Whiteface Mountain - Part 1

On the second day of my sister's visit, we drove to Whiteface Mountain, the only Adirondack high peak which has a highway, enabling non-hikers to experience the wonder and beauty of a mountaintop. We began by paying a toll at the bottom of the Memorial Highway, where they told us that the elevator was not working, but we could get to the top via a "fifth of a mile nature walk:"

The long, winding, steep Memorial Highway took us gradually higher, and I stopped frequently so we could get out and gaze out over the beautiful Adirondack Mountains:

And indeed, every vista was breathtaking, not to mention sweetly scented with Balsams:

When we began to near the top, we could see the highway below us, the one on which we'd just traveled, with tiny cars beginning their own journey up the mountain:

With the aging process and my need for leg braces, I'm not likely to hike these mountains ever again as I used to. It's a blessing to be able to have these views available from a road:

My sister has spent plenty of time hiking in the Rockies and in Oregon, so she's seen mountains much higher than this. Nevertheless, she too found it beautiful and inspiring:

At the top, we drove beneath the castle, through that passage on the right, and then circled around through the passage on the left and continued back down to the first available parking space:

Once out of the car, we investigated the interior of the castle. They had a cafe and a gift shop:

And then we began walking up the trail toward the summit, stopping frequently to enjoy the views:

We'd climbed steeply for some distance when I took this picture of the "fifth of a mile nature walk" they'd told us about. It was long, steep, slippery and treacherous. But we soldiered on:

We looked back at the castle and admired what a feat of engineering it had been:

And we kept climbing. Sometimes there were stairs made of stones and sometimes there were just rocks, but a steel cable had been placed there to grab onto. We continued upwards. I'll post Part 2 tomorrow: