On 9/11 we (The OMG) climbed the 4th mountain in our Saranac 6 quest. We had all climbed it before, twice in my case, but we either hadn't recorded when or it was before the start of the Saranac 6 Challenge so it didn't count. The start of the trail was new to me because they had rerouted it since the last time I climbed it. The reroute is interesting as it takes you by some very impressive glacial erratics and through a beautiful grove of hemlocks before rejoining the original trail where the serious climbing starts. Even then it was not an overly steep trail but it had a couple of "interesting" sections.
When we arrived at the summit we were alone in spite of having dawdled on the way up. Shortly though people began arriving and we had quite a conversation with a retired policeman from NJ or at least Rick and Dave did. I left the conversation after a short time to go about my photography. I tried shooting a stitched medium format image with my Rhincam adapter and a 35mm Mamiya lens but the light weight tripod I had carried apparently wasn't steady enough plus I was shooting into the sun and don't have a sunshade for that lens. The experiment was a bust.
Two people volunteered to photograph us, the first shot is with the NJ cop and the second is the three of us in front of the actual summit.
I made another panorama from the actual summit that included the fire tower.
I made some photos of interesting rock patterns around the summit before leaving.
Dave thought this area looked like a lightning strike. The rock certainly has a burnt look to it.
I liked the web pattern on this one and the tiny white lichens that looked like snow flakes.
I shot most of the photos on this trip going down. On the last trip it was mostly fungus but this time it was large boulders.
This had a tree growing on it and Dave decided to climb up and visit the tree.
I had to take two photos and stitch them to get all of this one into the frame without a lot of trees in front. It looks as if it was once one rock that split and the upper part slid to one side. It makes a nice shelter for small creatures though.
Rick likes to be on top of things, like mountains and in this case a very large glacial erratic.
As always, it was a good day in the woods. I have to return to some of those erratics on an overcast day though. The totally clear sky and bright sun made for very harsh shadows with very bright highlights.
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