Giant Mountain & Rocky Peak Ridge (NY,USA) - 4,636 ft & 4,390 ft (1,410 m & 1,338 m)


On January 31st 2016, we decided to hike two more 46er peaks: Giant Mountain and Rocky Peak. At 4am, we left Montreal in our super awesome Jeep Wrangler Unlimited Sahara (a free upgrade from our rental car company) and started our hike at exactly 7am from Chapel Pond Trailhead. The weather was forecasted to be just above 0°C. However, the last few days, about 6 cm of snow fall onto the trail. Two of us were wearing small ice spikes and two had their snowshoes strapped on after 5min as the path was quite icy. The snow in the lower part was packed with icy patches and fresh snow was covering the trail in the higher region. The first part of the trail goes up the ridge towards the Giant washbowl. From there you hike up very steep to moderately steep section towards Giant. About halfway through the hike, the other two switched to snowshoes as well. Parts of the ridge trail has exposed rocky sections covered with a dense layer of ice. With the snowshoes however, these section were manageable.

At 9:30am we were on the summit of Giant. The view towards the Adirondacks was just beautiful. We could see most of the 32 peaks we have hiked so far, that was very cool. After a 20 min food break we were on our way to Rocky Peak. The descent is quite long and steep (1 km descend and 220 height meters) . The ascent to Rocky Peak is less steep, so that we made it to the summit at 10:55 am. We spend about 40 min on Rocky Peak before heading back down and up (almost back to Giant). From there you descend back to the car. As the temperature was quite high, the snow began to melt and was super sticky and wet. This made the trail more slippery and annoying.  At 2:50 pm we were back at our car and on the way to have dinner in Plattsburgh.

Overall a very nice hike with breathtaking views of the Adirondacks and towards Vermont.

Here our stats: 
Hiking time: 7 hrs 56 min
Elevation gain: 1,881 m (6,171 ft)
Distance: 14.4 km (8.9 miles)




 
Giant Washbowl, 0.7 miles into the trail.

 Almost at the top of Giant Mountain looking West towards Dix Range, Colden and Marcy. 

 Looking over the beautiful range of Gothic, Saddleback, Upper/Lower Wolfjaw.

Icy patches on the wall.

View from Giant Mountain. 

Summit of Giant Mountain

From Giant towards NorthWest.

Beautiful view from Rocky Peak Ridge (just before the summit) to Giant. 
The whole ridge trail can be seen. 

Summit of Rocky Peak Ridge looking West.

On the summit of Rocky Peak Ridge with Giant Mountain on the right.

Looking East towards Lake Champlain and Vermont.

Me with my gear on Rocky Peak Ridge.

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