Big Crow Mountain

9/15/20

Despite the name of this one, it is the shortest of the Lake Placid 9ers at 1.4 miles round-trip. Immediately after finishing Bear Den Mountain in Wilmington, I and my two hiking buddies (and Juno) made our way up the narrow dirt road toward the Big Crow trailhead. The drive up gave us a fantastic view of the mountain we were about to climb, and I was thinking, “Wow, that sure seems like a steep climb!” until I realized the road we were on took us nearly all the way up! Since this hike was so short, I opted to leave my pack behind and take only the essentials up with me to give my back a break. We lingered just for a moment at the trailhead to enjoy some beautiful huge red leaves, then made our way up to the register at about 3:15pm.

The trail started off relatively flat, but before long we were certainly gaining some serious altitude. With an elevation gain of 570′ over only 0.7 miles, of course this was going to be a steep one!

The bright side of this hike is that before you know it, you’re at the top! It took us half an hour to reach the summit at about 3:45pm.

The view at the top was a little bit clearer than at our previous summit, but not by much. Still, there is no better way to spend an afternoon than looking down on the adirondacks with it’s reddening foliage.

After about 15 minutes, we took our leave. I was trying to be in my car by 4pm; it’s a 3 hour drive home, and I didn’t want to spend it in the dark! As we were heading out, we passed the sweetest little family – a mom and dad with 3 little kiddos – who were so excited to greet Juno as we descended past them.

Within 20 minutes we were back to the flatter part of the trail, where I spotted a HUGE orange mushroom that I must have missed on our way up! Jeepers this thing was the size of my foot!

On the way down, we talked about how this trail is a perfect little Adirondack hike; it has all the elements of a real high peaks trail, just scaled back. We arrived back at our cars at 4:25pm. The lot, which had been so busy just over an hour before, had emptied out. I learned this lot is also another trailhead for Hurricane mountain! I had no idea there were multiple ways up Hurricane, but that explained how there were so many cars but almost no people on our trail. Not that I’m complaining! As I drove home, I watched the sun set in front of me, that same odd orange ball that I had seen that morning, with the distinct aura of being seen through a screen of wildfire smoke.

Big Crow Mountain: 2815′ Elevation Gain: 570′

Total Distsance: 1.4 miles

Total Duration: 1 hr 10 minutes, including time at top

Happy hiking!