FKT Report: Whiteface Massif Double Traverse in the ADK by Coach Ben Nephew
Many moons ago, even before Ian Golden had told the MPF RNR team about his plans to stage a sky race at Whiteface, I had always wanted to do a double traverse of the peak. I had hiked up and skied down with my wife and stepfather but had never run the hiking trails. We had hoped they could have the sky race on the trails, but Ian has never been able to get a permit to go off the ski area property. Whiteface is not the highest peak in the Adirondacks, but it is certainly one of the most impressive. Marcy technically has the greatest prominence, which seems strange, but Whiteface is visually more prominent due to its separation from the other ADK High Peaks. There are a couple of other FKT’s on Whiteface, but none take full advantage of the massive vertical the mountain has to offer. I decided to start on the Poor Man’s downhill, head up to the summit from the west on the Wilmington Trail, descend on the Whiteface Landing trail, then retrace my route.
The first couple of miles are a nice, mellow warmup to get the legs ready for the abuse that is to come. This is good running as well as biking. Things get serious quick in the third mile, where you take a right to head up Marble Mountain and the grade hits you right in the face, increasing exponentially and resulting in a gain of over 1200’. The fourth mile eases off with only 700’ of climb, but there are some steep and technical sections here. Although you get a break from the ascending with a flat stretch across the top of Lookout in the 5th mile, at 4.4 miles in you still have 1k of climbing in the last mile to the summit. My legs were already feeling it at this point, and I had to remind myself I still had miles and thousands of feet of descending and ascending and descending to go.
While I did not plan on a tour of the summit, the start of the Whiteface Landing trail if not the easiest to spot. After a few intervals around the area (with the incredible views typical of Whiteface), I started the plunge down towards Lake Placid. I remember how steep this trail was in snowshoes, but it feels even steeper in the summer. My Inov-8 Terra Ultras were great on the well-worn eastern side of the mountain, but the Whiteface Landing trail clearly does not get that much traffic, despite the fact that it is closer to Lake Placid. The reason for this is that the upper trailhead to the Wilmington trail is 1k up the auto road and a much shorter route to the top.
The upper section of the descent had me wishing for my Orocs, and the rock was wet, green, off-camber, and greasy. I was grabbing at trees left and right, it was a full-body downhill workout. To add potential injury to insult, there were cut pine branches all over the trail. I was quite confused by this, until I realize the trees had probably been trimmed in the winter, and the branches were left in the snow until it had melted. I was very happy to make it down out of the thick pines and no longer have to worry about sliding and tripping on piles of pine boughs. Now, although the eastern side of the mountain is quite steep, the western side is at a different level. There is a mile in there that drops about 1800’, and there are not many miles in the northeast that can say that.
That descent down to the Connery Pond trail seemed endless. I knew I was close when I got to a washed-out stream crossing. During my winter ascent with Steph and my stepfather, Andre, Steph had fallen off a log which crossed the stream. I have no idea how he did this, but Andre bent down and pulled Steph out of the stream and onto the log by her pack with one arm, while standing on the log. It was crazy. The water level was low during my run, so my crossing was less eventful. My relief at hitting the doubletrack of the Connery Pond trail was considerable. I had thought about just having the route turn here and head back up to avoid the potentially boring run out to the road, but to turn right around there and head back up would have been brutal, and I appreciated the chance to run at a decent pace and stretch the legs. I also had not realized there is now a parking area at Connery Pond, which cut off about 2 miles of less interesting mileage. I turned here to head back up the mountain.
You end up with about 5 miles of nice doubletrack running to recover from the vertical assault. By the time you get back to the unrunable sections of the second ascent, you are ready for the unrunning suffer fest. Befitting the vert, that was one of my slowest miles on any hill, and it wasn’t because I was taking selfies with my flip phone. I looked at my watch while staggering towards the summit and laughed at my time compared to my some of my more optimistic, uninformed estimates of how long this would take me. Those were based on recent hikes on the eastern side of the mountain, in better conditions.
I had a much shorter crossing of the summit on the way back and was surprised at how well my legs still felt, at least on the upper part of the descent. I’ll also add that I saw no one on the summit (the auto road was not open), and barely anyone on the trails the entire run. By the time I reached the steep drop down Marble, my legs were done with the downhill. There are few to no breaks from the pounding here. The rocks on the faster, more gradual miles on the traverse over to Poor Man’s seemed substantially larger on the way back, where I had to will my knees up to get my toes over them. Even with wasted legs, the last mile and a half is fast and fun, just as with a mountain bike.
By the time I reached the trailhead, my watch read 22.5 miles and over 8k of climb, with most of that vert coming in 17 miles. I had estimated there would be that much climbing, but it was nice to see it verified. I’m glad I finally took the time to do that route, it is definitely worth the trip. There are not many routes where you get that much bang for your buck, as well as incredible variety on an out and back route. A number of mountains are unique experiences depending on the direction you run, or crawl, them, but Whiteface is especially so.