Hike #4:PHELPS & TABLETOP

My trail stats didn’t start until I turned it on at the top of Phelps

Today is going to be hike number four, Phelps and Tabletop. It's roughly around 3, 700 feet of elevation gain and approximately just over 12 miles. Phelps and Tabletop was June 18th of 22, and this was our first high peak after the end of 21.

Back in October, we completed Street and Nye, and then over the winter, we decided that I needed to build up a bit more. a bit more tolerance for hiking the high peaks. So we did the LP9 challenge and if you're not familiar with that you can look up the LP9er challenge here and it's a fantastic way to build up towards the high peaks because you , start off small and it builds you up a little more with each in distance, height, terrain, and they definitely build you up and prepare you for what you will encounter up in the high peaks. So once you complete all nine of them you should be good and feeling pretty confident to hike in the high peaks. It's a really nice introductory flow , that gets you pretty prepared, and we did that over the winter. We'll discuss the LP9 challenge in the next episode. But for today we're going to focus on Phelps and Tabletop.

So now that I had built up a pretty good tolerance for hiking, or so I thought, that early June I wound up coming down with some gastric problems. I had a gastric ulcer and it was causing quite a lot of pain and I was not feeling well for, for a few weeks. However, Father's Day weekend was coming and Dave and I really wanted to get out and enjoy a hike. So we planned to head out that weekend. So now just like Street and Nye, again we parked at the loj and, and headed out from there. So the Phelps and Tabletop Trails start all the way to the left of the parking lot, as do the McIntyres, Marcy, and everything back that way. Where Street and Nye starts all the way to the right side, even past the guard that you pay for parking.

Now, in our introductory post, I originally spoke of being pretty unprepared for one of our hikes. Well, this was the hike I was talking about. Phelps and Tabletop had us very unprepared, and I was pretty disappointed in us, because at that point, we had been hiking quite a lot, and we knew that, at the very minimum, you need to be prepared with all appropriate clothing, and layers, and be prepared for any conditions well, it had been about 90 degrees all week long down by us in the Hudson Valley, so thinking that the colder weather was behind us, we weren't really thinking about the cold. When we got up there, we woke up in the morning, we did realize it was raining. And it was pretty cool. Cold, even. Like, mid 40s at the base.

So, guess what that means? Snow on the summit. Neither of us had checked the weather forecast . So, huge elementary level mistake. We should have known better. Well, we decided, we both have rain jackets in our packs, let's do it anyway.

We quickly scrambled around the car looking for anything that we could layer up with and help us tackle the cold. Fortunately, I did have a pair of gloves left over from the winter, so I grabbed those. I still had my hat and gloves in my pack from the winter season, so that helped quite a bit. I did let Dave wear my gloves and I wore the, I wore what I recall to be just a cloth cheap dollar store purchase to have on hand.

Gloves for myself.

So, with what little supplies we had, we thought, well, we're already up here. Let's give it a shot. If we get too uncomfortable, we can always turn around and come back. So, that's what we did. So, the beginning of this hike starts with the trip back to Marcy Dam.

View from Marcy Dam

It's a 2. 4 mile trip over some pretty easy terrain back to Marcy Dam.

Now, if you've never been to Marcy Dam, It is a fantastic place with lots of opportunity to camp. And it's a great place to set up a base camp. If you're hiking multiple peaks or a couple overnights, there's lots of campsites, lots of lean to's, and we've stayed there quite a bit over the past few years.

Now, once we got back to Marcy Dam, I was pretty shocked. This was my first time back to Marcy Dam in about 20 years. I had been there. back in my early 20s when I attempted to hike Marcy. But it appeared very different.

The dam had been washed away since that time. And you do have to go down , a little further to cross the stream

than when I was last there. I do remember once we got back to the dam we realized we were getting a little cold, so I put on another layer. Dave realized he was getting cold, so he stopped and warmed up his hands, and we continued.

Once at the dam, you head to the left and about a football field away. Is the new bridge crossing over Marcy Brook. Here, you'll see the signs directing you in the direction of Phelps, which is 2.1 miles from that point. As well as another five miles to Marcy, but we'll save that for another day. As we stopped to check the sign. We, we ran into a trail runner who also stopped, looked at the sign and said, all right, tabletop this way. And we said, yep, that's where we're going to. And he said, all right. And he took off.

