616 - Whiteface Mountain
Today we escaped the clutches of New York city.
Admittedly, it’s quite difficult to leave this place. It almost feels like Manhattan is sunken below the rest of the world, and it’s surrounded by these massive concrete hills that you have to traverse to get out. Everything about the city aims to keep you inside spending cash.
But this isn’t to say I didn’t have an amazing time exploring the city. But it’d been a long week of adventures, and it was time to leave. Even if it meant going through our own version of hell. If you’re not sure what I mean, re-read my Vessel adventure, except imagine it backwards this time.
Once we finally made it back to the Prius, we rested for a few minutes and plotted our day. Our goal for today’s adventure was to make our way into the Adirondacks- a series of mountains near impossible to pronounce unless you hear someone say it first.
The mountains had a sort of “legendary” aura to them. Every time someone spoke about them, it was always in high regard, with a tone of respect. There weren’t a lot of mountains on the east coast, but these seemed to be the self-proclaimed leaders of the pack.
For this reason, I was excited. Every mountain range these days seemed to have its own flair, and I was curious what these babies had to offer.
The only problem was that it’d been a rainy couple of days for New York, and I’d never heard of weather getting better as you went up in elevation. Nevertheless, I remained in high spirits. The asphalt jungle had reared its ugly face for too long, and at this point seeing any tree on a hill would do.
But as we drove deeper and deeper into the mountains, only one thing was clear: the rainy fog was here to stay.
Our destination of choice was a place called Whiteface Mountain, which was ironic because all you could see everywhere was white. The mountain was supposedly the crème de la crème of the Adirondacks, because you could pay $25 to take an elevator to the summit- no hiking necessary. (Welcome to America, folks!) It also supposedly had insane views.
Despite the thick blanket of fog, we decided to cough up the money anyway. Our hope was that the clouds might break at the top for a moment or two, and we’d get to see something. And we’d just driven hours to get here, so why not engage in the good ole’ sunken cost fallacy?
The elevator itself was pretty neat, but I won’t get into details. Just imagine one of those old mining movies- it’s basically the same thing.
Once we arrived at the top, we got out and took a look around. Spoiler alert: it was foggy.
But we weren’t the only ones mildly disappointed with the weather. A wedding photographer was running around with her soon to be hubby and wifey, desperately trying to find a backdrop to shoot. Apparently she’d been up here hundreds of times before, and never seen conditions quite like this before.
We got that going for us.
At that moment I decided the best course of action was to make the most of it. Let’s get some foggy shots for real, for real. Starting with this one:
“Smoked Out”
Taken with Sony a7rIII + Sony 12-24mm f/4 G
[ISO 100 ~ 24mm ~ f/5.6 ~ 1/320s] [Focus Stack]
That’s Alara and I standing in front of the elevator station at the top of the mountain. I thought it was funny how it resembled a lighthouse. And if you look closely, you can see droplets of water hitting the foreground puddle. The devil’s in the details.
From there, we ran around different ledges looking at the trees. What was fascinating about the entire scene was how fast the fog would roll in and out. One moment it’d be so dense you couldn’t see 30 feet in front of you, and the next you could see 500+ feet.
It felt like you were going in and out of a dream, as the depth was constantly changing. I managed to snag this photo of a blown-over tree line:
I love when tree growth is quite literally a product of the wind.
After an hour or so of roaming, we decided that the fog wasn’t going anywhere. Our $25 bet against mother nature hadn’t quite paid off. (This post is brought to you by DRAFT KINGS, folks. Enter the promo code “GOFUCKYOURSELF” to get $50 instantly deposited into your account when you make your first $5 bet!)
Either way, we got to ride a rickety old elevator and see some surreal fog scenes, so I wouldn’t call it a total loss. We even got to contribute our own fog to the mountain when my brakes started smoking on the drive down! Oh, what a day it’d been.
Stay tuned for my next adventure, where we head down into an absolutely massive chasm the moment the rain lets up. If we were in the desert, I couldn’t think of a worse idea. But this was New York, baby!
I’m on a mission to explore as much as humanely possible.
Want to see my progress? Check out the Adventure Map.
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