Sept 6, 2010 - Vanderwhacker Mountain

We hiked up Vanderwhacker Mountain today. This was a lovely trail - very Adirondack-y, through mixed northern hardwoods, past several wetlands, creeks and streams, climbing up into fir & spruce... rocks and roots, the whole deal. The trail is well worn in places but pretty well maintained for the level of traffic. Great hike with a wonderful reward upon reaching the summit!
The view from the top is really beautiful and even more so from the top of the firetower. I, with my newly acquired fear of heights braved the climb up only to have my daughter taunting me, after climbing down herself, with "Mom, it is pretty wobbly! Mom it is REALLY high up there!" - Nice!

The roundtrip distance is 5.4 miles, with about half of it being pretty steep. Claire slowed down a bit close to the top but after a bite to eat and sitting for a while looking at the beautiful view, she was ready to go and go she did... running down the entire way! I was beat! It was all we could do to keep up with her! Wow!

September 5, 2010 - Cook Mountain

We headed to Cook Mountain Preserve, south of Ticonderoga and overlooking Lake George. Not a very long hike - 3.4 miles round trip but somewhat steep and scrambly in places. View of the lake and the Green Mts is pretty though it is through the oaks that cover the rocky summit. This picture is my first experimentation with high dynamic range imaging (HDR photography). Very fun stuff - really can capture more of the light in a scene.

August 28-29, 2010 - Camping on Crane Pond

Decided to camp overnight on Crane Pond. Had the camera this time!! Above - Claire in the parking area near goose pond trailhead. We brought the canoe and paddled up Alder Pond/Flow (below), and then carried over to Crane.

DJ paddling up Crane. We headed to the sites that were primarily accessible only by boat at the end of the lake (seems some bushwhack their way there at times). We saw 5 boatable sites by our count. Our site facing north got morning sun, two sites at the northeastern end facing west seemed to get sun much of the day. A fourth on the southern shore had great afternoon/evening sun and one the bay over looked nice but we didn't get close enough to it to really check it out.

Claire at the campsite!

Crane is a beautiful little lake! Popular on this late August weekend, but we did get a site even coming in on Saturday! We had fun and really enjoyed swimming in the crystal clear, deep waters. The water was deep quickly at our site. We had a wonderful rock shore that we could dive right off of. Other campers on the lake left right away Sunday morning so we enjoyed most of the day alone on the end of the lake. After packing up, we threw in a 4 mile loop hike that went by oxshoe pond lean-to which was occupied and then paddled out Alder. Nice couple of days!

August 18, 2010 - Mt Jo

Following a fantastic trip to Michigan, camping in the Wilderness with Aunt Bean and the 3 cousins, the crew came to Glens Falls for a visit. We took the kids to hike Mt Jo and weren't disappointed. The hike to the top was short and fun, complete with lots of rock scrambles. We did not have the camera! Crazy! The kids had a blast and the summit was beautiful. The view was gorgeous. Kids played on the shores of Heart Lake after coming down and they all got their very own Mt Jo patches.

Spectacle Pond - July 18, 2010

Unfortunately we forgot the camera! Claire, DJ and I went out around 2 so we had to do something relatively close and not too long so we weren't getting back too late. We chose to check out Spectacle Pond on the east side of Schroon Lake and not too far from Crane Pond a previous trip we had done. The trail is 3.4 miles round trip and follows Spectacle Brook for much of its length. The brook is beautiful with wonderful little falls and deeper pools and big rock slides. The flora are all rich site indicators and the spring ephemerals must be beautiful when in bloom. The trail is well maintained and is definitely well used. We saw 4-5 other families while out.

The pond itself is surrounded primarily by marshes and beaver activity is pretty apparent. We had hoped we might get to take a swim in the pond, but alas I don't think we have ever seen so many leeches... yuck... Still a pretty spot and a nice hike. We had our nets with us so we caught lots of little fish, newts and yes leeches. Also beautiful damselflies and dragonflies with the butterfly net. We stopped at a deeper pool in the brook on the way back out and cooled off a bit in the water. Claire played in the waterfall and in the deeper water (above her belly button) for a while. A bad moment to not have the camera! Nice little hike we thoroughly enjoyed it!

Inman Pond- July 8, 2010

Out of order post but thought I'd record it anyway! Claire and I did an afternoon hike to Inman Pond. We've been before but this time we did some letterboxing as well. It was a nice afternoon and the pond was pretty in the late day light. Claire feasted on raspberries and we scrambled around on all the downed logs big rocks on the water's edge. Easy, relatively level 1.1 mile hike each way... Camera was crazy fogged up so only a random photo!

Crane Pond, Pharoah Lake Wilderness - July 11, 2010

Beautiful pond/lake! Hike is along an old road and can be upwards of 2.3 miles to the pond if you do it from the official trailhead. The "road" is drivable a ways so we went in about a mile and parked at the goose pond trailhead which made it only about 1.3 miles each way. You could drive even further to nearly the end of alder flow and only have very short jaunt to Crane. I am told people will start to be ticketed for driving it but for now rangers are looking the other way. This makes it a bit easier to get to some of the further away spots like Pharoah Mountain and Pharoah Lake! We're definitely heading in there on another trip.

Crane Pond is wonderful - we saw a loon and it said hello right away! Lots of fish and deep clear waters. We swam at a campsite that had big flatish rocks at the waters edge with very deep water so we jumped in. It clearly is higher use because of the accessibility, but there was only one other party that had kayaked down to the end of the lake campsite. We also saw some fishermen come out in a canoe when we were leaving, but no one else on a beautiful Sunday afternoon in July.

Above - Alder Flow - We could put a boat in an paddle right to the Crane pond with just a short carry over to Crane.
Below - Claire climbed this root system of a huge white pine that had tipped over.