Cascade and Porter

We started our journey to become 46ers with Porter and Cascade because after a lot of research we found it was the easiest/shortest hike. Most people start here.

Tuesday, July 7th at 0330 our alarm went off, we packed the car, and hit the road. It's about a 4 hour drive from Rochester for us, plus stops. We got to the trailhead around 0900. You can find the trailhead by searching for Cascade or Porter mountain trailhead in your gps but beware that cell service is spotty in the mountains so have a back up. The trailhead is on route 73, so beware it is a busy road. There's plenty of pull offs but I'm sure it fills up in the busy summer weekends, we had no difficulty finding a spot on a Tuesday morning. There's also porta potties here.

The trail about 6 miles round trip but it's straight up from the beginning. After about 2 miles you'll come to a split. 0.4 miles to the left to Cascade and 0.7 miles to the right to Porter. We decided to do Porter first because Cascade's view is better so we wanted to save the best for last. Porter's Peak is partially wooded so that blocks some of your view.

We started at 0915 and reached Porter's peak at 1042. Since it was our first high peak we were still impressed with the view. I highly recommend using the AllTrails app, it's free and will tell you where the peak is exactly. You may be thinking "isn't it obvious where the highest point is?" Well no, not always, especially if it's wooded. In fact this trail goes right over the peak and starts going down the other side, and many people pass the peak without realizing it. Here's us at the peak with Cascade in the background.

We then backtracked and got to Cascade's peak at 1130. This peak is very popular, luckily there's a ton of space to spread out away from other hikers.

I tracked our hike on my Fitbit and Kyle recorded it on the Alltrails app. It took us about 3 hours of moving time plus the time we spent taking in the views. I had 18,942 steps and we hiked at a 30'57" minute mile pace.

We were pretty lucky with weather, it was 81 degrees with very few clouds in the sky so it was hot at the peak.

Make sure to wear good hiking shoes, we saw a lot of people wearing running shoes and would not recommend that. Also make sure you bring lots of water (we had 2 L water and 2 Gatorades). And of course snacks!

You can find more information about this hike here

https://www.alltrails.com/trail/us/new-york/cascade-mountain-and-porter-mountain-via-cascade-mountain-trail

#/46 Rank Mountain Elevation (feet) Date Completed

1 38 Porter 4059 07/07/2020

2 36 Cascade 4098 07/07/2020