Santanoni Preserve - Newcomb Lake to Moose Pond

By the time I finished my hike to Moose Pond I had, according to my GPS, covered over 17 miles. That's a long walk, but it's not as difficult as it might sound because much of the way was over trails that follow what were once well-built woods roads. That makes for relatively fast and easy walking. It also didn't hurt that it was a nearly perfect day for hiking; early fall, cool, and mosquito free. I walked the Newcomb Lake road to the Moose Pond crossover trail. Then over the crossover trial to the Moose Pond Horse trail and out the Moose Pond trail to the pond. I returned following the Moose Pond trail back to the Newcomb Lake road and out.

The route as recorded by my GPS and viewed in Google Earth. That's Newcomb lake on the right and Moose Pond at the upper left.

The highlight of the route is the five mile trail that connects the Newcomb Lake road with the Moose Pond Horse Trail. The Newcomb Lake road is the five mile long gravel road leading to Camp Santanoni on Newcomb Lake. This area is managed by DEC as a historical site and the road (closed to public vehicle traffic) is a great walk in its' own right. The road also delineates a section of the High Peaks Wilderness boundary so, when you leave the road (after four miles) you immediately enter the High Peaks Wilderness. The five mile long trail that connects the road with the Moose Pond Horse trail is a beautiful and invigorating walk.

Fall in the Adirondacks. Even the swamps look good.

The first section of the connecting trail stays south of Newcomb Lake until you reach the unnamed inlet stream at the west end of the lake. This stream flows through an extensive wetland which is crossed without difficulty over a solid bridge and then a long split-log boardwalk.

Bridge over the inlet stream.

The boardwalk crossing the Newcomb Lake Inlet. 

Just past the end of the boardwalk you reach a trail junction. Turning right the trail leads along the north shore of the lake and loops back to the great camp area and the road. The trail to Moose Pond turns left (west) and enters a spruce/cedar forest.

For someone interested in forest communities, and succession in forest communities, this section of the trail is fascinating. The terrain is flat, and wet, and the forest mix is typical for that type of terrain; dominated by Spruce and Balsam Fir. The interesting part is that the Spruce here are larger than is commonly seen. Probably not virgin timber large, but old second-growth large. Added into the mix are large Cedars that appear to be quite old. On a clear fall morning this section of trail felt like a trip back through time.

Large cedars are mixed in with Spruce, Balsam Fir and other tree species.

And this trail is little used. From the bridge the trail stays close to the stream for a mile or so and this section of trail is overgrown with some blowdown to work over and around. There are a few places where if it weren't for the trail markers you might have to search around a bit to find the path.

Eventually the route gains enough elevation that you enter a mixed hardwood forest. This section of the route covers roughly two miles before joining up with the Moose Pond Horse Trail. It's not a particularly interesting section and much of the route follows what I took to be old logging roads. The larger trees are Sugar Maple and Yellow Birch so there may have been selective logging in this area. None of the trees are particularly large and my guess is that logging took place here 50-75 years ago.

A highlight of this section is the beaver pond/swamp/meadow that you reach about half way between Newcomb Lake and the Moose Pond trail. It's an attractive spot and from the beaver dam you get an interesting view of a sharp little pinnacle on a ridge of Moose Mountain.

Fall in the Adirondacks.

Past the beaver pond the trail trends to the northwest as it contours around a couple low ridges. About a half mile before the junction with the Moose Pond trail the route veers to the south, travels in that direction for a couple hundred yards, turns west, and then back to the north.. Much of the crossover trail is faint, but at this point the route-finding becomes a significant challenge.

I knew that the Moose Pond trail was a quarter mile away to the west and I could have simply headed in that direction until I hit it. That option was unattractive, however, because a swampy wetland lies between the two trails. That quarter mile would have undoubtedly been wet and muddy so finding the path was still the best bet.

Reaching a place where I could no longer pick up any hint of a path I suspected that the trail had been re-routed and that I missed a detour. So I doubled back to see if I had missed a turn. I back-tracked for over a quarter mile and, if there was a detour, I couldn't find it. In any case, continuing on where I thought the trail should be, I soon spotted a trail marker and an arrow sign nailed to a tree. From there it was just a couple hundred yards to the junction with the Moose Pond trail. If you go this way you should be comfortable finding your way through the woods.

There it is! Back on the trail.

It's hard to keep up the pace when hiking on a day such as this. Every turn of the trail brings another photo opportunity.

From the junction it's 1.3 miles to Moose Pond with a decent little hill in between. Given the the round trip from the junction to the lake would add 2.5 miles to an already long day, I thought about just turning towards home. But I'm glad that I didn't. The view across Moose Pond to Santanoni Mountain, and its' prominent slide, was a delight. And, the forest around the pond is older. Most of the old trees are hardwoods with some large Maple and Yellow Birch present. But, best of all, close to the edge of the pond I spotted a White Pine in that rare category of "trees with diameter over 48 inches". Trees of that size are rare in the Adirondacks today.

Moose Pond with Santanoni Peak in the background. The slide is well know to residents of the Long Lake/Newcomb area. You see it as you drive east towards Newcomb on Rte. 28N.

Whitehouse to Canary Pond; Quiet and Remote

The last time I stood on the suspension bridge that carries the Northville Lake-Placid Trail over the West Branch of the Sacandaga at Whitehouse I was around 10 years old. That was close to 50 years ago.

Image 1: Bridge over the Sacandaga West Branch. The bridge crosses over a rock outcrop in the center of the river (now covered with trees). The total length of the two spans is close to 300 feet. 

