As First-Years, my friends and I were new to the Adirondacks. After only a short time on campus, each one of us had heard about adventures hiking in the North Country. One of my friends chose Mount Azure as our first hike, so we decided to check it out. Pictures showed a stunning view that would be perfection in an Instagram post. We decided to set off on the hour drive to Mount Azure. Unfortunately, our day was less than perfect.
We followed our “smart” phone instructions to the trail, but something must have gone wrong because we ended up at the start of a gated road. According to the directions, the Mount Azure hiking trail was “only a mile” away.
We hopped the mysterious gate at the beginning of the road and started walking. The six of us followed a rocky trail in hopes of finding the mountain. It was a nice day and we were all hoping to get a better view of the area.
The road seemed deserted, all of us jumped the first time a car drove by, forcing us to stand in the grass and puddles of who knows what. We had no clue how the car even got there because of the gate. The driver stared at us, definitely confused as to why six college girls were backpacking down a random country road.
That was the first sign that maybe we had taken a wrong turn at some point during the drive from campus. He even asked us if we were lost, another clue that people weren’t usually seen hiking in this area.
More trucks came by later, every driver, typically an older man, giving us very strange looks. They were definitely surprised by the six confused and tired college girls standing on the side of a practically abandoned and blocked off country road. We were probably the most noticeable thing there.
We kept walking but still couldn’t see any mountains in the distance, much less anywhere to go off the road that didn’t have a warning sign about security cameras or hunters. There were also some abandoned cabins on the side of the path that looked dilapidated, with boarded up windows and caved in roofs. There were no signs of life or anything that indicated a hiking trail was anywhere in the area. There wasn’t any wild life either, except for a dead snake. So far, our “hiking” trip was a bust.
About two hours into our expedition, we were hungry, tired, and sweaty. We had set out for a nice view, but the prettiest thing we ended up seeing was a marsh. Supposedly we were in the Adirondacks, but we couldn’t find a mountain anywhere in sight.
And we weren’t about to keep going, since we knew we had a long way back to the car. We all agreed to turn around. But since our walk was devoid of landmarks, we couldn’t tell how close we were because there was nothing to use to track our position.
After what felt like a million years, we came to a familiar stretch of road. Cars continued to come by, and at one point there was a truck coming in each direction. That ended up being the most eventful part of our day.
So our “hike” was essentially a failure. We definitely got a workout though, because it turned out that we had walked seven miles in total from the car, to the middle of nowhere, and then back. At least we got back to SLU in time for brunch.