I should explain my methodology for trips. If it’s a canoe odyssey to the Canadian Shield or a day-hike closer to home, the planning starts with a Chair Parade. Any great adventure kernel, the glance or picture or colleague’s casual mention will by necessity lead to two widely divergent places. Your Adventure Goal is balanced by Your Adventure Trip-Planning Research.
The Ascent Gully was one of the first geographic locales that ensnared me in the Adirondacks. It’s fairly obvious from many distances and angles unless you’re within actual striking distance, at which point it becomes difficult to see and more difficult to access. It is the key to my Ultimate 2024 Camp-out Goal, The Cave of the Sunrise high atop and hidden away upon a local mountain. Casual asking in the ADK region is a great way to gain awareness of opportunities for great adventures. Much of my actual guiding work lately is helping folks flesh out their plans in this way (Marking Maps). Knowledge is a double-edged sword when it comes to caves around here, however. To publicize them is to invite damage from overuse, and I and colleagues have come into verbal and written abuse for even mentioning these “secret spots” in the new digital environment, let alone taking new people to experience them. Usually, it is a careful vetting by someone who holds the knowledge to give you access to it after judging you, (your moral character?). In the digital world it is hard to safeguard wild places. Just having your phone on can “out” any private sweet spot you may have found, allowing unprepared folks with G#$$*&% maps to sully the site (and any guide’s reputation) carelessly.
The above paragraph clanks at me as I and you read it. This is because of site sanitation and obfuscation. Keep reading, svp!
Adventure Trip-Planning Research is in the basic ephemera of the actual goal, the things you string together around the experience to give you an idea of requirements. My current goal is not actually a cave in the Tom Sawyer sense but rather the Anasazi cliff-dwelling one, a rumored bivouac hundreds of feet above climbs of hundreds of feet. It is a) sheltered from most rain, b) a location, once reached, that affords good top-roping excitement and an un-parallelled view to the eastern horizon, and c) once photographed with a classic glass-plate box camera by a man with a straw boater and his companion, a lovely lady wearing a corset and mildly bustled gown! That last was the absolute kicker for me, working with people who frequently have a trial when walking on sidewalks. My adventuring mentor showed the couple’s photo and caption to me while we were plotting out a summer program of separate hikes to discover rock-climbing sites, and we spent years afterward, combing locales for any sign of this cool place which someone wearing crinolines was able to reach!
Natty B models in front of a location that has ONE feature of TCOTS that we’ll be looking for this summer. After many outings (becoming increasingly competitive) I discovered the key to this location in an odd out-of-the-way source. The ephemera of this search became the framework and focus for an actual boot to the ground experience which will henceforth be known as The Crinoline Caper.
Remember we talked about the paternalist approach to Adirondack Caves? I never ever would have given this goal a second thought even after the old-timey picture if a government agency hadn’t done a survey of park trails and re-erected a sign in an odd corner of the trails around it. My young children pointed out that someone had broken off a post (they hate vandalism) that when flipped over, revealed the object of my search years before I thought to search for it. Serendipity and random acts of violence have all played into the cloud of data surrounding this goal, and now it starts to crystalize.
The Crinoline Caper, thus far…
Commit? Y/N (Yes)
Locate? Y/N (Yes, after years!)
Matches Physical/Skills Capability? Y/N? (Yes indeed) (Class 4 and 5 scrambles, watertight camp, equipment carried on backs, etc.?)
…and we move forward and upward on a downward path, our Ascent Gully. In Pt. III let’s define The Good Life, Crinoline Caper Style. Until then, leave the Chair Parade and head outside!
