Macomb Mountain

"This was a fantastic weekend My wife Brigitte and I wanted to do the Dix Range. We were lucky to find parking on a sunday afternoon at the Elk Lake Lodge. Our first afternoon hike took us to our camp site at Lilian Brooke. The following monday morning we started at 7h00am. Our itineray was to start the ascension of Macomb via the slides. The ascent was difficult but the view was amazing. Upon arriving at the top we saw a few hikers. 2 of them (Jimmy and Don) did the next 2 summits with us: South-Dix and Grace. We really enjoyed their company and we had a similar pace which was great. After Grace we parted ways. They head back down as Brigitte and I continued to Hough peak. We had read it was going to be though and it was true. We arrive at its summit around 3h30pm. Looking at what we still had to hike to get to Dix was impressive. Around 5h30pm we arrived at the summit of Dix... We started our descent around 6h00pm after saying goodbye to this magnificient view. We choose to go down via Hunter's pass even though it was going to take us longer. We knew that this path was easier then by the Beckhorn. We finally arrived at our camp site (Lilian Brooke) around 9h00pm...." — CPaquin • Aug 20, 2018

"Trip report from the whole Dix Range traverse, included on all five logs: On Tuesday the 6th, Mom and I drove up to the Elk Lake parking lot and hiked in to the Slide Brook Lean-to. We got in sometime early evening and had the place to ourselves! It was raining, had been raining, and continued to rain into the early hours of Wednesday morning. But I'm willing to take the rain on set-up day versus hiking day. It was a little chilly at night and I had to put all my layers on to stay warm. I forgot that summer nights in the ADK can still fall into the 40's! Wednesday morning we were up at 6am and planning to hit the trail by 7am. A little late getting going and hit the trail by 740am. The climb up Macomb was pretty smooth, although wet and muddy (theme of the day). We found a sweatshirt, long sleeve shirt hanging off branches at one point and then a t-shirt and pants hanging off a tree branch at another point. Fully expecting a naked man at the top! (joking) Mom was nervous on the slide up Macomb but she did fine. Told her to just lean forward and don't look up! Once we hit the summit marker we stopped for some snacks, water, and pictures. The black flies weren't that bad at this po..." — tscha1 • Jun 7, 2017

"Solo. Macomb > S. Dix (Carson) > Grace > S. Dix (Carson) > Hough > Dix. Note pertaining to the entire day's hike - the trail register for the Dix Wilderness at Elk Lake Road was completely out of pages.. It made me uneasy to not have a place to sign in, despite having left planned trip information with Tommy & Chad before I left. I started out on the trail at about 05:15, in the dark. I'm glad I brought a light jacket as it was just about 40 degrees out (it later warmed up to a total of 70 or so this day.) The stars were absolutely beautiful in the cloudless sky and it's been awhile since I started a hike in the dark. I was a little uneasy at all the coyote howls I heard though! After hitting about a dozen spiderwebs directly across my face I stopped wiping them off. The trail in to the lean-to area near Slide Brook is pretty easy going, no uphill or downhill to speak of really, some parts of the trail are nicely built up paths, but mostly it's loose ankle-roller rocks. I got to the herd path cairn just passed the foot bridge in good time & found the herd path to be wicked easy to follow and in decent condition - no crazy uphills here either. Interesting mushrooms on the sides of t..." — kellieirene • Sep 12, 2016

"Deb and I wanted to do part of the Dix Range, I had done Dix once before so we set out to do Macomb, Carson and Gracie. Great weather, the slide up Macomb was awesome to do and very unique. The views to the East from Gracie were great. We wanted to do Hough on the way back but we missed the herd path by the summit of Carson and ended up on the Lilian Brook herd path which took us out of the way. We will catch that one in the fall when I take Deb up Dix for her 1st time." — hbotc • Jun 4, 2016

"After sleeping in my car in the parking lot, I hit the trail. Getting to the herd path went quickly. I was expecting the slide part to take longer. Surprised by how quickly I reached the summit of Macomb. Met a guy up there and we hiked together for the rest of the day. " — newenglandwarrior • May 12, 2016

"We are working on completing our ADK Winter 46 and decided we would try the Dix Range today. The winter gate was closed which added ~ 4 miles to the hike so we started out early at 6 am. The walk into the Summer TH was easy and after another 1.5 miles we reached the herdpath for the Macomb slide. The slide was ice and snow and took some careful navigating but was a lot of fun. After 2500' of climbing We were at the summit by 9 am and off to South Dix in short order. <br><br>The col to SDix is easy and the 1.0 mile hike to the open face of SDix was very quick. The winds were picking up so it was a quick climb and we were on the summit by 10 and off again to Grace (East Dix). The trip to Grace is also an easy oe being just over a mile with only 320' of gain. We enjoyed the summit of Grace fo a while and then made our way back towards Pough/Hough - totally forgot that Pough came first until we started climbing it! After the short steep ascent of Pough we drop into the col and climb the 600' up to Hough. The views were getting tough as the storm was picking up.<br><br>We made our way across the ridge towards the Beckhorn which is roughly a mile and ~1000' of gain. The ridge..." — deb-and-rob • Feb 6, 2016

"A very nice hike via Elk Lake DEC lot. NYDEC trail to McComb Herdpath. Easy to follow with nice gradual ascent until reaching the slide. The slide was a fun climb. It started raining and the wind picked up soon after starting up. From the top of the slide the summit is about .5 mile further. We went down the Lillian Brook herdpath on out way back to the trailhead" — johngilligan • Jul 10, 2013

"Frank and I reclimbed Macomb since I was hoping to complete a "Double 46". We bushwhacked through a lot of heavy spruce, came out on a ridge with five summits. Canister, of course, was on the last one. I slid down slide pretty much on my backside. Most memorable thing from this trip for me was seeing jet black mushrooms on the way up." — barbaratraver • Oct 11, 1997