We’d really enjoyed our first adventure in the Adirondacks during 2020 – especially during the COVID years, it enabled us to get outdoors while not putting ourselves in jeopardy of infection.

In 2021, we returned to the Dacks, staying in the same, very cute AirBnB in Keene. For this week, we were looking toward adding another five summits to our North East 111 list.

We approached these two peaks following the internet wisdom, by approaching Giant first, then the traverse to Rocky Ridge, then returning to our starting point.

What this “internet wisdom” seemed to lack was much insight into the traverse between the two summits – which is somewhat evident in the topo/relief image. Steep and a whole lotta slab. But, I get ahead of myself.

And, with a bit of help from the PeakFinder app, we can identify many of the summits. kinda cool!

Nice view, though we still had a long way to go. Grabbing a quick bite, we packed up, retraced our steps to the T-junction and continued onward toward Rocky Peak Ridge.

And this is where the real fun began.

While it was only about 600ft of elevation loss, and the another 400ft of gain back to the summit of Rocky Peak, it was a tough section. Lots of slab, and very wide, leaving little in the way of branches or trunks to grab hold of while traversing. All do-able, though it makes for slow going – in both directions. Downward slab is a butt-slide, and upward slab is very measured steps.

In all, the traverse to Rocky Peak and return to the T-junction took the better part of 3 hours for a bit over 3 miles. A slow pace for sure!

I suppose in 20-20 hindsight, there’s a reason it’s called Rocky Peak – because it’s rocky! go figure.