Trip Review: New Year's in the Adirondacks

Note: I wrote this post in January of 2010 and never actually published it.  Looking back, I'm missing our crazy half-planned, half-spontaneous outings in the Northeast.  This was far and away the best New Year's I ever had.  



I'm a bit late in sharing, but rest assured that we had a fantastic New Year's weekend in the Adirondacks.

Adirondack Winter Trip Review

On the summit of Armstrong Peak, New Year's Day 2010

Background: Jeff and I realized that we hadn't gone backpacking since Vermont, in July.  We've been on many hikes since then, but nothing overnight.  Having always had kind of crappy New Year's celebrations (I'm usually either designated driver or holed up in my parents' guest room keeping my dog sane with all of the fireworks), and having just whet our appetites for outdoor adventure with our Colorado Christmas, we decided that the long New Year weekend would be a perfect time to go backpacking again.  Our dear friend Matt, possibly the only person who would agree to a winter backpacking trip on New Year's four days prior to departure, of course signed on.

There's a saying that the activity you are doing when the new year rolls in is what you will do all  year.  Starting off this year--and this decade--backpacking is, I think, a terrific sign.

Transportation:  Matt and I picked up his car, then came back into the city for Jeff.  We drove up I-87 to Keene Valley, the base of operations for the Eastern High Peaks region of the Adirondack Park.

Trail Conditions:  We had winter conditions.  There was packed snow on the ground when we arrived on the night of Thursday, December 31st.  It was pristine and beautiful on Friday the 1st.  There was no wind to speak of and clear skies all around.  Saturday the 2nd, it was substantially colder, maybe 15 degrees F in the lower valleys and 0 degrees without windchill on the higher peaks.  Up on Mount Marcy, the winds picked up, gusting to 45 mph.  That is not fun in any weather, but certainly not in sub-freezing temperatures. We made camp in a lean-to farther down the valley just before a major blizzard rolled in. Thankfully, the next morning the trailside warming hut was staffed and the ladies working that weekend hailed us over as we shivered and trudged toward the trailhead and fed us hot chocolate and banana bread.  They said the temperature got down around -4 Fahrenheit in the night.

I often felt like how this tree looked

Food: I got to use my dehydrator for new and exciting projects!

For dinners, I made African Chicken Groundnut Stew and Mashed Chipotle Sweet Potatoes from A Fork in the Trail.  We rehydrated them by pouring boiling water into the ziplocs and putting them in a little cozy I sewed out of an old sweatshirt.  I used the pocket-front section of the sweatshirt so there was a bonus spot to warm my frozen hands.

Breakfast: oatmeal, GORP

Lunch/Snacks: Pizza GORP (cheez-its, sliced pepperoni sticks, nuts, other goodies), potato chips, peanut butter, chocolate pretzels, a can of SPAM (questionable choice), oreos

Another fine post-blizzard morning in a lean-to

Other concerns:  Hiking in winter conditions might as well have a completely different name as it bears very little resemblance to summertime hiking.  The elements are less forgiving, so you need to bring your A-game.  Car camping tents, flimsy sleeping bags, cotton clothing--none of these have a place in a responsible winter hiker's gear.

In addition to our regular hiking gear, we had several indispensable pieces of equipment:

• extra layers, more than you think is prudent
• socks, socks and even more socks
• gaiters
• snowshoes
• crampons
• ice axes (1 each)
• trekking poles
• extra stove fuel

Even well-equipped, we all got a bit of mild frostbite.  Keep yourself warm and keep skin covered when on an exposed mountain face. Matt and Jeff got little spots of frostbite on their noses and cheeks in their ill-advised afternoon summit bid of Mount Marcy. My big toe had some from stepping through thin ice and a bit of water getting into the front of my boot.

Sleeping through a blizzard in a lean-to is not a pleasant experience.  We didn't think to put up our tents inside the lean-to for extra insulation and wind protection.  We woke in the morning to find snow drifts alongside us and inside our boots.  Lesson learned.

Especially when it is freezing cold, it's hard to make yourself eat or drink water since your hands are already cold, you don't feel thirsty, and stopping to find your food in your pack will drop your body heat.  This is silly.  Pack food that's easy to eat on the go and make yourself eat it to avoid bad low-blood sugar decisions and hypothermia. As for water intake, not only do you want to avoid dehydration, you also need water to maintain and regulate your body temperature.  Fill a thermos with boiling water before you leave on your trip, and again after you finish making dinner each night and you will have hot water at the ready without needing to get out your stove.

