Nye and Street
The 45'th, and 31'st highest peaks in New York State with elevations of 3,895 and 4,166 ft.
Climbed Saturday 8-16-14 with friend Evan, son Josh, and daughter in law Abbey. We left Speculator later than usual around 7:30. We arrived at the Loj and found the parking lot full and closed.
We were instructed to park a mile down the road
and walk back to the trail which was off the right of the security shack and
the same trailhead to Mount Jo. Josh left the three of us and his pack and
drove back to the designated overflow area figuring he would be able to hitch a
ride back. Well it was a good plan but no one would pick him up so he had to
jog all the way back to us.
These two mountains are not marked and considered trail
less peaks so I asked the shack attendant for directions. She was very helpful
so we then started out at about 9:30 AM. The first mile or so was flat and easy as we
walked around Heart Lake. It got a little tricky shortly after that, as we had
to cross the swollen river without a bridge. Right before us there was group of
four women who had basically just took off their shoes and waded through the
river. No surprise Evan was the first one to venture out and vowed to do it without
removing his shoes. By golly he did it and the other three of us basically
followed his successful route to cross.
Shortly thereafter there was another
river crossing but this time there was a large tree that had fallen across so
we could cross by walking on it.
Unfortunately for me as I stepped off on the
other side on what I thought was solid ground sunk up to my knee in mud. Not too
much to report about this hike other than, although not marked it was very
clear where to go and very muddy.
There were several trees downed across the
trail that slowed us down having to decide if better to go over or under.
Eventually we got to the split in the trail marked with a cairn and a carved
tree with the names and arrows directing hikers how to go. Street was off to
the Left and Nye to the right.
We decided to climb Nye first. It was a very
short trip to the Nye summit and not much of a view so we didn’t spend much time
there.
We backtracked the trail back to the cairn and then up to Street. I figured
that Street would be about the same distance from the cairn but I was wrong. It
took considerable more time to get to the Street summit and the views weren’t any better.
On the
summit we met a father and daughter who were hiking alone. We were very
impressed when we found out that he was 72 years old, had had a stroke last
year and was still going strong. The daughter was a little nervous about the
trip back and wanted to get to the river crossing before it rained or got dark.
It was overcast but I it didn’t
rain on us until we got back to the car at 4:00 PM and headed to dinner. Josh
actually was able to get someone kind enough to drive him from the trailhead to
the car so he didn’t
have to walk it and then drove back and picked us all up. We decided to go to the
Lake Placid Pub and Brewery for dinner. After a half hour wait we were seated
on the second floor dining area, a spot we hadn’t been to before, and had our usual excellent
dinner. After that we headed back to Speculator and arrived home around 7:30. Although
the views were not great it was another good day hiking with good friends and a
good end to summer as Josh and Abbey head out to Caltech to start a new chapter
in their lives.
