Colvin and Blake | Adirondack 46er

May 7th, a beautiful day in the Adirondacks again! I made my way up the Lake Road intending to summit Colvin, Blake, Nippletop, and Dial. Unfortunately, the mountains had other plans for me, I had to orphan Nippletop and Dial after hurting my right knee. The walk along the Lake Road was a nice warm-up for the day. Walking past the H..G. Leach Trail, I reached the Gill Brook Trail, this was a beautiful trail with lots of waterfalls along the way. The trail splits into two sections, easy and scenic (slightly harder I guess you could say). After this section, it's a gradual climb up to the Elk Pass Junction for Nippletop/Dial to the left, and straight to Colvin/Blake. The climb to Colvin is gradual, with a nice ladder to climb just before the summit, looking to your right at this ladder at a massive rockface, that's the Colvin Summit. The summit itself had a beautiful outlook towards the Santanoni Range to the Left, Great Range front and center, Indian Head to the right, Nippletop, and the Dix Range behind you. There is also another outlook just before you descend to the col. Once down into the col, the climb up to Blake began. This section sucks because you have to descend roughly 700 feet down into the col, then up to Blake for absolutely no views (definitely the worst peak of the 46), only to drop back down said 700 feet, then back up 700 feet back to Colvin. The trail had a very narrow deep snow spine after 3,500 ft which made the hike slow and miserable in some areas. With deteriorating rotten snow on both sides of the spine, it made slipping off the spine a nightmare, post-holing into knee and waist-deep snow. Nevertheless, I still bagged Colvin and Blake for numbers 4 and 5!