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Hiking and camping over 100 years ago

Review: “Friendly Adirondack Peaks” by Robert Wickham

Winter can be a good time to sit by the fire and read someone’s memories of a long ago trek through the Adirondacks. By chance I found a copy of “Friendly Adirondack Peaks,” by Robert Wickham, published in 1924. Why not find out what such an undertaking would have been like exactly a century ago?

I know little about the author. After growing up in the Saratoga Springs/Ballston Spa area, he graduated from Cornell University, and practiced law. In addition to this book, he also published a memoir, “A Saratoga Childhood.” He was a longtime Adirondack enthusiast; this book was published in an edition of 500 by the Adirondack Mountain Club.

The book compiles journaling from three weeks (Aug. 7 through Sept. 1, 1923) spent hiking and camping with his 17-year-old son and five-year-old fox terrier. They traveled by rail to Raquette, took a smaller train along Marion River Carry, and boated to Utowanna and eventually Blue Mountain Lakes. Scampering up Blue gave them their “woods legs” before heading to the High Peaks area. There they conquered fourteen crests. On one exhausting day in the Great Range, they ascended 5,700 feet while dropping down 7,000.

One aspect of the book is learning how challenging Adirondack outings were before the evolution of lightweight fabrics, collapsible tents and freeze-dried food. Making camp for Wickham necessitated cutting tent poles, whittling stakes, adjusting ropes and finding forked twigs for holding pots. Gravel was hauled from stream beds to undergird fires. They gathered balsam branches for the comfort now provided by air mattresses.

Most meals consisted of rice, macaroni or oatmeal. He once ate his oatmeal dry under the supposition it would absorb fluid and settle once in his digestive tract. Along the way, he used a bow to produce friction for starting a fire, found the benefits of small cooking fires and learned a few principles of evaluating lumber holdings.

The good old days featured considerable woodland destruction from lumbering and devastation by fire. There was plenty of rotted corduroy, and flooding from beaver dams. Specifically cut hiking trails were few. Wickham’s crew relied heavily on what he called “tote roads,” “draw roads” and “snake paths.” Remnants of tree cutting made bushwhacking a much more formidable task than what’s encountered today on herd paths.

Among many highlights– Santanoni and Skylight views, Wallface with its boulder-strewn base, Opalescent River “most beautiful” with its colors, pleasures of sleeping by a murmuring brook, frying and eating fish they had just caught.

Misadventures centered upon the sheer work involved. He learned that there’s a “mile” and then there’s “an Adirondack mile,” an insight to which many of us can attest Pliers were needed to extract quills from the unfortunate dog capturing a porcupine. Wickham also commented on the increasing numbers of hikers in the mountains (yes, even then), saying many of them need some education on fire management, sanitation and more. Sound familiar? His ability to identify every peak he saw from each vantage point astounded this reviewer, who’s now almost ashamed how dependent he is on maps and guidebooks to delineate contours and distant bodies of water.

Incidentally, Wickham tries Bob Marshall’s system for “objectively” rating views from mountain tops. Ultimately he agrees with Marshall; Haystack wins the “best view” moniker. Nioppletop ranked second; Santanoni placed third. For those wanting to know, he deemed Dix the most difficult ascent. Perhaps that’s because it was also the last one he climbed, and he was already pondering a well-earned dinner at Elk Lake House.

The more I reflected on the narrative and/or returned to specific pages for this review, the more I enjoyed being present with the author and his party. You’ll need to look in used bookstores or on-line sources to find the book. I also found full text via a Google search, but that lacks the tangible feel of the text in your hands.

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