This article provides an excellent overview of what to expect and plan for when winter hiking or winter camping.

We did it!

Sunrise at our final campsite

One year ago today, Jeff and I woke up at our final campsite in the Grapevine area of the Grand Canyon simultaneously a bit sad, nostalgic, and elated that our 5 month backpacking trip was coming to an end.

The night before, I cried when I woke to a clear, beautiful setting with the pure black of looming canyon walls blocking and juxtaposing innumerable incredibly crisp stars above.  No man-made sounds reached my ears, just the sounds of tiny bats*, insects, and wind.  Having lived for six years in New York City, on or near Broadway, it wasn't lost on me how remarkable it is to sleep without the sounds of sirens, motorcycles, exhaust fans, planes... and  I didn't know when I would be granted such a night again.  The next day we would be hiking up out of the South Rim of the Grand Canyon to be surrounded by thousands of tourists who might never think to leave the comfort of their cars or the paved sidewalks above.

Waking again at sunrise, I felt renewed and excited.  Having pushed my body to its utter maximum for five long months, I was thrilled to think of days of rest and recuperation rather than more 20 mile days. For the previous three months, I had pains in my hip sockets that ached like a poked bruise with each step I took.  Jeff, being a good person and an excellent boyfriend, was understandably concerned for my health and worried that this trip would do lasting physical harm to me.  Many days when I woke up and hobbled around waiting for my ibuprofen to kick in, he would try to convince me that my wellbeing was more important than this trip, and I would stubbornly keep moving forward exclaiming/muttering in a run-on that we were going to fucking finish this because I'm not likely going to quit my job and to go on a 2,500 mile walk again and I am going to finish what we started especially if we made it this far already. But I ached with every step of 1,500 miles and if/when I clumsily tripped on a root or a rock or unexpectedly flat surfaces, my hips screamed with fiery pain.  So the prospect of as much rest as I wanted as soon as we knocked out the last 11 or so miles filled me with happy anticipation. 

An even greater factor in my high spirits that morning was the pride of accomplishing something that Jeff and I worked so hard on day in and day out for months.  The five months leading up to the trip were full of gear reviews and purchases, physical training, and meticulous planning of our route and supplies--on top of our more-than-full-time jobs and regularly scheduled programming.  Of course, the five months of the trip were full of unimaginable and nearly indescribable challenges and joys and mundane moments.  Jeff's biggest challenge was getting up everyday to do the same thing that we had been doing: hiking.  My obstinacy proved helpful in the latter half in combating this.  My biggest challenge, even considering my physical debilitation, was also a mental one.  I often felt oppressed by an unfortunate androgyny.  The logistics of a long-distance through hike preclude frequent showers, scented products, and other grooming activities that were strangely important in an urban setting.  The fact that I wore a tan button down shirt, no girly colors and no makeup; had short hair, a less than busty profile, and 'natural'/overgrown eyebrows meant I was mistaken for a man several times.  For these reasons I felt like I failed at being a girl, but I also failed at being a boy because I couldn't hike as fast as Jeff or carry as much of our shared food and gear. We had one notable tiff about a month in because I smelled so terrible that Jeff had to leave the tent to eat breakfast comfortably. My body had yet to determine how to clean itself with minimal showers (it did eventually).   Thankfully, as would happen repeatedly throughout the trip, the mood lightened as we hiked through beautiful places and Jeff assured me that I was a necessary part and partner in this trip.  For both of us, the satisfaction of overcoming challenges large and small to end up in the Grand Canyon--truly one of the most beautiful and awe-inspiring places in the world as well as home to some crazy hard hiking--rendered us downright giddy on our final few miles.

As anticipated, we started seeing dozens more people as we approached the corridor (where most people hike and where nice things like toilets with doors and reliable, potable water can be found) and had more awkward conversations and misunderstandings than we ever could want.  On our final day, climbing 3,260 feet in just over four miles on the South Kaibab Trail (7 previous miles on the Tonto Trail), we generally encountered warmly dressed dayhikers strolling down from the rim with cameras but no food or water.  We were half-running up the crazy switchbacks and laughing maniacally, sweating profusely in our tiny running shorts and button-down shirts with the sleeves rolled up.  There were some backpackers mixed through, with way more stuff than I would ever want to carry, and they assumed that like them we were doing a rim-to-rim hike in the corridor since our packs were relatively small and we wore trailrunners, not boots.  Those that spoke to me were surprised to find out that we spent a week in the canyon, and not in the corridor excepting the last few minutes.  We didn't bother to mention that the week in the canyon was the cap of a five month trip from the Canadian border of Montana.  The only other visitors we told were the two nice ladies who had the great fortune of being at the trailhead atop the rim when we sprinted up together and jumped and danced around exclaiming with glee that we did it!  We hiked here from Montana!  They congratulated us, took our picture, and told us we must be two of the fittest people in America.

