588. "Van-der-whacker"
A fine 5.8 mile round trip climb with about 1700 feet elevation gain to a fire tower with a wonderful sweeping central Adirondack views. (Allow about 3-5 hours.)

This mountain (without the hyphens) must have been on my mind for planting a letterbox on for a very long time, as the name for it, poked onto a spare piece of emergency replacement foam given to me by Steve Glazer of "Valley Quest" fame (pre-dating both LbNA and AQ by many years!) could quite literally be considered one of my very first "handmade" stamps. And, yes, even way back then I had the thought of sticking it onto the back of a rock, which I recently came across lying forgotten in the bottom of an old shoe box. So, I thought, why not still plant it after all, even though, of all the ADK mountain boxes I've planted over the years, not a single one has yet been found, as far as I know. Anyway, we still want to keep climbing these magnificent mountains for as long as we can, so we'll just keep planting in the hopes that maybe one of these days someone out there who knows about letterboxing may want to climb one of these mountains anyway, and the" token stamp" can just be a little something extra to mark the journey. And, who knows, maybe one of these days even the urban stamp carvers will come to realize what a great place for adventuring and planting letterboxes the Adirondacks can be, and will start getting stamps out to these wonderful wide-open places, too!

Anyway, to find this little old "token", just climb to the top of the aforementioned mountain and look under the west side of the natural rock casement that forms the southeast step of the fire tower frame. There, behind a slightly larger stone should be a small gray stone with fading letters poked into the gray foam of its underbelly…

For more info on the hike itself, which starts about 2.6 miles down the dirt road heading southerly just west of the Boreas River off route 28N several miles north of Minerva, we suggest, as usual, consulting hiking books like our old standbys, the "50 Hikes", or googling the name of the mountain - without the hyphens, of course!

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