February 7th we headed up to Lake Placid to complete another hike of our winter Lake Placid 9er challenge - Mt Van Hoevenberg. Funny side note about this mountain - the company I work for designed/built the new mountain coaster! Pretty neat fact I thought you'd enjoy :)
There are two routes you can take to tackle this hike. Either the West Trail that starts over by the ADK Loj or the East Trail which starts at the Olympic Complex. On AllTrails it says the East Trail is closed, but it is in fact open!
We decided to try the "route less traveled" and go the East route. This trail is 4 miles roundtrip and spans over 950 ft of elevation and starts RIGHT next to the mountain coaster at the Olympic Center.
The trailhead can be kind of hard to find. Once you park - walk towards the new olympic building for rentals and head towards the bridge, you'll see a sign pointing you to the left alongside the coaster.
The hike starts out following the coaster track, you can actually see it while you're hiking up. It also follows some of the xc ski tracks, so be warned when you see skiiers flying through the trees!
From here, the trail is primarily composed of switchbacks. Gradual incline, but on this day - it was SNOWY and clearly not a trail that had been hiked recently, so it was a slow moving, tiring day.
After about .7-.8 miles you'll come across a trail junction, continue following the trail to the right up to the summit!
You continue switchbacking back and forth until you get closer to the top (about 1.5 miles into your hike) at this point you start hiking within the trees, This section of trail was my favorite, it has a more "woodsy" feel to it, has some really cool rock formations too!
At this point, you've gained the majority of your elevation - so it's mainly trekking through the woods to the summit from here!
The summit was nice and open, and it was clear to see that on a bluebird day these views would've been gorgeous. But, as you can see we had no such luck! We stayed for a few photos, but because of the wind quickly started our trek down the mountain.
A beautiful, strenuous day due to snow in the mountains. 6/9 down for our Winter Lake Placid 9er challenge only 3 left! Which do you think I'll tackle next?
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