Santononi Range, Adirondack High Peaks #26, 27 and 28. Hiked with Meenu, Mark & Kellie.

This hike clocked in at just under 14 hours and just over 20 miles, though my Garmin battery died about 12.5 hours in and I had to record the rest via Strava on my phone (lest anything go undocumented!). It is arguably one of the hardest hikes of the 46 high peaks, and I would say that was true for me. It felt grueling and mentally exhausting as well as physically tough. We started at 5:45 am and ended about 7:40 pm. We had to hike out about 4 miles to a junction, then did a loop of 3 peaks and back to that junction to hike back out. The first peak, Santanoni, was the highest and had the steepest climb. We got to that summit in about 4 hours. We didn't stay long because the bugs were out in force and there wasn't much of a view on the summit. Great views at lookouts along the way though.

The next peak, Couchsachraga was the lowest but the most grueling part of the hike, and is actually under 4000 ft so shouldn't even be in the high peaks. It is an offshoot from the loop that you have to hike out about 2.5 miles to get to the summit. It goes down in elevation a ton and then back up again, and then the reverse as you have to hike back out the same way. It was getting quite hot out and the whole thing took was longer and way more out of us than we expected. And again this one had a treed summit with little view but some good lookouts along the way. We realized at the summit (7 hours in) that our expected 12 hour hike was going to take quite a bit longer than that. So after a brief rest and refuel, we put a little more hustle into it on the way back.

Getting back to the main loop we still had one more peak, Panther. This one was thankfully only about .5 miles from the junction and we seemed to get up there in no time. We were 9 hours 15 minutes in. This one has an open summit and amazing views, so it was the definite highlight of the day and we were happy to have it as our last peak. The photo below is me standing at that summit.

And then it was time for the long hike out. It took us about 4 hours to get back to our car from there. Those were not easy miles as we were pretty tired from leaving home at 2 am and already hiking over 9 hours. The descent was rather steep in places and was constant stepping down from boulder to boulder. Very tough on the ankles and knees. When we finally saw the gate near the parking lot we were so grateful. Of course then we still had to drive about 4 hours home. So altogether I was up about 23 hours. I got into my house just before 12:30 am and showered and crawled into bed and fell asleep. Hard apparently because we had a rainstorm and tornado warning about 12:45 am and I heard nothing. I am still super tired so early to bed for me tonight.