I have an Adirondack High Peak hike planned for the near future with some cousins. I haven’t been to the Adirondacks since before the pandemic, which is crazy. I think I’d been every year since I was 2 or 3 until 2020. I feel like it’s “my place.” I miss it.
I need Iroquois if I’m every going to get all 46 high peaks, so we’re going to do Iroquois, Algonquin, and maybe throw in Wright. Wright is my favorite mountain, and I want to do this hike as a loop with Avalanche lake but I’m not fully confident I have the fitness level to do what I want to do.
The last time I tried for Iroquois was in 2015, we got to Algonquin and I had a migraine because I hadn’t drunk ALL my coffee that morning. I was too excited to get going. And by the summit I was low on water. It just wasn’t a good idea to keep going. But Algonquin is always impressive view or no view, migraine or no migraine.
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I’m a little worried about my fitness level. More mechanical stuff than endurance. If all my limbs etc work I can push myself forever but if I have a mechanical issue with my joints or whatever (something that seems to happen more and more as I age), I don’t really want to push myself to the point of injury and spend months getting myself back to normal. I decided today that I needed to do a longish hike on the Ontario Pathway (a rail trail near me.) I wanted to take my essential gear hike as far as I could and see what my weak points were. My boots got to me way before my energy ran out. The heat got to me a little bit too. Also a mosquito bit my finger. That I can handle.
So I need to find a way to keep my boots from irritating my right ankle, or just wear my running shoes. They don’t seem grippy enough though. And I did just buy the boots…. but let my ankle not fall prey to the sunk cost fallacy.
I will need to bring way more water if the day is the same level of heat and humidity as today, and drink it. I felt like I was drinking plenty but I still got a headache which I’m blaming on heat and hydration issues.
I only hiked 7 miles before I knew I needed to stop torturing my ankle. So I tapped out and Brian came and got me, with popsicles. He’s the best.
Just as I was limping toward the Boces parking area I saw a bunch of woolly aphids on a maple tree. I probably wouldn’t have noticed them if I hadn’t decided to call it right then.
Woolly Aphids
I mentioned these little fairy creatures in a recent post, but I can’t imagine how many of these I just thought were poplar fuzz floating through the air before I discovered their existance.
It’s not cordyceps
The very first time I saw them was 2017 and I was convinced they were some kind of entomopathogenic fungus, cordyceps of course. Everything looks like cordyceps if it’s the only entomopathogenic fungus you know about and it looks like it has stuff growing out of it and is behaving like no insect you’ve ever seen.
Cordyceps: attack of the killer fungi - Planet Earth Attenborough BBC wildlife (YouTube 3 minutes)
Beech Blight Aphids Dancing
The great thing about finding out you’re wrong is getting to learn new stuff. The ones in the video are probably beech blight aphids because they were on beech. When I found these I ran a half mile to the house to find someone to come look at them with me because I think I needed a witness. I also needed to get my camera. I guess their dancing is supposedly some kind of defensive behavior. I can’t remember why that helps. But maybe it makes everyone think if they eat you they’re going to kick off some kind of “Last of Us” scenario.
Maybe Woolly Maple Aphid
I think the ones I found today might be woolly maple aphids. But also, maybe not.
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I have a bunch of other pictures that I have taken that I want to share but I’ve run out of steam to tell you about them. So hopefully I will take that on tomorrow, though getting the laundry done may have to take precidence. For now here’s a tree covered in a MASSIVE amount of poison ivy.
Great!! I love Wright too.