Closer to home

The weather has been really nice here in upstate NY the past week or so. There have been a couple of afternoons with heavy thunderstorms, but in between, skies have been big bright and blue with lots of puffy white clouds drifting lazily along. With cool temps around 68 and light breezes, you couldn’t ask for better weather to be out in the woods.

I had the week off work with big plans to get lots of projects done around the house.  Oh well. Those projects will be here when I get back, but this nice weather will be gone before you know it.

I stayed closer to home this week than last what with the big overnight trip to the mountains and all. I love the Adirondacks for the sheer size and wildness of the place. There are places there that you can actually get lost if you aren’t careful. Some of the more popular spots can be down right crowded, but there are lots of quieter places where you can walk all day without seeing another soul.

On the other hand, trips to the mountains can be harsh at times. I came back from the last trip tired, sore, and dehydrated with innumerable itchy bug bites that stayed with me for days despite the lingering taste of DEET in my mouth. Long walks in wild areas always call for dragging along lots of gear (just in case) and lots of liquids (there never seems to be enough). I take time along the way to shot photos and to just sit and ponder (when the bugs will let me), but still I often feel that I’m hurrying to reach some destination – a mountain peak or a pond or just trying to complete a circuit and get back to camp before dark.

This week I was back in my old stomping grounds – places that I’ve been hunting, fishing, and hiking in since I was kid going out with my father. The distances aren’t as great – 500 acres here or a couple thousand there. My paths are much more wandering and leisurely. I don’t need a map or survival gear or bug repellant. I wouldn’t even need a pack if it wasn’t for the camera stuff and a few candy bars.

I love to walk light free and there’s nothin’ like leaning back against a big rock by a sun dappled splashing waterfall closing your eyes and listening to the sound of the water and the birds and the rustling leaves. I can shoot the whole day here without going far distance wise and without feeling pressured to get anywhere in particular.

MDW

Sly Pond Revisited

This past weekend I headed back to the Moose River Plains Wild Forest in the Adirondack mountains. Last summer I hiked here for the first time on a failed attempt to reach Sly pond. The trail to Sly pond is not heavily used so it is a bit tricky to follow at times.

After three or four miles, the trail literally runs out into the middle of a beaver pond and stops. I was stymied. Although I continued across the pond by jumping from hillock to hillock and walking the beaver dam, I was never able to find the trail on the other side. I ended up giving it up and heading back to camp. I decided to give it another try.

You take Cedar River Rd. to Wakely dam where there is a registration point before entering the seasonal road that runs from there to the west entrance at Limekiln Lake. There are campsites on either side of the road beginning at about seven miles. Eventually there is a left hand turn for the trail to Sly pond. There is a sign post here, but the sign is gone.

There is one campsite on the side road to the trail head, but the road was blocked by blowdown. I camped at a site back on the main road near the turn off.

Early in the morning I headed up the trail. First you need to wade across the Moose river. Water levels seemed to be a little down all over so this was not a problem. If you pick the right spot, the water is only about knee high.

I had gotten an early start, the weather was fine, and I had studied my topographical maps carefully so I was looking forward to a leisurely walk confident that I could find my way to the pond. Alas, it was not to be.

No sooner had I crossed the river than I started running into blowdown. Obviously this is to be expected early in the year before the people who kindly maintain the trails (thanks folks)  can get out an clean things up a bit. However, the amount of blowdown was amazing. Every few feet there were downed trees criss-crossing the trial. Some I could climb over, some I had to crawl under, some I turned my back on and pushed through, others I just had to go around.

It was actually easier to bushwhack through the woods than it was to follow the trail. It seems that the trees along the trail are especially prone to losing their tenuous grip on the thin soil since they are deprived of the support of surrounding trees. I wanted to stick with the trail though, so I toiled on hour after hour climbing and hacking my way along.

Finally, tired, sweating and bug bitten, I reached the beaver pond and stood by the tree with the final trail marker surrounded by water. I crossed over and started looking for the trail. It seems that you need to bear to the right immediately after reaching the far shore. There are no markers – just follow the general clearing through the trees.

In a few hundred yards, this leads to another beaver pond and another confusing point. The key here is to NOT cross the beaver pond, but instead to turn left and follow the general clearing up hill. There are no trail markers here either, but I did notice that someone had made scrapes in the bark of two trees on either side of the trail.

As I climbed up the hill I was never sure if I was on the right track or not. The open line that I was following often ran in the bed of a seasonal stream so I didn’t know if this was a trail or if I was just following the stream to who knows where. Finally after what seemed like a mile or more of relatively steep climbing, I found a trail marker on the side of a blown down tree. Woo Hoo!

From here on there was an occasional marker or sometimes a bit of surveyor’s tape tied to a branch. I reached Sly pond around noon after a hard slog. At around 2885 feet (according to my GPS thingy)  Sly pond is one of the highest bodies of water in the Adirondacks.

I puttered about for a while taking some photos and stuff. At high noon, the lighting was not what you would want for landscape type shots so I was not happy with any of the ones that I took.

I dreaded hacking my way back down that trail so I decided to circle around the pond to the outlet and then follow the stream down. This would cut a fair bit off the looping trail and maybe avoid the blowdown problem.

At first this was a good deal. The water was low and I hopped from rock to rock down the stream. There were a few spots where it got steep enough that I had to get down on all fours and scootch down wide clear sections of rock like ski slopes.

Unfortunately as I got lower down the mountain and things started to level off, two things happened – the blowdown started across the stream and the black flies and mosquitoes went nuts. The blowdown was not too bad, but the bugs were. They seemed immune to DEET and they were so thick that I must have breathed in a pound of the little buggers!

Eventually I made my way down to the Moose river. The trouble now is that I was a couple of miles east of the original trailhead where my car was parked. My choice was to try and bushwhack along the river or to head due north through the woods until I hit the road and then walk down it.

I decided to head through the woods which worked out OK. It took longer than I expected so I was a little worried at one point that I had read the map wrong or something, but eventually I came out on the road.

Well, it wasn’t the leisurely walk in the woods that I had envisioned, but it certainly wasn’t dull either.

 MDW