The Final Mile

One of my father's childhood Scout leaders and mentors was a man named Bill Hall. Bill lived in the same town we did, and I met him several times. He was a forester by trade, and I can vividly remember tramping through the woods with Bill and my dad marking trees, which were to be cut for firewood as part of a church fund raiser. I spent much of the summer of 1980 with my dad and the church's volunteer crew cutting those trees. Anyway, earlier in life Bill had been an Olympic bobsled driver, captaining/driving the 1972 Olympic team in Sapporo, Japan.

In December 1979, at the age of 7, my dad took me to watch my first bobsled race at the Mt. Van Hoevenberg track in Lake Placid, New York. The track had just been built as this was just weeks before the 1980 Winter Olympics. 2-hour drives from Essex to Lake Placid were routine occurrences over the next couple winters. I don't know for sure, but at some point, my dad must have had a conversation with Bill about chasing his own Olympic dream. My dad's employment status allowed him a certain level of flexibility. He leveraged that flexibility to travel back and forth, working 3 days a week and training 4. I remember helping him repair a broke-down old sled in the "sled shed" as teams for the 1983 World Championships (held at Mount Van Hoevenberg) performed training runs. He improved quickly, and nearly made the alternate team for the 1984 Sarajevo games, but his goal was always the 1988 Calgary games.

Concurrent with my dad's winter pursuit of bobsledding, we shared significant time together hiking and backpacking in the spring, summer, and fall. (I described those adventures extensively in the bookend to this article. If you'd like to read about that, click here.) Beginning at age 13, and continuing until I went off to college at 18, I went on regular weekend, week-long, and multi-week trips with him. Significant parts of Upstate New York are public lands - the "Adirondack Park" - and there are trails all over the place. We hiked several of them, but always just as day hikes (no over-night trips.) However, the trail sign for the "Northville-Placid Trail" (NPT) caught his eye.

I enrolled in the Vermont Army National Guard the Spring of 1990, being drawn by the GI bill as a way to partially pay for college. (I thought my love of backpacking and the outdoors would be a perfect match with a mountain warfare unit.) I went off to basic training the summer of 1990, then started at the University of Vermont that fall. I attended advanced individual training (AIT) the summer of 1991. The summer of 1992 I worked for the USDA Soil Conservation Service (SCS) out of an office in Winooski, Vermont. I returned to work for them in 1993. Besides ruck marches in the army (which turned out to be far less pleasant than I imagined) I had not done any backpacking since 1989. My dad asked if I could reserve time in August, before I returned to school, for us to do a trip. Of course I agreed.

The Northville Placid Trail

In the 80s, while pursuing Olympic ambitions, my dad was in excellent shape. I too, being an athletic teenager, was in excellent shape. I signed logbooks with the trail name the "Keenan Express," along with little train tracks. We made quite a team. We routinely averaged a 2 mile-per-hour or greater pace, regardless of the terrain. I was particularly inspired by bigger and badder challenges. While I would have preferred a trip to the White Mountains of New Hampshire, or the High Peaks region of the Adirondacks, those days were slowly passing for my dad. He had ended his Bobsled career in 1987 after some injuries. By 1993 he wasn't in bad shape, but he wasn't at his mid-80's peak. And he wasn't as motivated by the tougher stuff that I was.

The NPT is a lowland trail in upstate New York. It doesn't go over rugged mountains or have stunning views. It's more serene. It winds through valleys, from river to lake to pond. There are a few climbs on it, but those are simply transitions. Overall it's about 130 miles long, and does roughly 16,800 foot of total climb. That's pretty modest by east coast standards. I didn't care. I was just happy to be backpacking again.

Unfortunately, we did not keep a log for the trip like we had for others. I don't know for sure where we stayed or how many days it took, but by using picture labels, maps, historical preferences and recollection, I think the itinerary below must be close.

Curiously, my starting picture clearly shows us leaving from the Benson trailhead. I'm not sure if that was the southern terminus of the trail in 1993. (GaiaGPS shows the southern terminus at the Collins Gilford Road trailhead, 8.75 miles further south.)

There is another guy in some of the photos. His name was Shaun. We met him night 3 at Spruce Lake. He was solo hiking and kept roughly the same pace we did, so we ended up leap-frogging several times and traveling together. I wish I had his last name and contact information, but I don't.

The above picture of Stephen's Pond shelter disserves some explanation. If you look closely, on my left, you'll see the bottoms of two cans, and something white next to them. The white thing is a Subway sandwich. The cans are beer. Also vaguely visible is smoke coming out of the fire ring. When dad and I arrived, there was a small group of guys just packing up. Stephen's Pond is only a couple miles from a road. These guys had stayed the night before, having a fire and a party, and were about to head home, their outing over. They offered us the leftover beer and the half of a Subway sandwich. Completely unexpected. This was my first "trail magic" experience.

I don't know where we stayed night 6. Looking at the maps, I suspect we stayed at "Salmon River Campsite." I do remember staying in a tent more than once on the trip. I have no pictures of that campsite.

Dad and I leap-frogged with Shaun a few times. We didn't stay in the same sites every night, but did meet up several times. Night 7 we stayed somewhere along the shore of Long Lake. I'm not sure which of the many sites along the lake we stayed at, and I have no pictures of it. I also don't have any pictures along the trail on Day 8, but I think we stayed at one of the Cold River Lean-tos that night. The bridge shown below is near those shelters.

The End

Shaun took the obligatory "we're done" photo of dad and I. Though I didn't know it at the time, this would be the last day of backpacking dad and I would share. I'd love to go with him again, but his body is no longer capable.

The Bling

The blue disc on the upper right of the pack in the photo below is something I stole off a downed-tree somewhere along the NPT. It's a trail marker. I did not have a patch for the NPT, so I made one and sewed it on. I had always wanted a proper patch - like the one you see on the left. It was not until just a couple years ago that I figured out how to get one. First you have to hike the entire NPT. Then you have to write up and submit a trip report to the Adirondack Mountain Club with an application. They'll then send you one. I have two: mine and dad's. The first is sewn on the pack you see in the picture - my original 1985 birthday-present pack - which is now relegated to wall-decoration duty. The second is proudly on my current/modern pack.

Thank You Dad

Thank you for the sacrifices you made to spend time with me as a youth. You knew what you were doing. Only years later do I fully comprehend and appreciate it. Had I known the NPT trip would be our last, I'm sure I would have done things differently. As it was, I was living in the moment. Thank you for taking these pictures, which I now share back with you. Thank you for the memories. Thank you.

Post Script

I love you too Dad.