2018 in photos

December:



November:



October:



September:



August:



July:



June:



May:



April:



March:



February:



January:

Hiking the Staten Island Greenbelt

Not my first hike here, but always a nice change (and not what people think of when they think of "Staten Island").

The pyramids of Teotihuacan

Technically, these pyramids not far from Mexico City aren't a hike, but there is plenty of elevation gain!

Starting the Moriah Challenge

The Moriah Challenge requires doing four hikes, of easy to medium difficulty. After finishing up the Tupper Lake Triad, we decided to tackle a couple of them, since it was in the direction of home.




First up was Belfry, which does double duty as a fire tower peak. It's a very, very easy hike, even with snow, since it's less than half a mile to the top. However, from the top were great views (made possible by very clear weather).

After this we upped the game, a little, by tackling Cheney Mountain, a whopping .9 one-way to the top.



There are several viewpoints on this peak, one of which is nice views of Lake Champlain.

Finishing the Tupper Lake Triad

As you can probably deduce, the Tupper Lake Triad patch requires three hikes. J and I had done Coney Mountain about a year ago and hoped to finish it on this trip. Well, our initial plan had been to do McKenzie and finish the Saranac Six, and then do one or both Tupper Lake peaks the next day, but the weather was unseasonably snowy. McKenzie is just shy of being a 4,000-footer, so we decided to save it for another day.

Mount Goodman has a wheelchair-accessible beginning, followed by a turn up to the top of the mountain. As we set out, it was sunny.



But as we reached the top, the clouds and the snow blew in.



By the time we got back to the car, it was snowing hard. But we headed on to our next peak. Mount Arab is also a fire tower peak, which normally means great views - but not in heavy snowfall.



(Of course, despite the weather, for patch purposes "winter" is defined by dates, not actual weather. This is both good (since dates count towards either winter OR regular patches, not both) and bad (you feel like you should get credit for hiking in the snow!).)