It has been said that a picture is worth a thousand words. If that's so then the nearly 150 photographs I compiled during our hike should speak volumes and I should need to say no words, yet numerous viewers have felt compelled to ask, after viewing the photographs, "So, . . . How was your hike?" I can answer with a single word - WET! Why then do my inquisitors press for more? I find myself needing to explain the term wet.

The map in the guidebook is not of sufficient scale to show every body of water (swamp pond or lake) of greater than let's say an acre but I count 23 such bodies that we passed within sight of. There were at least 4 beaver ponds that flooded part of the trail. The map does not show every mountain rill that poured into these various collecting bodies but again I count at least 43 distinct named flowing bodies of water. There were easily twice that many when you count the unnamed unmapped watercourses.  Some of the larger streams in the above count flowed along the trail for some distance; the Cold River and the Sacandaga River are two of the larger rivers that come to mind.

We hiked parts of 11 days and at least part of 7 days included a share of liquid precipitation. (Rain at night counts for the following day as the resulting wet leaves are experienced on those days. Of the four so-called "dry days" at least two were hot and humid enough to saturate us with sweat.

At the end of the first day's hike was the last time that my boots and feet could truly be said to be dry.  Even the very short (less than 4 mile) day that ended at Lake Durant ended with wet feet because the residual water in my boots soaked my dry socks.

We walked along water, we walked in water, we had water fall on us from the sky, we carefully dried many small plants by absorbing the water clinging to their leaves, we walked through bogs, we walked in deep mucky sucking mud, we exuded water from every pore.