2025 ADK Winter Mountaineer School

2025 marked by 3rd year as a volunteer instructor with the ADK Winter Mountaineering School, an amazing program that offers Day Hike, Weekend Backpack, Advanced Day Hike, Advanced Backpack, and Combo (day hike and 3 nights backpacking). This year after some encouragement from our Program Director, I instructed Combo for my first time.

The ability to do this sort of cold-weather hiking and camping means having the right clothing and gear, and knowing how to manage moisture and stay hydrated and fed. It has taken me several years to be able to acquire the right gear and skills to camp comfortably in the winter. I still make mistakes and learn something new on every hiking and camping trip, especially about my own body.

I've been winter camping since 2019, when I took a winter camping class through the Vermont Becoming an Outdoors Woman Winter Program. We stayed in a hot tent teepee and the experience opened up my eyes to so many possibilities. From then on, I was hooked on sleeping out in the cold and have been doing so every winter since.

So I was very excited to have been invited to become a part of the ADK Winter Mountaineering School, an all-volunteer run program that has been in operation since 1954.

Winter School begins each year with Ice Axe and Crampon Workshop - learning to put on and use crampons, how to ascend and descend a slope, and then everyone's favorite - the ice axe self-arrest workshop. Students do down the slope in 4 different ways - feet first on back, feet first on stomach, head down on back, and head down on stomach. Students must flip the right way and dig the pick of their ice axe into the snow to stop their slide - a lot of fun!

The second day is our "Shakedown" hike day. Our Combo grouped went over to Baxter Mountain, a short 1.2m hike up, where we went slow and practices switching between snowshoes and crampons. We also did a little map and compass work.

On Saturday, the day hike and combo groups split into groups attempting different peaks - usually ones like Algonquin, Giant, Phelps, Esther, and others. I went with the Cascade and Porter Group with 4 students. It was pretty cold that day but we made good time, got to switch over to crampons and feel the wind of above-treeline conditions! We didn't have time to make it over to Porter but we enjoyed the scenery and alpine terrain of Cascade.

On Sunday, our Combo group of 5 students hiked 4.5 miles from Route 73 to the Bouquet River lean-to, breaking trail after the turn off to Noonmark. We got to the lean-to around 2pm, set up 4 tents, stomped out our trails, and built our snow kitchen next to the lean-to. We actually had 2 boards from the lean-to that we used for a counter, and got two stoves going to boil water essentially the whole time we were in camp. We thankfully found an old water hole as the river was frozen at least 4 inches thick. We made dinner and made a plan to head towards Dix the next day.

On Monday, we started hiking towards Dix, breaking trail through knee deep powder. We reached the slides and made good time up, then bushwacked back to the trail. The snow was thigh deep in here and the trail was super steep. We broke trail for a while which was thankless work - one person in the front kicked steps, the next person having to re-kick them, while everyone else is not really moving and getting cold. We decided to head back to camp a little bit before our turnaround time and to come back the next day for another summit attempt. We got back to camp around 4 and the temperature was mild. The other teams got rained on, but we had some heavy snow flakes, boiled water, ate dinner, and had an impromptu dance party.

Tuesday - we got up, ate breakfast, and headed back up our trail. What took 5 hours to break the day before, we made it up in about an hour and a half. We started breaking trail again and it took a long time to get to the junction on the Dix Ridge. We only had an hour left before our turnaround time, with the summit a windy and deep half mile ahead. We decided to go for it and headed above treeline, with the snow as deep as the trail markers and the wind blowing fiercely. We reached the summit right at our turnaround time of 2pm and instantly turned back around to get back to treeline. We glissaded down the steep parts of the trail, got back on the slide, and were back in camp by 4pm.

Wednesday we woke up at 4am and hiked back to the parking lot by 8:30 to go back to the Loj for showers, lunch, and our graduation. What an awesome time, great students, and amazing co-instructor, and ideal winter conditions. Cannot wait for next year!