So happy on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon

Tonight we celebrated the anniversary of our last day hiking the most epic trip we will probably ever undertake by turning off the lights in our apartment, putting on our headlamps and cooking a typical trail dinner of spinach-potato burritos.  For the first two-thirds of our trip, we picked up our supplies on a roughly weekly basis through packages Jeff's mom sent to us at rural post offices care of general delivery.  Tortillas were in each box or purchased at tiny grocery stores.  They were a fairly heavy food choice to carry for their caloric value, but made up for their weight in our minds with the increased portability and less messy meals.  Spinach-potato burritos were filled with freeze-dried spinach, freeze-dried sour cream powder, freeze-dried monterey jack cheese, mashed potato flakes, and copious hot sauce.  We boiled water in our little titanium pot--on the gas stove tonight, on our beer can stove with denatured alcohol on the trail, rehydrated our fillings in our little tups, spread the goods on the tortillas with our sporks, and doused liberally with hot sauce.  We ate our meal on the floor in our living room by the dim, garish light of our headlamps once again happy, nostalgic and proud that we did it.

And spinach-potato burritos are still tasty.

* Yes, tiny bats.

2010 Trek: 1 Month and Counting

In exactly one month, Jeff and I will start hiking South from the Canadian border of Glacier National Park.  Our apartment is a wreck of towering cans of dehydrated food, boxes full of Clif bars and hundreds of ziploc bags--nearly all the calories we will be consuming for the next five months.

Some, knowing that they are soon leaving the city would spend their time visiting with friends.  I took a different tack and have been taking advantage of the last few weeks with access to health care.  That's right, I am spending my final weeks in the world's best city sitting in beige waiting rooms with dusty pink and teal accents.  This week I've gone to the dermatologist and the oral surgeon to have troublesome pieces of myself removed. 

tomatillo with husk unfurled

I hadn't planned out what to do about food after my wisdom teeth came out.  I got home at four in the afternoon, having hardly eaten breakfast or lunch so I could work off a little bit of the lost afternoon.  My mouth wouldn't open more than a half inch, I couldn't chew, the right side of my head had a gentle throbbing--and I was starving.  I stared around at the abundance of food littering my living room and knew that I couldn't eat any of it.  

Today, after eating nauseating quantities of applesauce cups and a yogurt parfait, I racked my brain for a savory food to save me from the drudgery of mush.  I realized that there was a perfectly delicious soft food waiting at home for me to assemble it.  I had cooked sweet potatoes and a bag of tomatillos in the fridge.  I knew just the trick for my disabled mouth: mashed sweet potato with sour cream and tomatillo-jalapeno salsa.

an accidental photo that captures the feel of this meal quite well:

quick, simple, colorful, and vibrant

Tomatillo-Jalapeno Salsa

Tomatillos are a member of the nightshade family.  Tomatoes and eggplants--some of my favorite plants to eat--are also nightshades.  Today as I cooked up this salsa, I realized that the tomatillo falls somewhere between these two on the family continuum.  It looks like a green tomato, but with a funny papery husk not unlike an overgrown version of the eggplant's topper.  Because the name is so similar to tomato, most comparisons tend that way.  However, the internal structure is much more akin to a round eggplant.  It has those funny little seeds and the same semi-spongey texture that becomes meltingly smooth with a quick roast. Also like eggplant, the tomatillo's composition lends body to sauces.  I love adding eggplant cubes to a vegetarian pasta sauce for a meaty mouthfeel.  In the same way, the tomatillo features prominently in Mexican salsas, assuaging some of the heat from the ubiquitous chiles and giving the sauces structure.  Tomatillos also lend a brilliant flavor. They have a distinct vegetal note, but are also quite tart when raw or barely cooked.  Here, their flavor shines through, augmented by the peppers' piquancy and the gentle smoky flavor of pan-roasted garlic.

pan-roasting tomatillo slices

• 9 medium tomatillos, about the size of small clementines
• 8 cloves garlic, skin on
• 2 jalapeno peppers, roughly chopped--I seeded one and left the other with seeds.  If you want to eat this salsa with chips rather than drizzled over some starchy potatoes, I recommend seeding both peppers.  The capsaicin will otherwise overwhelm most palates.
• 1/4 tsp salt or to taste

