An Alger Alp Morning and a New Internship

I'm baaaack! I know, I vanished. I haven't done a whole lot of hiking lately. I've been busy and until these last couple weeks, the weather has been crap, so yeah. I haven't been able to keep much of a schedule.

I have a new internship in Mt. Vernon that's keeping me working long days. I did the math and figured that between internship, the resort, and the paper route, I'm working 72 hours a week. Most of that is unpaid due to the internship.

I've also been working on legal name-change stuff, so too much free time has been spent in the social security and DMV offices. *makes gagging sound*

I did make it up to Alger Alp last Sunday, though! I've already written a guide about it before, though I don't think I looped around the beaver pond the last time. I did start at Squires Lake as usual. I still have the purple fuzzy handcuffs on my pack, and there was a group of cub scouts or something similar at the trailhead when I got there. The parents gave me wary looks and gave me a nice, long headstart for some reason.

Leaving the park to head to the hill.

It was a beautiful day for a hike. I brought my hiking buddy with me.

Along South Ridge Trail

Once we hit Alger Alp proper, the bugs did start attacking us. I need to get more bug repellent. I ran out and made a mental note to get more. That mental note became buried under lots of other mental post-its though. I forgot. I forgot until I went to reach into my pack for some and there was none left. Oops.

White trail marker means you're on the PNT.

I found an itty bitty 'naner slug. He curled up when I came near and despite waiting for him to poke his head back out, he kept being shy.

Shy guy

Ozzy found a mini fir to water.

I noticed one of the signs for 1300 was taken down, with a new marker that read 1100 in its place. All the other markers read 1300, so I'm not sure if someone was just messing around or if they'll be reassigning the roads soon.

No vehicles had been on 1300 anytime recently, but 1000 had fresh-ish tire tracks, so they could be planning some upcoming logging in the area. We'll have to wait and see at this point.

Proof of purple handcuffs

Fortunately it was breezy enough at the top to keep the bugs at bay, so we had time to relax and enjoy the views.

It was low 80's and pretty muggy, so I was pretty sweaty at the top.

Just LOOK at this adorable face!

Some sort of pink flower growing out of the cliff.

On the way down, I added the Beaver Pond Loop, which is just an extension of the Squires Lake Loop.

Did not see any beavers

I was a bit miffed to notice that there was a decent-sized oil sheen across the pond. It's not visible in the photos, but it was there. A logging road runs alongside the north side of the pond, and the outlet stream is on the south end, so all the pollution has to cross the entire span to drain out.

Back down at Squires Lake I ran into the cub scouts again and got more looks. One look back at the lake before hiking down shows Alger Alp in the background.

In a week I hope to re-hike Sugarloaf as well as some of the other ACFL trails. Crossing fingers for more fantastic weather!