Arriba la loma EMPINADA! or Marcy, Marcy, Marcy

My friend Milt is a 45'er - that means he's climbed 45 of the 46 highest peaks in New York State and needs just one more - Mt. Marcy, the highest of them all - to become an Adirondack 46er. He's invited his friends and hiking buddies, including me, to join him for his joyous ascent on, hopefully, August 16.

I plan to join him for the hike and celebration because it's quite an accomplishment. I know, because after 7 long years and a lot of blood, sweat (a tremendous amount of sweat), tears and other bodily fluids, I became a 46er in September, 2005. Milt helped me quite a bit to reach that goal, joining me for some really long, tough hikes, including Panther, Santanoni, Seward, Donaldson, Emmons and the descent of Redfield.

I met Milt and his son Dwight on top of Redfield. I had climbed up the mountain with my son Jon, my friend Chili Willie and his son Adam. I went up at my usually slow, plodding pace. My companions noted that every time we (I) stopped to rest, we caught up with the party ahead of us. They deduced, correctly, that at least one person in that party was probably climbing at the same pace as I was, which turned out to be correct.

My companions, of course, reached the top of Redfield before I did, and started talking to the party ahead of us. When I reached the top, they informed me that they had engineered a swap - they were taking the Assistant Scoutmaster from the other group, the faster hiker, and I would be joining Milt - the person hiking more or less at my pace - and his son Dwight. The faster hikers in my party wanted to climb down Redfield and then up and down Cliff, the next mountain over, and they knew they couldn't get that done before sundown with me in the group. They couldn't leave me there by myself, so they swapped me for the faster hiker. Kind of like a winning baseball team at the trade deadline, going out and getting a player to help them get over the top, so to speak. And no one had to clear waivers.

By the way, Dwight was perfectly capable of staying with the faster hikers, but he chose to stay with his dad. Turns out Dwight was going to spend the next 5 days out in the mountains by himself, while Milt was going to go home at the end of the hike, so he wanted to spend a little more time with his dad.

So, that's how I met Milt and Dwight. The hike down was fun - it's great to hike with people who go at your rate. Lots of good conversation, and no guilt about hiking too slowly and holding up the progress of the faster hikers.

I haven't been in the mountains in a couple of years, and although I have been biking and swimming and jogging, none of those are really climbing muscles. So, in preparation for joining Milt in two weeks, I have started doing the stairs at work - 24 flights Tuesday, and 32 flights yesterday, taken 16 flights at a time. Not exactly the 3,000 feet I'll have to do to get up Marcy, but at least my legs should be in good enough shape so that I can keep up with Milt - and so that he won't be tempted to engineer a swap of his own.

See you out there.