Now, Peaked Mountain, near North Creek, has a well-established trail that is easy to follow and is not that difficult in hiking terms. But this was no first climb or something like that. No, this was a millennial ascent.

Spencer Morrissey, who hails from Long Lake and now lives in Cranberry Lake, was the connecting force for this hike. Morrissey, who hiked his first High Peak by accident, was going to reach the top of his 1,000th named Adirondack mountain on this sunny Sunday late in June.

But before you get too googly-eyed over this accomplishment, you should know he’s only about halfway to his goal of hiking every named peak within the Blue Line.

“It feels really good. It’s something I’ve been flirting with for a little while,” Morrissey said. “The big mark was sort of when I hit 50 percent, right around 900, (but) it kind of seemed like that last 100 went so slow.

Spencer Morrissey smiles at the summit of Peaked Mountain while overlooking Peaked Mountain Pond on June 24. It was the 1,000th named peak in the Adirondacks that he had climbed. (Enterprise photo — Justin A. Levine)

“So when you’re finally looking up and you’re seeing that sunlight, you know you’re almost there. Granted, I’m only at 54 percent now.”

Morrissey has been working on this hiking effort for years, and has tallied the number of named mountains at 1,817.

“But I’m always finding different ones that have been named by locals that have good views that I’ll add to the list,” he said.

Morrissey researches the names of most of the places he’s gone, and has written extensively on the history and hiking of all the peaks he’s climbed. Morrissey said his friends, many of whom were on the hike up Peaked Mountain, will sometimes find a “new” mountain and send it to him.

“I sort of give a half-assed thanks,” he chuckled.

Spencer Morrissey takes in the view of Peaked Mountain on Sunday, June 24. Peaked Mountain would be Morrissey's 1,000th named peak in the Adirondack Park. (Enterprise photo — Justin A. Levine)

Morrissey said he will sometimes research the history of a name beforehand. Other times, he may stumble on a peak and then look up its name later.

And while it may seem obvious that Morrissey is — by almost anyone’s definition — a peak bagger, he’s a little uncomfortable with that term.

“I guess I kind of have to,” consider himself a peak bagger. “Peak bagger has become such a derogatory term that … I don’t climb the mountain just to climb the mountain. I don’t go up there, touch the top and then just leave.

“Yes, I’m going to touch the top. I’m going to experience the top of the mountain, that’s kind of the big purpose,” Morrissey said. “But if there’s a view, I want to find it. I want to flirt with the mountain. I want to be one with the mountain. I want to experience the whole mountain.

“So no, I won’t go out and do six, eight, 10 mountains a day, because you can’t and (still) enjoy the mountains.”

On a bushwhack from the summit of Slide Mountain (No. 1,001), Spencer Morrissey climbs an enormous glacial erratic in the woods. (Enterprise photo — Justin A. Levine)

Morrissey said he never likes to tackle more than four mountains in a day, and thinks even that sometimes is a little too much.

Although he does admit that the first 500 mountains went pretty quickly, “the last 500 kind of went slower,” he said, adding that he was savoring the mountains more and more.

“There’s a lot of really, really small peaks out there that have names,” he said during an interview outside of Origin Coffee in downtown Saranac Lake. “And they really don’t have a whole lot to offer so I don’t spend as much time there.”

Morrissey said he doesn’t use Google Earth because he likes the mystery.

“I don’t want to know what’s up there until I get there,” Morrissey said. “I want that to be kind of the surprise and allure of it.

Spencer Morrissey enjoys Peaked Mountain as members of his hiking group explore the rocky mountain top. (Enterprise photo — Justin A. Levine)

“If I’d known that (a) summit didn’t have a view, it might take away from the sexiness of it.”

Despite the huge number of hiking trails crisscrossing the Adirondacks, most of the peaks Morrissey is trying to get to have no trail. So he spends a lot of his time bushwhacking, and even started the Facebook group “Bushwhackos.”

Morrissey also hasn’t embarked on this odyssey alone. His wife, Corenne, a forest ranger, is often along, as is a rotating cast of adventurous people who don’t mind getting off the beaten path.

Many of those people were on the Peaked Mountain hike with Morrissey. The trail followed the edge of 13th Lake for a while, then made a right-hand turn as we began following Peaked Mountain Brook. Relatively flat through the first two-thirds of the hike, we soon got our first good glimpse of the naked, sand-colored cliffs that make up the summit of Peaked Mountain.

