While 2020 was a lot of things thanks to COVID-19, one thing the year did offer Moe and I was a chance to really focus on hiking and backpacking. Honestly, in many ways there wasn’t any other choice (other than Zooming). We hiked a lot in the Catskills in the spring, and while the summer Moe was able to start Hike On Guides back up, the two of us were still doing a lot of outdoor activities on our own. That’s when we hatched a plan to hike the 139(ish) mile long Northville Placid Trail. The trail is located in the Adirondack Park, so we wouldn’t have to traverse any state lines, and we’d be in the woods away from others, so it seemed to be the perfect vacation for a COVID-19 summer.

Moe was in charge of the planning since not only had he thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail in 2016, but also had done a number of smaller thru-hikes (a category the NPT falls into). Given our abilities (or should I say my limitations), we decided on a roughly 10 day thru-hike with some flexibility built in. Packing and planning commenced and by the 8th of August, we were driving up to the Adirondacks to spend our first night in a hotel since COVID had started. Who would have thought a hotel stay would be stressful, but in the end it all worked out, including a giant family meal via takeout from Panera that we devoured that night in the room.

Our original plan had been to bring one car up, have family help us shuttle that car to Lake Placid, and then have them drop us off in Northville and begin the trek north. Unfortunately due to some unforeseen circumstances, that couldn’t happen so we ended up bringing both our cars. Since we had them, we figured it would be easier to break the hike into blocks and we’d do shuttles as we completed each block. It gave us a chance to keep resupplies in the cars, and get out for some town food (and ice cream) as we made our way north.

We began the morning of August 9th in Northville and over 10 days (with a single zero day in there), we finished the hike in Lake Placid the afternoon of August 18th. We generally had good weather (with the exception of one evening of very heavy thunderstorms we ended up hiking through, and a single day of fairly damp weather), and we kept a steady pace over that time.

Having spent time as a kid hiking sections of the NPT with my Dad, it was cool to see the whole trail together as a whole. It was all really interesting to see Moe in his thru-hiking element. I only saw him on the Appalachian Trail (or his other thru-hikes) from the outside – as the support guy – but on this hike, I got to eat, breath, and live thru-hiking with him and it was a wonderful experience. He’s got it down to a science and I learned a lot from him as we made our way north.

We created a video of our NPT thru-hiking experience and it’s on our YouTube channel. You can experience the 139-mile long, 10-day hike in just 35 minutes!