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EMBARK: Oh brother, where art thou?

Looking out over Brant Lake from First Brother. (Photo — Spencer Morrissey)

The siblings are a Little Sister and Three Brothers whose residence is Brant Lake. You see, I am not talking about a literal family rivalry here, but a set of five peaks who are fighting to offer the best views.

When you think of Brant Lake your mind doesn’t go directly to, “hiking destination,” but more likely as a great place to paddle and fish. However, the Brothers have been talked about for decades now, even though its lack of frequent visitors and route finding keep the crowds at bay (no pun intended).

We had flirted with the idea of making the drive down to Brant Lake just for this occasion, but more often than not we ended up doing something much closer to home to forego the two-and-a-half-hour drive (one way I might add).

We weren’t sure exactly how long this adventure would take us, but a decent path was developing up and over at least four of the mountains. Going over to Brace Mountain would surely be a bushwhack and this became our plan of attack for the traverse.

With that in mind, we passed on the “early bird gets the worm” idea and slept in a bit, settling on a later start of 9 a.m. You see there was no direct route to Brant Lake from where we live for either of us, and coming in from opposite directions we couldn’t even carpool. Even if we could, we had planned a traverse where two cars would be an essential part of our day.

Climbing toward the top of Second Brother. (Photo — Spencer Morrissey)

We met up at the state boat launch site on Brant Lake and Jim followed me to a parking area off state Route 8. The parking area sits at the base of Brace Mountain, which was to be our final peak and Route 8 was where we would emerge from the woods.

We then hopped into one car and drove over to Palisades Road where a small finger of state land would give us access to the mountains. We found the paint blazes on the trees and what appeared to be the herd path. With room for only one — maybe two — cars along the shoulder of the road, I managed to get the entire vehicle off the road. And being parked on a sharp corner, this was important.

The trail started climbing right out of the gate as the flagged herd path followed the state property line. It was steeply graded but quickly leveled out once we hit the ridge. We got slightly off track as the path split away from the state property line and ended up having to back track a little bit because we missed that separation. Once we were on it again, we had no trouble following it to the summit of Little Sister.

Little Sister isn’t an official name for the smaller summit along the ridge, but since Barbara McMartin referred to it as “possibly the Little Sister,” we just went with it.

We were still slightly walking in a morning haze — in every sense of the word haze — but the lingering low clouds burned off fast. As we waited, perched on a rocky slope, we began to see the mountains behind Brant Lake starting to peek through. It was quite majestic.

From here, we stayed atop the ridge on another faint path, also flagged, but much more difficult to follow.

We made a heading right at the First Brother which rested at around 1,650 feet in elevation. As we progressed over the ridge, the open rock started to appear and we had amazing views out over Little Sister to Brant Lake and beyond.

It was getting very hot, and as the saying goes, “it’s not the heat but the humidity.” I could vouch for that.

We stayed to the right to assure we did not miss any additional views, but quickly the path started to disappear and we wanted to get back on it.

The First Brother was layered in sweet fern; the pungent smell overtook our senses as we pushed through its entwined branches. We eventually came back to the trail as it led us close to the summit of the First Brother. Of course we needed to tag the wooded top.

The trail now descended before us; not all that steep, but very slippery in spots as the oak leaves made for a natural slip and slide. A slanted rock shelf got the best of me on the descent and my awkward flailing to catch myself ended up in a twisted heap at the base. Luckily all that was injured was the palm on my left hand that received a slight case of road rash. Guess I’ll just rub some dirt on it and motor on.

Soon we stood at the base of what appeared to be a fine view. But we needed to get there first.

The slopes were crazy steep. We didn’t have to go that way, but good fun is in a wilderness scramble. The oak leaves again caused a bit of concern as they spread out over some unstable moss, but with carefully chosen foot placement we worked our way up on all fours.

At a stellar viewing platform, two chairs and a fire pit were erected from slabs of rock. Convenient. We sucked down another bottle of water before we pressed on to the wooded summit of the Second Brother.

The herd path blazed in red dots was making us uncertain of its destination, and since we had not been here before we didn’t know what to think. Too many other times bushwhacking, we had followed blazed trails only to be led off the wrong side of the mountain. We didn’t want that to happen again.

We followed the blazes for a ways, but it seemed to veer too far left and drop off the ridge and not toward the Third Brother. We opted to bail on the herd path and head right for our destination.

Atop the ridge, we found that red dot trail again, I guess it didn’t go in the wrong direction after all. We followed it as it led us farther over the ridge with great views of the Third Brother ahead.

We could see the open rock on this side of the mountain and it was imperative that we go to it. We were quite sure that the red dot trail would head right up the gentler slopes of the ridge and not approach the steep open rock, so we stepped back into hardwood forest and went right up the steep face of the mountain.

The jumbles of rocks and odd footing pushed us back left, and as we neared the base of the open rock we ended back up on the red dot trail again. We just couldn’t win.

The red dot trail actually brought us right to the open rock and directly up it. Taking in the countless views, we slowly made our way up to a large open field of rock and sedge where views off to the east were quite fine.

The summit once again was wooded but the views we had along the way made that so much less important.

As we approached the end of our day, we had one mountain — Brace — left before we could descend directly to the car. We had no idea what Brace would offer us, if anything more than a nice walk in the woods.

The descent was easy as we passed over open rock and through open hardwoods. Quickly, we stood at the shore of Spuytendulvel Brook. (Yes that’s how it is spelled. Not exactly sure how to pronounce it though. I guess it’s a good thing I am writing and not reading.)

This brook is a massive width of rocks and boulders. Well over 12 feet wide but only a trickle was flowing through it. Our maps showed a wetland about 0.2 miles upstream and our love of ponds and wetlands drove us to check it out.

We rock hopped the 0.2 miles and found ourselves at a wonderful location with outstanding vistas out over the beaver swamp. A few pictures were in order and then we would climb the steep slopes of Brace that came right down to the shore.

The climb was all we could bear at the end of the day, but tired and overheated we pressed on ever so slowly to the summit of the wooded peak. Part of me wanted to check out the lower summit of the mountain but a larger part of me just wanted to get back to the car to get a cool breeze flowing over my face.

We descended in a rapid fashion, side hilling the super steep slopes, playing amongst boulder jumbles, hanging from partially decayed trees and jumping from lip to lip as we made it to the valley below.

From the valley, we had a relaxing walk in the woods as we finished off the remaining half-mile or so to the car.

It was now time for a much-needed ice cold drink as the remaining water in my pack was close to that of bath water and that my friend was just not acceptable.

[This article appears in the June-July issue of Embark. Embark is a free, bi-monthly publication that focuses on outdoors-related topics in the Adirondack Park. Embark is published by the Adirondack Daily Enterprise and Lake Placid News.]

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