1. Cut tomatillos crosswise into 1/2 inch thick slices.  Cook in batches in a dry skillet over medium heat until slightly browned and a little wilty but not disintegrating.  Remove to a bowl to cool. 
2. Add garlic cloves in their skins to the hot pan with some of the later tomatillos.  The skins prevent the garlic from sticking to the pan.  The pan-roasted cloves virtually peel themselves.
3. Transfer the roasted tomatillos, garlic, chopped peppers and salt in a food processor or blender.  Process until roughly combined and there are no shockingly large chunks of jalapeno visible. 
4. Serve with hearty food to moderate heat or mix into store-bought salsa to make it tasty.

The Next Step: 2010 Trek

I've obviously been distracted from this space, which is unfortunate.  Even though I have a teensy tiny audience (thanks for reading you two!), I really do enjoy recording my thoughts here.  The bizarre word blog comes from web+log, and that's precisely what I need to keep my musings coherent and orderly. 

In any case, I have been wanting to share the next big step in my and Jeff's lives, but was waiting to do so until after I explained to my bosses.  Now that I got that out of the way, I can state here that Jeff and I are leaving New York in about a month to take advantage of the fact that we are still young and able to pursue our backpacking passion.  We will be hiking for five months from the Canadian-Montana border all the way down to Arizona, through some of the most beautiful places in America.  Winter will be spent in Hawaii, where we will scheme something else for 2011.

We started dreaming up trip ideas while we were still out on the trail two years ago and knew that we wanted to do something big at this point in our lives, we just weren't quite sure what that would be.   After months of rigorous research, planning, training, food preparation and dehydration, I'm excited to say that this trip is really coming together.  The process has been intense and sucked up most of the free time and energy I would have liked to spend fleshing out thoughts here.  Suffice it to say that I will share more about the coming months before I fly out in a few weeks.

Springing forward, but not too fast

The snow from my last post is long, long gone.  I'm quite happy that spring is here.  The full, riotous plant growth and showy display of fertility* hasn't quite hit the city, but the season's harbingers are all here.  The magnolia tree is heavy with buds, the daffodils and crocuses are unfurling, and Jeff and I started craving cold-brewed ice tea.

* not limited to plants.  We'll soon see shirtless men consciously flexing as they casually toss their frisbees, and miniskirts are just around the corner.

Paperwhite daffodils on our fire escape

I guess bulbs and succulents are the plants for us because they thrive with minimal attention.

I think these are crocuses.  

Feel free to correct me, I'm only familiar with plants in Hawaii.

Cold-brewing iced tea in our fridge.  

Cold-brewed tea is a great way to enjoy iced tea since there is no heat to turn flavors bitter.  We've been making a great deal of iced oolong and Twinings Gunpowder Green tea.  In the large jug, formerly some apple juice, you can see some oolong hanging in a bag that I sewed from some scrap muslin and a little twine.*  I drape the bag string over the lip of the jar and tuck it into a rubber band to hold it in place.  In the other jars, we just dumped loose leaf tea into the jars, filled them with filtered water and left them to sit in the fridge for a minimum of four hours.  Ideally, the tea will steep and infuse overnight and be ready in the morning for a small spoonful of agave nectar--just enough to highlight the floral qualities of your tea.  It's a terrific start to a spring morning.

* The tea bag pattern is available here.  I would recommend making your rectangles wider than called for here.  It makes inverting the bag and removing the used tea leaves much easier.

Snowpocalypse

The view from our living room 20 minutes ago

Yesterday, New York City residents were alerted that the snowfall today would be severe enough to merit closing the public schools for a snow day.  Since NYC schools are virtually never closed, our office decided the snowstorm was serious and also decided to close.  

After weeks of crazy, exhausting hours doing the work of three people, I've been feeling pretty burnt out.  Today's snow day is a great day for me to recharge (weekends have essentially ceased that function).  I slept about 20 minutes later than usual, but then bounded out of bed, ready to tackle a bunch of dormant projects.

