One of the main things that concerned me about taking the position at Skidmore was loss of access to the sea – my main summertime activities have revolved around kayaking the last 5 years or so. I consoled myself with the fact that I would have access to the adirondack park system, which I had hiked and camped in extensively when I was a kid. I looked forward to all the mountain trail hiking I would be able to do. Then I tore a muscle in my abdomen and got sick, and spent two months doing a whole lot of nothing in terms of physical activity, which essentially blew the warm months for me.

Fortunately I’ve been gradually recovering. I’m not lifting weights yet, but I can be physically active again, and the past month or so I’ve been getting out hiking as time and weather permits. I’ve also discovered something cool – I can hike even when it’s cold, whereas with the Kayak, while it was technically possible to paddle in the winter months, it wasn’t something that appealed to me.

Anyway, I’ve been snapping photos on these hikes, and I finally sat down and put a bunch of them online. You can scope them out in my gallery, specifically the new Lake George Hiking Gallery. In the past month I’ve summited Buck Mountain, 5th Peak in the Tongue Range, and (sort of) Prospect Mountain on the west shore of Lake George. If you’re not interested in browsing through all the photos (there are perhaps 50 across the 3 hiking galleries), then you might at least want to check out the topographical map of part of the region and possibly the crude but still cool panorama of the summit of 5th Peak

I just bought myself a GPS unit so I can produce better and more accurate topographical maps of the areas I hike. My intent is to summit all the peaks in the Lake George region and then ultimately become a member of the 46 Peaks club by summiting all the peaks in the adirondacks. Watch this space, there’s more cool stuff to come.