Two inexperienced Central New York hikers got themselves into a pinch last week while attempting to bushwhack off marked trails in the Adirondack High Peaks Wilderness.
The pair, a 32-year-old from Syracuse and a 36-year-old from Irondequoit, had planned to scale Dial Mountain via Gravestone Brook, a steep, strenuous, 18-mile bushwhack route with an elevation gain of 4,100 feet.
But shortly after 4 p.m. on Sept. 20, they called New York State Department of Environmental Conservation forest rangers to say they were lost and unable to move in the thick spruce forest somewhere on the south side of Bear Den Mountain…