The hike gets steep right away as we ascend the first of the Brothers.
The beauty of this route is that you get up into open areas with views almost right away, and what a view it is.
The snowy, scrambly and occasionally icy route presents extra difficulty for me with my nearly worn-out hiking boots.
I quite enjoy this particular view down Keene Valley (Giant Mountain on the left, Round Mountain to the right in the distance) and several pictures are taken.
After many open spots on the Brothers, we head into the woods for a while, though there is one open spot from which the summit of Big Slide can be majestically observed.
At the junction where the direct trail from the valley comes up.
And here we are, on the summit, with a great view. Johanna is getting quite a kick out of her first official Adirondack Peak.
The last bit of the ascent was very icy, and I got good use out of the crampons which I finally put on. Here I am putting crampons on for Johanna. This will turn out to be counterproductive, since the other side of the summit is not icy, and Johanna will trip in the untracked snow and rip her gaiters and scrape her knee.
Andrew with his usual strange sense of what constitutes a good Markus picture, takes a whole series of me animatedly ranting about something.
Off we go again, on the additional detour over Yard Mountain. This means tougher trail - untracked snow, and later a muddy creekbed - and not much in the way of additional views, though a dramatic closeup of Gothics is possible from one place.
I pose to illustrate the scale of these icicles!
We reach Johns Brook Lodge, and take a sandwich break. Then we hit the well-trodden "hiker highway" trail back out to the car.
