A beginner’s first look at Ampersand

Entering my last year as an undergraduate student at St. Lawrence University, I recently realized something troubling about my recreational time at school. How could I have let three years slip by without once hiking a mountain? I decided to right this wrong this past Sunday with the help of Wynne Hannan, a sophomore at Cornell University. Wynne is well adept in all things outdoors, so I enlisted her knowledge (and her car) in my quest to climb Ampersand Mountain.

We started with a quick stop at the Dunkin’ Donuts drive thru. All of my favorite journeys begin with a large iced coffee, as they all should. Once caffeinated, we were on our way to Ampersand, an hour and a half long drive from St. Lawrence. We parked and signed our names into the trail register, beginning our journey with a leisurely, flat trail over two brook crossings.

I was beginning to think that there wasn’t as much to hiking as people made it seem, until the path ahead began more and more to resemble a 90 degree angle. I had drawn the short straw of the day, and was sentenced to carrying our backpack until we reached the summit, after which Wynne would carry it back down. Every time I stood straight up, taking a break or a quick drink of water, the pack threatened to pull me back down the steep stone staircase.

About halfway into our course, our different levels of experience became more readily apparent—Wynne is the head of the Cornell Outing Club, and as such could reach the top of Ampersand, come back down, and summit again at my side without batting an eye. In contrast, I have never hiked a mountain in my life, and to my surprise my usual routine of 30 minutes on the elliptical four days per week had not conditioned me for this. There was a family with two small children closing in on us from behind. I pretended to explore a damp rock enclosure so that they could pass without wounding my pride.

Despite the slow trek up, we saw some pretty great things (not as novel and noteworthy to a seasoned hiker like Wynne, but definitely new to me): clusters of hand-sized mushrooms along a fallen tree side like footholds, uprooted tree stumps and brook crossings that resembled scenes out of The Lord of The Rings, the bulbous conglomerate of open rock that marks the summit, and the innumerable signatures of those who climbed before us, immortalized in faded spray paint facing the sky.

I did not expect to be surprised by the view—any informational web page is accompanied by a panoramic shot of either the mountain from below or the view from the top. Pictures on the internet, however, truly cannot hold a candle to such an experience. The sight of the High Peaks to one side and the Saranac lakes to the other was a fair trade for the modified appearance of my ‘hiking shoes’—my white sneakers were irreparably discolored by the slick red and brown mud that coats the side of the mountain.

Wynne and I scoped out a spot at the top apart from the other hikers, all of whom were in different groups of varied size and age. I was interested to find that two of these other outing teams weren’t English-speaking.

We broke out our lunches of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, granola bars, and the remnants of our water supply, and perched our respective reading books on our lap. Harmless tiny spiders and ants made their way around our legs as we looked out at the High Peaks, and at the occasional dragon fly floating effortlessly over the edge—if only we could do the same.

After an hour or so at the top, it was time to begin our descent. Being a first-time climber, I expected a feat no less difficult than the trudge upward. Instead, I delegated my back pack burden to my hiking buddy and we bounded downward jubilantly, stopping at every bubbling brook to splash our faces and arms and exchanging pleasantries with the very last hikers of the day as they made their way up Ampersand.

Excluding our prolonged break at the top, the round trip took us about three hours. We cut our time on the way down by nearly half, saving plenty of time for a pit-stop at Stewarts for some medicinal double-scoops of mint chocolate chip ice cream during the car ride home to St. Lawrence—by the time we got out of the car my legs felt more like anchors than workable limbs.

Now that I have some real experience under my belt, I’m looking ahead at which trail might be next. Leave a suggestion in a comment below.