saranac lake, ny

detour!!

so long trail fest was pretty awesome, complete with homemade oversized slip'n'slide and gelatin off ramp, and some psycho threatening to kill everyone with a pick ax and burn down all our tents...

so this guy's a total creep, camping right next to us, giving everybody scary looks and not capable of normal conversation, yet wearing a gmc polo with gmc patches and at patches etc, supposedly a ridge runner somewhere, and right outside his tent is parked a giant pick ax. and then later that night this thru-hiker from french canadia named julien decided in his drunken state that it would be a good idea to jump over this guy's tent. ok so he does successfully jump the tent, but not without knocking the cross pole with his foot and clearly distrubing the crazy dude resting inside. so the crazy dude climbs out of his tent, grabs his pick ax, wields it like a weapon, and says, 'who f*cked with my tent?!' serveral times in a row, then threatens to kill whoever f*cked with his tent, then threatens to burn down all our tents if we don't tell him who f*cked with his tent. so lumpy gets up and trys to mellow the guy down, and then a crowd of guys get up and sort of surround him and try to talk him down, then john trys to lead him over to the check point where the event organizer is hanging out, and as soon as he turns his back on the dude he raises his ax again like he's about to swing it into john's back. so needless to say the crowd of guys around him quickly (and quite impressively i might add) remove the ax from him and pin him on the ground.

long story short, he was eventually escorted to the twelve tribes for the night, not allowed back to the party the next day, but instead layed down outside the entrance ALL day 'waiting for his boss' to show up, who apparently fired him, and then somehow got a ride back to some place in connecticut. apparently also, he's some kind of witch and none of this would have happened if he'd 'had his crystals with him' (this is rumor coming from when he stayed at 12 tribes).

but slip'n'slide was awesome, and so was the rest of the festival, and then neon and cc showed up and we chilled, and then they drove us to the adirondacks where we spent a zero hiking 15 miles over the tallest mtn in new york (mt. marcey) and along avalanche lake through avalanche pass, which was totally amazing (the peak sucked, but only bc we were stuck in a cloud).

important info: slip'n'slide is a serious ab work out (who knew?) and all of our abs are incredibly sore, which is trouble when you're hanging out with three of your best friends, because you can't actually laugh without discomfort.

tonight i believe the plan is to head back to vermont, camp by clarendon gorge, (which we bypassed on our hike this year due to laziness and convenience) and then go to some apparently amazing pancake place, where i will be dearly tempted from my veganism with 'the best pancakes on earth.'

and then, swear to god. i'm actually gonna start hiking towards canada again.