On today's docket:

- Make Meyer Lemon Curd

- Yoga with YouTube videos

- General apartment cleaning

- Finish crunchy berry yogurt leather, a tasty new backpacking snack from this book

- Start proofing a loaf of sourdough

- Watch BBC's Yellowstone documentary

- Possibly put up 6 week late post on our winter backpacking trip to the Adirondacks

Beat the Back to Work Blues: Bake Squash Lasagna

Rocky Mountain National Park

I spent a delightful Christmas in Colorado with Jeff's family, observing how their traditions differed from those of my own family:  they're big into stocking stuffers, they open presents earlier than my family, they don't get up on Christmas morning and immediately start brewing a massive pot of coffee and baking breakfast pastries, they don't have Christmas dinner/3PM meal on the beach...  Our families do share the key aspect of holiday overeating, though.

New tradition: stuffing stockings so full they need sweet potato counterbalances

Also, you know you're in Colorado when your rental house has posters of elk battles.

We had a lot of fun snowshoeing in Rocky Mountain National Park, learning how to use our new ice axes with Jeff's more-skilled sister and brother-in-law, playing with remote-controlled helicopters, and stuffing ourselves silly with fresh cookies, toffee and fudge.  It made going back to work on Monday, December 28th to an eerily silent office where I was the out of office contact for my entire department nearly impossible.  

I managed to make it through the week by making a big batch--two 8x8 pans--of roasted squash lasagna to take for lunch as little pick-me-ups and by planning a backpacking trip with our good friend Matt for the New Year weekend.  I think either of these approaches alone would have sufficed, but together they made the work week fly by without sacrificing too much productivity.  I'll share more about our backpacking trip later, but for those of you more inclined to cook your way out of the doldrums, I've included my lasagna recipe below.

After this, who wants to go back to fluorescent lights and Outlook?

I highly suggest making this when you think that you're tired of squash but still have 5 more sitting on your counter.  It is absolutely delicious and will reignite your curcurbitaceous love.  While the lasagna recipe below is by no means a 30-minute meal, it comes together surprisingly easily and store-bought lasagna sheets can certainly be substituted.

Roasted Squash Lasagna

Salt more than you think prudent; baking mellows the flavors, and a little salt will perk them up right quick.  If you have a health concern that limits your sodium intake, zest half a lemon into your squash mix to take the flavor a slightly different direction.  Lemon, like salt, is a flavor augmenter. 

As far as ricotta goes, I've made some myself and it was incredible.  Making your own ricotta and your own squash filling and your own fresh pasta consumes more time than most of us are willing to give.  If you have access to fresh, local ricotta--go for it.  If not, Polly-O whole milk or part skim ricotta is a decent substitute.  Do not, I repeat, do not get fat-free ricotta. 

• 3 medium squash or 2 medium, 4 tiny
• 1 pound fresh egg pasta - I use this recipe, roll as thin as you can
• 12 oz ricotta
• 3 cups parmesan or pecorino, grated
• 2 T sage or thyme or both or your favorite herb for squash, roughly chopped
• salt and pepper to taste, and then a little bit more
• 1 c vegetable stock, optional

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.  Cover two cookie sheets with foil.  

Cut your squashes lengthwise, scoop out the seeds and reserve for toasty snacks later.  Place the squashes cut side down on the foil-covered sheets and roast for about an hour.  When you forget that there are squash in the oven and the whole apartment smells delicious, they should be just right: mushy-tender, slightly caramelized on the cut side, and the skin can be pierced with a fork.

Let them cool until you can scoop out the flesh without burning yourself.  Put the flesh into a medium bowl and roughly squish with a fork.  Salt and pepper generously.  If your mixture seems too thick to spread across lasagna noodles, thin with the optional vegetable stock.  Taste the mix.  It should be saltier than you would prefer to eat plain, but not inedible.

In a separate medium bowl, combine the ricotta, chopped herbs, 2 cups of the grated cheese, and more salt and pepper.

Prepare either two 8x8" baking dishes or one 9x13" pan with a generous butter rub-down, focusing especially on the corners.  Put a very thin layer of squash mix on the bottom of the pan.

Working in batches of two noodles, boil your pasta sheets in well salted water.  Fresh pasta par-cooks in about 2 minutes.  Check the package instructions if you are using dried noodles.  As each batch finishes cooking, remove gingerly and place into the prepared baking dish. 

Start the next batch of noodles.  Layer ricotta and squash on top of the pasta in the baking pan.  Continue this dance until the pan is full, then cover tightly with foil and bake 40 minutes.

After the first 40 minutes, check on your lasagna.  Remove the foil and dust with the remaining cup of grated cheese.  Return to the oven and let bake another 15 to 20 minutes, until the top is lightly browned and bubbles are coming up the sides of the pan through the squash-cheese filling.

Let cool and firm up for five minutes before cutting and serving.