Okay, continuing along the Van Hovenberg trail past all the campsites and lean tos. You come to one spot that you'll need to keep in mind when planning this trip. You do have to cross. Phelps Brook. Pay attention to the trail reports leading up to your hike.

Again, a few days before really, up to a week before so that you're properly prepared. This Brook can sometimes be difficult to cross after days of heavy rain. We had no problem. Just rock hopping that day. And our next trip was all snow-covered and frozen. So again, don't have any reference for how deep it can get, but I have heard of ranger stopping hikers and severe storms. In fact, actually the trip that we did up Marcy gray and skylight. We stayed that night at Marcy dam. That night, a huge storm rolled in and that small Brook that we crossed without a second thought was now a raging river of chaos. When we got back to the high peak information center, we were asked by a couple of different Rangers asking us how it looked, where we came from.

And after talking with us and telling them what we saw, they decided not to let anybody else back there for the day. The smart choice on their part for sure. I do remember looking at the water and. And Dave said, Ooh, I'm sure. Glad we're not on the other side of that. Today. I don't know.

I like to think that we may have helped prevent a rescue or two that day. Okay, so now back to the hike.

About three quarters of a mile up from the dam is another little spot with a privy that you could camp at and it's also a great place to use as base camp if you're hiking some of the other mountains. It's about a mile from the dam to the trail split. Phelps is going to be to the left and tabletop is going to be straight ahead. Now, for some reason, both of our trips up this pair, we did Phelps first. I think it's because it's the harder of the two. Tabletop is further to get to., But Phelps is a bit tougher of a climb. Once you hit the Phelps Mountain Trail, , it's a one full mile of pretty steep relentless climbing. Some rocky sections, but honestly, nothing significantly technical. Just be prepared for the steepness.

Phelps has a gorgeous view of the McIntyre Range, which we did not see that day. In fact, because of the horrible weather, we had absolutely zero view and was completely in the clouds and snow. Yep. Like I said, because of that colder weather, we actually had snow on top of Phelps in the middle of June. So when the advice is there to prepare for all conditions in the high peaks, definitely prepare for all conditions in the high peaks. Always check your weather, which was a really, really big mistake that we made. Learn from our failure.

 Phelps mountain. That's number five for me. 4,161 feet high. Making Phelps, the 32nd in height of the high peaks.

Not feeling great but continuing on!

So we snapped a picture and moved on. If you look closely at the picture on Phelps you can see the snow falling!

Well by now I was really trying to just continue hiking and not focus on the fact that I was kind of miserable. I honestly didn't pay attention to a lot on this trail. I just followed Dave. He led the way, and I just walked behind him. I was basically just thinking to myself, I need to get through this. Just gotta go. Just gotta keep moving. Gotta get through it. I'm not feeling great. I'm not really enjoying this. It's cold. It's rainy and I'm just basically miserable.

Once back down to the trails split , head to the left and you go about another quarter mile and you cross the bridge for the Phelps Brook again. you'll come to a smaller trail split and head right. The left trail is just for skiing during the winter, but the trail then continues to climb a few hundred feet over the next half a mile or so to the trail to the top of Tabletop , this last half mile is a little steeper, around 700 feet in that last half mile. Uh, typical. Typical summit push. This took us some time because I really was feeling awful.

It took us about four hours between the peaks during this first trip. But the next time we did this during winter, it only took us about two and a half hours. So you can see how I really struggled here.

Tabletop mountain number six for me. 4,427 feet high. Making tabletop the 19th to all lists of the Adirondack hike peaks.

