Climbing The Pinnacle - Part 1

We are near the Canadian border and it's supposed to be winter, but we recently had a sunny day with highs near 55 F. It seemed otherworldly for this part of the world. To celebrate, I took the dogs on the trail which led to "The Pinnacle." The trail head is 18 miles south of my house and then 1.6 miles into the Adirondack forest. It was an easy drive. I parked, and we all hit the leaf strewn trail:

The new, more slender version of Seamus had much more energy than he used to have:

And all the dogs ran and played - and then ran some more. As for me, I spent a lot of time hollering at them to "Get back here!"

"Who, me?"

"I'm having too much fun. I'll come back when you're really, really mad"

But aside from the dogs running too far ahead, it was great fun and we progressed uphill until I could see the mountains off through the trees, on the other side of a deep valley:

Clover and Daphne ran and wrestled and played Queen Of The Hill:

I can almost hear them giggling when I look at this picture. Five dogs in the forest is a fun experience for them. I was more cautious, with leg braces, painful ankles and nitro glycerine in case of heart problems - but I was having fun too:

This was a rocky landscape, reminiscent of the Catskills but a bit unusual for the Adirondacks. Clover and Daphne found all those rocks to be great playground equipment:

Did you notice the leafy growths on the rock in the above photo? I've been seeing them for years and kept trying to identify them. I believed them to be Liverworts. Well, I've finally got them figured out and they are called Rock Tripe, a form of Lichen. A lichen is a combination of fungi and algae, living together in a mutually beneficial relationship. Rock Tripe lives in the coldest climates and is "green" all year long. Furthermore, it grows up high on rocks where it won't be buried in snow. For these reasons, I have read, the Native Americans used them for emergency survival food (apparently they aren't at all tasty):

The trail took us gradually uphill, zigzagging across the face of the mountain:

But we were just getting started. I'll post Part 2 tomorrow: