Northville-Placid Trail – A Perfect Two-Week Fitness Vacation

By Jeff Case

I’d always considered myself fit. When I was young, I had a newspaper route that was eight blocks from my home and I carried my papers to it, lest someone pilfer from my meager profits. I played baseball in high school. I put a ton of miles on my Fuji S10s road bike. I was on the ice every winter, slapping pucks all over the place. I ran, walked, and worked out at home. My senior year I didn’t even have to take Phys-Ed; they offered me “independent study” credit. I simply had to log my activities whether I was bowling or pumping iron.

Then along came romance, and soon after that marriage. Needless to say, newfound responsibility required newfound employment hours. Pretty soon my personal fitness had to take a back seat to more important matters such as rent and car payments. Oh, the residual calorie furnace burned clean for a while. But before long, the furnace couldn’t keep up with the fuel provided by food service employment, and a couple of loving Greek matrons that felt a personal responsibility to “fatten me up.” What was I to do?

Well, like my father before me, and countless other male bread winners and bread eaters, I was resigned to the typical middle-age spread that rapidly ensued. Going up a pant size every year became the norm. At least it was, until I discovered what proved to be a rather enjoyable reset to my personal fitness, I hiked the Northville-Placid Trail end-to-end.

If you’re not familiar with it, the NPT is an approximately 133-mile continuous footpath across the Adirondack Park. It’s the oldest and longest marked foot trail in New York. A noteworthy fact regarding it is that the purpose of constructing the trail led to the formation of the Adirondack Mountain Club. This year the trail is celebrating its’ 100th anniversary. Now, to the uninitiated, please understand it’s not your average suburban walk in the park. No, it’s a sporadically maintained footpath that winds through the remotest parts of the state. Granted, it is a marked trail. But in the wilderness, anything can happen and does happen. Trees fall on the trail and must be dealt with. Beavers move in and renovate the landscape. Rivers and streams may not have bridges, and if they do have bridges they may not be there when you get there. And as you might expect, there are hills to climb, many of them. And then there’s the weather to contend with, but that’s another story.

Now, I should mention that I had some backpacking experience before doing the trail. I had done several weekend trips of six-to-eight-mile lengths. They seemed pretty tough as I navigated my way along hill and dale in the southern Adirondacks. My pack seemed heavy, the trails seemed difficult, and I seemed to be out of shape! By the end of the day, I was tired and sore. However unlikely it may seem, the prospect of backpacking a long trail was very appealing to me. 

Of course, the grandaddy of all trails, the Appalachian Trail, loomed in the distance. As appealing as it might be, at 2,100 miles and five months duration, there was no way that my circumstances would allow even entertaining it. But somehow the Northville-Placid Trail seemed a reasonable possibility. After all, I was already used to two or three days out at a time. What if I could simply string together the equivalent of five or six trips? If I could work out the logistics, it just might be a possibility, so I bought the guidebook and began to plan. Before long I put in my notice at work with the intent of actually accomplishing it. Little did I know at the time that a two-week vacation would turn out to be a more than 33-year avocation.

I began to plan and train. Planning was fairly easy. The Adirondack Mountain Club published a slim volume at the time, separate from the High Peaks guidebook, that dealt with the trail and planning. That was pretty much straight-forward. Gear was suggested and all I had to do was purchase it. But what about the physical training? Books on the subject of backpacking were scant at the time, and the internet wasn’t even thought of. One of those books suggested that one pound of weight on your feet equaled five pounds of weight on your back. Hmm, it occurred to me that if that premise were true, by walking with weight on my ankles I would be able to train for walking with weight on my back. Hence began my training with ankle weights, and thereafter a weighted vest.

Before long, the day to leave finally came, and I found myself walking down the trail with about 40 pounds on my back. Beautiful scenery and nearly perfect weather contributed to what seemed to be a fairly easy 7.3 miles on the first day. Not bad for a start. The next day gave way to 11.3 miles. Then 11.1 and so forth. Before I knew it, I was covering more miles than I thought I ever could. The exertion of each of those long days was whipping my body into shape. Muscles were getting stronger and firmer. Hills and steep grades at first were agonizing – an exercise in deep breathing and sometimes gasping for air. I told myself “I’m never gonna die of a heart attack, because if I was, I’d be dead by now.” Before long they became what I came to call “butt burners,” because of the calories they were burning.

The intense exercise was only part of the equation. The other part was unexpected: A drop in appetite. I had packed snacks and treats of all sorts, along with nutritious ready-to-eat meals. But at the end of the day, I wasn’t hungry. Maybe it was the summertime heat. Maybe it was the exhaustion. In any case my calorie consumption dropped with my appetite. The result was the pounds began to come off.

The days on the trail grew to be beautiful. The scenery was delightful, sometimes spectacular. There seemed to be new things to see and enjoy around every bend in the trail. Before long I reached the halfway point, the seventh day, and Blue Mountain Lake. This brought with it a day off to go into town and pick up a package of food mailed to the post office. Without a heavy pack, the long walk into town was almost like a ballet, skipping along the tops of rocks effortlessly. When I returned to camp I began to notice it; my clothes were getting loose, noticeably loose, welcomely loose.

The second week began with a difficult climb up and over Blue Ridge in the Fishing Brook Range, on the way to Long Lake. This brought another day off and a trip into town to retrieve a package, and surprisingly, to send a package of unneeded food home. By this, the 11th day of my trip, I felt like a new man. When I ventured into town, I did not crave sweets and salty snacks at all. I wanted yogurt and cheese, and vegetables and meat. Then soon enough, on the 14th day I reached Lake Placid, triumphant in having successfully completed my end-to-end trip.

Once I returned home, I weighed myself and found that I had lost 15 pounds. My clothes were all baggy and loose, and I felt like a million bucks. Because I had increased my muscle mass, my calorie expenditure continued at a higher rate than normal, so I continued to lose several more pounds. Additionally, I was more conscious of my eating habits, and I’m sure that contributed to my weight loss and overall fitness level. I made a determined effort to keep my activity level high, and my calorie consumption low, and that has paid off over time. Now, I regularly tout the benefits of taking the challenge of hiking the trail as ‘a perfect two-week fitness vacation.’

It wasn’t long after completing that first end-to-end trip that I began longing to repeat the experience. Little did I know then that it would turn into an annual trek, with just several exceptions, that would culminate in 30 completed trips to this date. An added bonus is that over 20 years ago the Adirondack Mountain Club invited me to write and edit the guide to the Northville Placid Trail, part of the Forest Preserve Series of guidebooks. All in all, given the modest expense, the experience of seeing the Adirondacks in person, and the health and fitness benefits, this may be the ideal vacation. Perhaps this centennial will find you on the NPT, a two-week fitness vacation to better health!

Jeffrey Case (jeffrey_case@hotmail.com) spends his time with his wife Dora at their homes in Salisbury, Md. and Syracuse. When he can’t be on the NPT or bagging one of the 46, he can be found riding his StreetStrider or walking his dog, Molly.