The Saranac 6: McKenzie Mountain

My weekend continued with Saturday's hike up McKenzie Mountain, my final (and hardest) hike in the Saranac 6. Now, I knew going in that the weather wouldn't be ideal. But it was my only full day in the Adirondacks, and I wanted to make sure I had the time to finish.



Sure enough, it was spitting drizzle in the morning. I elected to sleep in an extra hour, since the forecast improved to merely cloudy at 10.

There are two routes up McKenzie. One starts at a trailhead shared with Haystack, then splits. The other starts on the Jackrabbit ski trail, requiring one to turn onto the McKenzie trail a bit after the split. The former is great if you're going to bag both in one day, but it starts about 400 feet lower in elevation and is more mileage, so I elected for the latter.

The ski trail was great - wide, flat, and smooth. "Flat" here refers to the terrain, not the slope; much of it was uphill, albeit in a modest, tasteful way. But after the turn, things changed dramatically. The trail becomes quite rocky and scrambly. Now I love scrambly trails, although things are a bit messier when the rocks are damp. A lot of the trail looked like this:



At one point, the trail bends, and two other side trails go to viewpoints (not that there were any to be had in the weather). I got badly turned around there, which I blame on no one but myself. But after wasting time trying to figure out which way to go, I finally forged on. (The only defense I have is that, because it was at the top of a false summit, it wasn't something as obvious as "go uphill.")

I did reach the summit, to be shortly joined by part of a group from upstate. The summit itself is hard to miss, what with the sign, although there is no view directly on top of it.



Then I returned the way I came, minus the turnabout. And as I got about a third of a mile from my car, the sun came out.

So I drove into town, and rang the Saranac Sixer bell.