon thereafter with news that President McKinley’s health had taken a turn for the worse. The Vice President was ordered to come in haste.
Hurriedly, Roosevelt hiked the 17 miles out to Adirondac, likely consumed in thought about the Oath of Office he would soon take. At Adirondac he boarded a stage coach that sped to North Creek. A third of the way on the 29-mile coach ride now designated as the Marcy-Roosevelt Highway, a horseback rider met him with the message that McKinley was dead. The presidential oath of office was taken at the North Creek train depot.
* * * * *
MY HOME, and that of the Scouts in our hiking party, is in the Mid-Hudson Valley; where the Hudson River is at its widest. We’re used to thinking of the river in superlative language, as mighty, grand, and large. By comparison, Lake Tear is rather disappointing to us. Still, we recline by its shore as an excuse to rest after the long and steep incline to reach it.
Verplanck Colvin, whose writings repeatedly self-congratulate himself for discovering the Hudson River’s source, also gave the lake its name. Writing in 1873, the State Surveyor called it “a minute, unpretending tear of the cloud – as it were – a lonely pond, shivering in the breezes of the mountains.” Later Colvin’s poetic prose resumes, “This lovely pool lifted on its granite pedestal toward heaven , the loftiest water-mirror of the stars … fresh, new, unvisited, save by wild beasts that drank; it was a gem more pure and more delightful to the eye than the most precious jewel.” In an 1876 speech made to The Albany Institute, Colvin defined the wild beasts that dwell here to include panthers, Canada lynx, fishers (he calls them black cats), sable, ermine, rabbits, red squirrels, deer mice and various birds all of which he personally saw or discovered footprints. He charted the pond’s elevation at 4,293 feet, only 1,040 feet below the Marcy summit.
Native Americans, who perhaps deserve the actual credit for the pond’s discovery, called Lake Tear by the name of Scaniadereovana, meaning “Head Lake of the Hudson River” as per a 1756 British military map. The same map describes the region west of Lake Champlain as one of the four “beaver hunting places” of the Iroquois’ six nations, which in their tonque was called Conchsachrage, also translated as “place of desolation.” Today one of the peaks on the official Adirondack 46R list west of McIntrye Works is called Couchsachraga, a slight variant on the spelling. This mountain, too, is today surveyed at less than 4,000 feet of height (3,820 feet).
The shores of Lake Tear are wooded with dwarfed evergreen trees deep-rooted to resist the frequent gale storms common to the elevation. A small opening near the outlet (only visible to those who know to look for it) follows a well-trod path to the summit of Gray Peak (4,917 feet), which is technically a mere shoulder to Marcy. Unlike Marcy, Gray Peak is completely covered in thick and dense, albeit stunted, forest all the way to the top.
The stunted trees of this elevation meant that Colvin’s team had to cut straight and tall bracing trees at lower elevations and carry them up, so as to hoist their tin-adorned signal towers to be visible from far away by binocular to perform the necessary surveying calculations. One such tower was hauled all the way to the top of Mt. Marcy. “These had to be procured a thousand feet below summit,” Colvin’s 1877 report to the Legislature reported, “The dwarf timber on the upper ridges being worthless for this purpose.” Suddenly the 40-pound packs we carried in yesterday to the lean-to no longer seemed that heavy.
The Colvin tower that once stood atop Mount Marcy has since been removed, but I imagine it may still have been in operation when Roosevelt ascended. Unless carried off by heavy winds, I cannot imagine anyone volunteering to the carry the timbers down.
Our water bottles filled with filtered Lake Tear water, we proceed to Four Corners and then begin our above-treeline push to Marcy’s summit. We are fortunate to possess a bright, sunny, blue-sky day wherein amazing mountain views are available in all directions. So often, Mt. Marcy is enveloped in a cloud. The Natives called the mountain Tahawus, which mean cloud-splitter. Likewise, although breezy, the weather is beyond cooperative.
I zig-zag my way up the bare rock, making a conscious effort to not over-exhaust my leg muscles or respiratory system. Not so the scouts in my group, who now seized with endorphins, beeline straight for the top. Not to be left behind, I join them in their rushed approach. I, too, am too excited to feel any pain.
“Beautiful country. Beautiful country,” Theodore Roosevelt was said to have proclaimed repeatedly in taking-in Mt. Marcy’s summit view. Thanks to the state’s wilderness preservation commitment the view today is the same as it was then. I take pride in excitedly pointing out the scouts the various peak names that encircle us, occasionally breaking into a story about my climbs up each of them on my 46-month quest to climb the Adirondack 46. Having devoted countless daytrips and weekends in all four seasons to this quest the view outstretched before me is more than just one of grandeur and beauty, but an album of earned experiences and exaltation that I am ever eager to share with my group members.
Cell phone selfies are taken and uploaded to Instagram and Facebook or sent out via text messages to friends and family back home. Undoubtedly these images will entice other people to add to the “throngs of tourists” who come here; so also will my article. Such crowds are, nevertheless, outweighed by the quality of the photographed smiles that reveal much about our mountain experience. I have often said – and my Mom will attest to it – that mountain smiles are the most authentic — and pure.
I query our group as to whether they have the energy and desire to also climb Mt. Skylight. I receive a resounding Yes. Down we go.
# # #
Michael N. Kelsey is an avid hiker, historian, and owner of AWAY Adventures Guide and Outfitter Services. Write him at KelseyADK@yahoo.com.
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