That visit took place during a family camping trip to the State Campground on the Sacandaga River just south of Wells. My family was one of a half dozen families who regularly camped together at various campgrounds around the State. My childhood was punctuated by those trips. If I remember correctly, on this particular outing, a couple of the Dads decided to take a bunch of the kids on a hike. The bridge at Whitehouse was new at that time and a 300 foot long suspension bridge over a major river was well worth a look; especially since several of the Dads worked for what was then called the New York State Conservation Department. I don't actually remember the bridge but I know we stood on it because there's a family photo to prove it. What I do recall is that we hiked to a place where a USGS benchmark was set into a boulder alongside the trail. There is a benchmark noted on current maps about a mile north of the bridge on the NLPT so we probably went that way.

On my more recent visit (September, 2015) I did cross the bridge. I was headed for Canary Pond and I thought I might try to go the extra couple of miles to reach Silver Lake from the north. But I turned back at Canary Pond and the nearly 14 mile round trip was plenty of hiking for one day. It took me nine hours to walk that route and a big reason for that was that it was an absolutely gorgeous early fall day with the leaves just starting to turn. I took lots of picture and that takes time.

Image 2: West Branch Sacandaga looking south from the bridge at Whitehouse. 

The human history of the area is described in fascinating detail by Bill Ingersoll in Discover the Southern Adirondacks. As Ingersoll notes, the first settlers to the area arrived in the 1850s and over the roughly 100 year period between settlement and acquisition by the State the land served many uses. The first settlers may have attempted to farm the land but the long winters and thin soil would have discouraged that idea, and from 1900 onward a succession of hotels, hunting lodges and finally a boys summer camp occupied the site. The surrounding wilderness has been owned by the state going back to the late 19th century and the 350 acres where the bridge is now located were acquired in 1962.

The hike south to Canary Pond passes through a rapidly maturing 2nd growth hardwood forest. The Silver Lake Wilderness lies in what was once part of the great northern hardwood forests that covered most of New York State. Sugar Maple, Yellow Birch, and American Beech were the dominant tree species and, today, stands of Birch and Maples are rapidly approaching maturity. The Beech are mostly gone; killed off by Beech Bark Disease. This route passes through forests where many trees are approaching 36 inches in diameter with a few larger ones mixed in. There are also stands of Hemlock and I measured one Hemlock on the slope leading up to Mud Pond Notch at 47 inches in diameter.

One of the more interesting sights along the way to Canary Pond was the beaver dam on a small stream between Mud Pond and Canary Pond. This dam is (or was) an engineering marvel. On the day I hiked the route (Sept. 27, 2015), it was very dry; northern New York State had received below average moisture for the year and August and September were notably dry. The beaver had managed to completely block the stream and the outflow below the dam amounted to barely a trickle. As seen in images 3 through 6, the beaver pond was quite large -over 6 acres as measured in Google Earth- and water was backed up to the very top of the dam. Unfortunately for the beaver shortly after my visit the area would receive between three and four inches of rain in a 24 hour period. I have to wonder if the dam stood up to that deluge.

Image 3: Beaver Dam along the trail between Mud Pond and Canary Pond

Image 4: The pond the beaver build.

Image 5: Looking up at the dam from the stream bed. The water in the foreground was standing water in the stream bed. Almost no water was getting through the dam.

Image 6: Looking back across the pond from the far side. The dam,, and the vantage point for the three pictures, is in the farthest distant corner of this shot. On the far shore left of the beaver house. 

I'd be interested to know if the the dam stood up to the heavy rain but I'm sure the beaver will manage, they have been damming this stream for centuries if not longer. Using our ability to view historical imagery in Google Earth we can see that over just the past 15 years the pond pictured above has filled and drained several times. The sequence of images that follows comes from Google Earth showing imagery from 2013, 2011, 2009, and 2006. From this we see that the current large pond was created since the date of the most recent satellite imagery for this area dated from August 2013.

The yellow lines in image seven are the tracks capture by my GPS. There are two lines because one is the track on the way to Canary Pond and the other is the track from my return trip. As you can see, the lines don't overlap, and the difference averages around 30 feet. I keep promising to write more about GPS accuracy, and explain why the tracks differ by that amount, so maybe I'll get around to that soon.

Image 7: The beaver pond/meadow as seen in Google Earth imagery from August 2013.

Image 8: The beaver pond/meadow as seen in Google Earth Imagery from May 2011. You might also wonder why this image is "fuzzy" when compared with the one from 2013. The most recent round of imagery used in Google Earth (as seen in image 7) is at a higher resolution than was previously available.

Image 9: The beaver pond as seen in imagery from May 2009. The beaver had dammed the stream and filled the pond.

Image 10: The beaver pond/meadow as seen in Google Earth Imagery from June 2006. The dam was out and the pond was a grass-filled meadow.

I did eventually make it to Canary Pond, a lovely and remote body of water (Image 11). Along the way you pass Mud Pond, site of a lean-to that is in particularly good shape. Ingersoll says that the appreciation of Mud Pond requires a special aesthetic (images 12 and 13) and for tired through hikers on the NLPT the difficulty of getting to the pond to get water probably does lead to a bit of cursing. But I thought it was pretty enough and marshes look to me like an exceptionally good place for bird watching. By the way, the stream that Ingersoll mentions as a source of water for campers staying at the leanto, was completely dry on the day I was there.

Image 11: Canary Pond

Image 12: Mud Pond

Image 13: The path over the outlet of Mud Pond. A split log bridge passes through and should keep feet dry most of the time.

Image 14: Fall foliage along the Sacandaga West Branch.