Starting with my 1976 Appalachian Trail through hike I began to keep notes on my long backpacking trips. One exception was my 1978 hike of the Northville-Placid Trail through the Adirondack Mountains with Buddy Koonce and John Quackenbush. For some reason, I did not keep a journal for that hike, and my other records are spotty. I only marked my campsites on the trail mileage table in my 1977 copy of the Guide to Adirondack Trails.
After
the NPT through hike, I remained in the Adirondacks to make a solo backpacking
trip through the High Peaks Area. I did not record my route on the guidebook
map beyond day one, but I did note the dates for all the peaks I climbed. The
only other information I have for the trip is some slides and their sparse captions.
Northville - Lake Placid Trail from 1977 Guidebook.
In
the summer of 1978, I had stayed in school for Dartmouth Geology Field Camp,
called “The Stretch”. We were based off campus and had a mix of classroom and
field exercises throughout the summer. This was all designed to prepare us for
the fall, when we would travel to the western US and Central America to study
more geology.
Buddy
and I had kept in touch after our through hikes on the AT, when we had done the
northern half of the trail together with Tim Line, Buddy’s original partner.
The previous summer Buddy and I finished the non-AT portion of Vermont’s Long
Trail. In December we had met up to hike for six days on the AT in Shenandoah
NP, and over spring break we backpacked the AT from Hot Springs to Roan
Mountain. My friend John Quackenbush from Dartmouth, who had been on the spring
break trip, joined us for the NPT.
John at Beaver Dam.
I
now (2025) have no memory of how we organized the trip, or how I got to or from
the Adirondacks. We hiked south to north so that I could finish in the High
Peaks. But otherwise, I have little memory of the trip, beyond a successful
experiment trading my heavy boots for sneakers, and passing a 10’ high beaver
dam along the way. Here is my trip itinerary.
Suspension Bridge on NPT.
Date Area Miles Location
8/28/1978 NPT 9.6 Northville to Upper Benson, tented
8/29/1978 NPT 13.6 Mud Lake Lean-to
8/30/1978 NPT 12.4 Falls Stream
8/31/1978 NPT 21.9 First Cedar Lake Lean-to
9/1/1978 NPT 18.8 Cascade Pond Lean-to
9/2/1978 NPT 19.3 Catlin Bay Lean-to
9/3/1978 NPT 16.9 Ouluska Pass Lean-to
9/4/1978 NPT 18.0 End in Lake Placid
9/5/1978 Peaks
6.4 Adirondack Loj to Mts. Algonquin &
Wright to Colder Lake LT
9/6/1978 Peaks Mt Marcy
9/7/1978 Peaks Mt Haystack
9/8/1978 Peaks Mts. Basin, Gothics, Saddleback, Upper and Lower Wolfjaw, and Armstrong with a finish in Keene Valley
When
I began to type up my old trip reports to store them electronically I had no
intention of going back as far as the 1970s. But this trip, even with its few
notes to type up, has jogged open some distant memories, and seems an easy way
to begin to digitize some of my oldest trip information. I now wish I had
better records from the trip to allow me to relive those times in more detail.
Coincidentally,
I would spend next summer in the Adirondacks in my first professional job,
working for the US Geological Survey conducting field hydrologic studies for a
study of the effects of acid rain on Adirondack lakes. That summer I was able
to hike up five more of the ADK 100 highest peaks. 
John and foggy pond.
