Squaw Mountain and Wyman Hill - Hoffman Notch Wilderness - 9/8/16

Today took a bit of a twist.  I left the house headed for work and immediately began to hear sounds from my clutch whenever I pushed the clutch pedal down.  Soon it became hard to shift.  Rather than get on the highway towards work, I headed straight to my mechanic.  Leesa came and picked me up.  My day was now a couple hours old and Leesa's as well.  She had a lot of work to do, and had our dog Rev underfoot.  I decided to take the day off and spring Rev and myself for a hike.  It also took Rev out of Leesa's hands for the day so it was a win-win.

I set my scope on 2 nearby peaks that I had never climbed:  Squaw Mountain and Wyman Hill (not nearby Wyman Mountain in the Dix Wilderness).  These two peaks lie in the Hoffman Notch Wilderness in North Hudson.  I decided to access them the same way I had attacked the un-named "Palmer Pond Mountain" that I had climbed twice previously; namely to take the woods road on the North Hudson trail system to the Schroon River, ford the river, cross under the North I-87 using the Wyman Hill culvert, then bushwhack.

The North Hudson fish weir on the Hudson River.

At the Schroon River I detoured north a couple minutes to revisit the remains of the old fish weir.  At the weir it was obvious how low the current water level is in the river.  I crossed the river a little ways south of the weir where it was only ankle deep.  I had brought my water shoes with me and I left them of the far side of the river for the return trip.

Once across the river I nosed around to find the walking culvert.  It's not easy to spot and even though I had been through it several times before, it took me a few minutes.

On the west side of the interstate, I made my way southwest.  I wanted to pick up the beginning of the long ridge on the eastern flank of the mountain.  This approach ridge turned out to be the best part of the entire hike.  After an initial steep climb, negotiating some rock faces, I ascended a very scenic ridge, staying on the south edge of the ridge.  This scenic ridge lasted for 0.7 miles before it reaches the actual summit cone of Squaw Peak.  The next 12 pictures below are from this ridge.

A sampling pictures from the eastern approach ridge to Squaw Mountain. 

Looking south from the approach ridge.  Pharaoh Mountain in the back left; I-87 in the back center. 

While climbing the Squaw Mountain summit cone eastern face, I was in a hardwood forest with no views.  Perhaps when the leaves are down this changes.  I stopped for a minute on Squaw then dropped a 100 feet into a small col before climbing 500 feet to Wyman Hill.  The summit of Wyman is open rock, but it is enclosed by tall pines so the view is minimal.  Looking around a bit I was able to find a filtered view of Paradox Lake.

Zoom view of  Paradox Lake

The summit of Wyman Hill

The sky was getting dark with the threat of rain by the time I reached Wyman.  I told Rev it was time to go back and she put her nose to the ground and led us back the way we had come.  When we got up on the approach ridge to Squaw Mountain it started to rain so I decided to drop off the ridge heading northwest.  When we reached a drainage, I knew to follow it southeasterly back to the drainage culvert and adjacent walking culvert.  I the river I put my water shoes back on for the crossing and then we took the North Hudson woods road trail back to the car.

Hike Stats:

Hike Distance:  6.9 miles

Hike Time:  4 hours

Total Vertical Gain:  ~ 1500'

The route (click image to enlarge)

The route on the Nat Geo Map.  The northern line was from the trip to "Palmer Pond Mountain".