5/7/21
I meet Bethany in Keene at 530am--and we instantly are excited to see each other and have a great day. We load up the car and catch up on life on the drive out to Catamount. I've never done this mountain and was super excited. We did some warm ups, snagged a selfie, and started running at 6:28am. The nerves and adrenaline starts to settle in as we enjoy the trail. We reached the summit feeling great and got lost a little coming down. Back on track we get down and head on over to Bear Den.
The parking lot was open at Whiteface Ski Resort so we took the main trail there. It was quick and thank God for a map because there is a misleading Cairn at one of the open faces near summit. We continue on past the Cairn, go pee, and get down in no time. Over to Cobble Hill.
We parked near Mt Whitney Rd and took the actual trail not the road. This little hill I think took about 25 mins round trip--refreshing! First trimester complete--we are pregnant with an FKT--Will we give birth?
4th mountain Mount Jo! The attendant was nice enough to allow us to pay $3 parking for the 25 minutes we were at the Loj. Normally parking is $15. We went to thank him when we were done but he was gone! Thanks dude!!
Over to South Meadows down the road for Van Ho. The gate was closed so we added on about 0.3 RT. Another quick mountain --you must go past the view and up into the woods where there is a us fence for summit. 5 done already!!
#6 we knew was about to get real. Hiking poles and music time. No talking. Focus. Pitchoff is pretty steep and longer than the previous 3 we just had. A huge group of hikers cheered us on before Balance Rocks and that really gave us what we needed!! They were clapping and shouting!! ? We get to the top and high five each other and just keep trucking. Over to Big Crow. On the drive this one song came on the radio that neither of us knew but we just had to crank it! The best was amazing and we just straight up have a driving dance party on Hurricane/O toole road!! So fun!!
Big Crow was a blessing of a hike!! 1.4 round trip amazing views about 20 minutes round trip. But then Hurricane. This would be our longest hike this far. Again...focus time. To me this uphill never ended. I just kept looking down and putting one foot in front of the other. We set our poles down at a junction then reach the open faces summit. The views make up for the pain and time!! Just get down then one last easy mountain..BAXTER
Baxter was switchbacky which is very unusual for ADKS it was mild and a treat for the last of 9 mountains! There is another false summit so we continued on through a little cold to the actual summit. We run down snapping our last photo at the car at 4:13pm. DONE. We hug and laugh and are a little exhausted at this point but we did it!! We go to Bethany's house and I drink a nice refreshing beer. We talk about our time and share photos. I leave her house knowing many more training days with Bethany will be happening again in the near future.