After snapping a few pictures on the shore of Peaked Mountain Pond, the group continued on up the trail to the steep final push. Stopping just short of the summit, several of Morrissey’s regular hiking and bushwhacking partners insisted he take the lead. Up until this point, Morrissey was just one of a group that was out for a hike.

We reached the top, where views of Gore Mountain and Peaked Mountain Pond stretched out before us as adult beverages and cookies were utilized in the celebration of his 1,000th peak. We lingered on the summit for a while, with people snapping photos and exploring the different views the various cliffs offered.

After lunch, Morrissey leaned over and said, “You up for a little bushwhack?”

It seemed that a trailed peak might just not be quite enough.

So, as a group, we started a descent of Peaked Mountain that did not go the way we came. The plan was to bushwhack to the nearby (and trail-less) Slide Mountain summit, then follow Slide’s ridge back down to Peaked Mountain Pond and the trail out.

“I’ve introduced quite a few people to bushwhacking,” he said.

Morrissey often utilizes the Facebook group to find hiking partners, and some people seek him out after reading his writings.

“I’ve been saving some of the ones I know have good views and that are a little bit shorter and are going to be a little bit easier for people who want to experience it with me,” he said. “I think a couple of times in the past I could have picked better mountains.”

Morrissey asked everyone in our group on Peaked Mountain before we set off to bushwhack Slide Mountain, a policy Morrissey said he tries to stick to.

“If there were people in the group that said they didn’t want to go, I wouldn’t have gone,” he said. “It had to be 100 percent, because I don’t want to put a bad taste in someone’s mouth. I want them to enjoy the mountains just as much as I do.

“Everybody has a ‘tree quota’ is what I call it,” he chuckled. “You can only push past so many before you start to swear at the sky. There’s only so many femur eaters you can step in before you just say ‘This sucks.'”

Because of the remoteness, lack of trails and difficulty level of many of Morrissey’s hikes, he sometimes feels like he’s the first person to set foot in a place. But this mentality has brought a few surprises.

“When I was bushwhacking the 46 (High Peaks), we bushwhacked off the side of Seymour (Mountain) and we got down into this creek and you obviously think very few people have ever been here at all,” he said. “It wasn’t the main one going into Oluska Pass, it was just some side creek, and we’re walking along and I look down and there’s a banana peel.

“And I’m like ‘this is crazy,'” he laughed. “And it wasn’t that old — it was still kind of yellowish — so someone had been there in the last couple of days. It just blows my mind sometimes.”

Another challenge Morrissey faces, in addition to the lack of trails, is that many of the mountains are on private land.

While Morrissey said he has climbed many mountains on private land, he said he never intentionally trespasses. To that end, he said he’ll sometimes spend years trying to track down a landowner and get permission to hike on their property.

Morrissey said his love of maps is one of the main drivers behind his quest.

“I love maps, I love looking at maps. I’m a map freak,” he said. “And I always said ‘I wonder what’s up there.'”

Morrissey said he started doing bushwhacks with his dad from time to time, and his professional guiding led him to the High Peaks too often.

“Honestly, I got bored. There might have been a time when I got to the top of Algonquin for the 10th time,” he said. “It’s just like it’s monotonous; it’s always the same view.

“Eventually, it just came to the point where I found enough cool stuff where it sucked me in for more, more, more.

“And then I decided, you know what, bushwhacking is kind of fun. I kind of like route finding and seeing different things.”

Morrissey said he ended up bushwhacking the 46 High Peaks using slides and creeks.

“I’d say every mountain I’ve found some cool stuff on the 46,” he said. “I found an old stove on the side of Tabletop, just in the middle of nowhere. It had to have been there from the old logging days, from the early 1900s.”

And for a guy who has become somewhat of a legend in the Adirondack hiking world, Morrissey admits he hiked his first hike by accident. Morrissey said his dad, Oliver “Bud” Morrissey, took him out for his first hike when he was in third grade, but the hiking bug didn’t really bite until he was out of high school.

“We went out to Indian Head and Fish Hawk Cliffs one day and that was one of our first hikes together,” he said. “And I saw the sign and it pointed toward Colvin and I said ‘I think that’s one of the High Peaks.’

“I was really green at that point, and so we went for it. It wasn’t that far away and we got to the top and we were totally socked in by clouds, but it was cool.

“And eventually it just clicked. This is what I want to do.”