Tabletop is mostly treed in summit. Not much to see, except there is a small lookout. So we again snapped a picture and moved on. I can honestly say that I don't really recall much more of this trip because I was absolutely miserable. Dave was freezing again. It was at this point that he actually had to stop and put his hands down his pants to warm up his hands. He was that cold. Again, I still can't believe how foolish we were that day by not checking the forecast. I remember thinking I look forward to doing Phelps and Tabletop again, so I can appreciate what the mountain actually has to offer. So to recap if you're starting the 46. It is a good one to do pretty early on. It is fairly easy compared to a lot more of the height. Now, when you are doing your 46, try and do some research and do a little smattering of both difficult hikes and easy hikes. You really don't want to do all of the easy ones all up front because there's nothing left at the end except the really, really hard ones. I mean, if that's your preference, then go for it, but it is nice to have a little break in between doing some of the harder hikes. with a nice easy bonus run and so forth. But overall, this hike is generally one of the easier ones. Like I said in the beginning, it's just over 12 miles. The first trip, it took us probably around 10 hours. So, looking back at the pictures, . We started the hike at 6 30 a. m. Got to Marcy Dam around 7 30 a. m. Got to the top of Phelps around 9 30 a. m. And to the top of Tabletop at 1 p. m. So now it took us almost four hours to get from Phelps to Tabletop. So you can see how bad I really was struggling here because I was, I was pretty miserable. So the second trip up these two was this past winter and it was part of a multi day trip for us. So we actually camped out at Marcy Dam. So my, my time log is a little different but generally takes about an hour to get back to the dam. At that point it was 10:50 in the morning and we got to the top of Phelps just around 12 30 in the afternoon. We got to Indian Falls about an hour after that the Indian Falls Lookout has a gorgeous view of the McIntyre Rain, which I'll discuss in another post.

Indian Falls Lookout is also the cut across trail to the Lake Arnold Trail for Colden and even all the way back to Gray, Skylight, Cliff, Redfield if you're doing some bigger multi day hiking.. If you don't stop at Indian Falls, continue up and we got to the top of Tabletop just around three o'clock. So it took significantly less time this trip than it did the first time because of how awful I was feeling. So the parking for this trip, again, is at the lodge. Don't forget to pay for your parking. And there aren't really any alternative routes to get up Phelps and Tabletop. There are a couple spots of water to fill up, especially . Down at Marcy Dam, but this is a pretty quick one, there are a bunch of camping options for this one You can always camp down at Marcy Dam Or a camp on the way up to Phelps. And of course the big takeaway from this hike is what we learned from this hike. Which is technically what we already knew. And I am definitely ashamed to say we did not plan very well for this hike. Always, always, always check the weather. I know I've said that a few times now, but I'm gonna beat that into your head because I am really so ashamed that we did not prepare properly. But we did complete it and our next hike would be absolutely perfect.

We came right back to the same spot for the MacIntyre Range. That's going to be right, Algonquin and Iroquois. And that trip, however, was absolute pristine, crystal blue, warm July afternoon. We'll see you next time when we talk about the MacIntyre Range. Our next hike. We came right back to the same spot for the MacIntyre range. And the mac’s are going to be Wright. Algonquin and Iroquois.

And that trip. Was absolutely pristine crystal blue, warm July afternoon.

But before we get into that. Since we're entering shoulder season, our next episode is going to discuss that and the LP nine challenge. See you then.

WRAP UP:

Access and key Info : Adirondack Loj at Heart Lake 1002 Adirondack Loj Rd, Lake Placid, NY 12946

Rates as of 1/1/2024 are as follows:

Non-Members

Full Day: $18
Half Day: $10
Weekly: $72

Members

Full Day: $10
Half Day: $5
Weekly: $40

Availability: Please be aware that parking fills early and often at the Heart Lake Program Center, especially in summer and the height of leaf-peeping season. The nearest overflow parking starts about one mile down the road at Meadows Lane. T

Payment: When the parking attendant is in the booth, you can pay by cash, check, or credit card at the booth. If the attendant is not present you can pay at the Adirondak Loj, or use the drop box for non-credit card payments.

Prohibited: Visitors are not allowed to drive in to look for a spot or to wait for a spot to open up. Buses, RVs, trailers, and vehicles over 20′ long are not permitted. You may not sleep in your car in the parking lot. Roadside parking along Adirondack Loj Road between the Heart Lake Program Center and Meadows is prohibited.

STATS: The round trip is approximately 12.5 miles, depending on your tracking device. You'll be going roughly 3,750 feet of elevation gain for the round trip. We generally bank on about a mile an hour for the trips, and this one took us approximately 8 hours to complete.

WATER OPTIONS: There are a couple stream crossings that you can refill water. Again, you shouldn't need to refill water. It's not that long of a day, but keep in mind there are a few spots to refill water if you need.

OTHER PERTINANT INFO: There is no other access to Phelps and Tabletop other than the loj. These two are an early choice for many starting their 46er journey. They are fairly easy compared to many of the high peak hikes while still offering a challenging experience. The pair make for a good day hike on their own and can also be combined with other peaks, such as Marcy or Colden, to make for a more challenging experience.