Adirondack 46ers

Becoming a 46er

In the 1920s two brothers, Robert and George Marshall, and their guide Herbert Clark set out to climb every Adirondack peak over 4,000 feet, using the surveys of the day. They counted 46. Later surveys found that four of those peaks — Blake, Cliff, Nye, and Couchsachraga — fall short of 4,000 feet and that MacNaughton, which wasn't on the list, clears it. Nobody cared. The Adirondack Forty-Sixers club keeps the original 46, and more than 15,000 people have finished them since.

Mount Marcy is the highest at 5,344 feet and, with Algonquin and Whiteface, one of the three most climbed. Whiteface is the only one with a road to the top, though the club expects you to walk up. The list's character is set by the trailless peaks — about twenty of them are reached by herd paths rather than marked trails, and Allen, Couchsachraga, and the Sewards are long, muddy, bushwhacky days that give the 46 its reputation.

Planning by range

The badges here are grouped the way 46ers plan: the Great Range (Gothics, Saddleback, Basin, Haystack — the best single traverse in the Northeast), the MacIntyres, the Dix Range (five peaks in one long day), the Santanonis and Sewards out west, and the outliers. Most people start from the Adirondak Loj or the Garden trailhead in Keene Valley, both of which need a parking reservation in summer.

Click a badge or its pin to mark a peak summited, again for want-to-climb. The club also runs a Winter 46er list for those who want to do it all again between December 21 and March 21; across the border in New Hampshire, the 48 four-thousand footers are the companion list, and the Catskill 3500 is the next one south.

Trailheads and timing

The High Peaks Wilderness is the most heavily used backcountry in the Northeast, and the state has responded with parking reservations at the Garden and along Route 73 in summer, a bear-canister rule for overnights, and a permit pilot at the Adirondack Mountain Reserve for the Ausable Lakes approach to Colvin, Blake, Nippletop, and Dial. Mud season — April into May — is when the DEC asks everyone to stay below 2,500 feet to protect the trails; the 46ers' best months are July through early October, with foliage peaking in the last week of September.