Burnt Bridge Pond is reached from a prominent trail head on Route 3 a few miles east of Cranberry Lake. It's 6.6 miles to the lean-to situated on a small bluff on the west shore of the pond. It's a nice spot.
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| The extensive marsh on the west end of Burnt Bridge Pond. From near the lean-to. |
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| The trail to Burnt Bridge Pond is not especially compelling but the pond itself is very attractive. Looking across the pond from near the lean-to. |
A portion of the route to Burnt Bridge Pond also serves as the northern leg of the 13 mile "Dog Pond Loop". That route connects several remote ponds and the western segment passes close to Cranberry Lake in several places. The trail also passes through stretches of forest that are notable for having been lightly logged if they were logged at all. In addition to visiting Burnt Bridge Pond I added a 2.5 miles side trip south on the eastern leg of the Loop (and back). This was to visit one of those old growth stands.
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| At three miles from the road, you reach the northwest corner of the Dog Pond Loop trail at a place known as the potato patch. Meadows at that location were once used to grow potatoes for the logging camps that dotted the region. The forest is now reclaiming the potato patch which is filling in with trees and brush. |
Starting on Rte. 3, it's three miles to reach the northwest corner of the Dog Pond Loop trail at a place known as the Potato Patch. So that's three miles to the loop, thirteen miles around, and three miles back out. On dry summer day that might be doable, but nineteen miles seemed a bit ambitious for late October. Which makes it ironic that the route I took ended up covering 19.2 miles. That meant getting back to the car at 7:00 pm having walked the last mile or so using a flashlight.
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| My route (blue line) to Burnt Bridge Pond with the side trip south on the Dog Pond Loop. I followed the loop trail to the point where it passes a beaver meadow that provides the first trickle of what will become East Creek. That's also the point where the climb up to the notch between Dog and Bear mountains begins. The yellow lines are trails as delineated on Department of Conservation maps. The disconnect in the trail is where an old route encountered private land. The new trail bypasses that section. The difference in the image (brown on the upper half, green below) is because the imagery available in Google Earth is from two different times of year. |
Even though continuing around the loop would have covered the same distance, it would have required a lot more effort. The Dog Pond Loop is a wilderness trail that passes through rugged country. The route to Burnt Bridge Pond is a snowmobile trail that follows an abandoned logging road so long stretches are relatively easy walking. The full dog pond loop will have to wait for another day.
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| Along the east side of the Dog Pond Loop |
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| Along the east side of the Dog Pond Loop |
After leaving the potato patch the trail to Burnt Bridge Pond passes through youngish second-growth hardwoods and, to be honest, this section of trail is fairly dull. The route passes a number of old logging clearings and the most interesting stretch is through a section of forest where the ground is littered with old disintegrating logs. Many of the larger trees (18-24 inch diameter) in that stretch are broken off well above the ground leaving the trees damaged but still living. Most the rotting logs are oriented on an east to northeast axis. This area clearly experienced a blow down event and given the log's state of decay it seems likely that it was the 1995 storm.
The Dog Pond loop section, south from the Burnt Brook Pond trail, is much more interesting. Less than a half mile from the junction you reach a crossing of a brook that feeds Burnt Bridge Pond from the west. That crossing exhibits what is sometimes referred to in trail guides as "extensive beaver activity." In this case meaning that the bridge over the brook is sitting in the middle of a beaver flooded area (Oct 2016). It's probably possible to find a way around the flooded area on the downstream side or you can cross one of the beaver dams. The one just above the bridge is reasonably easy to cross but doing so while keeping your feet dry will pose a significant challenge.
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| Flooded bridge on the Dog Pond Loop eastern leg |
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| Upstream from the bridge the beaver flooded area is quite large. |
South of the crossing the trail quickly enters mature forests that were lightly cut or, perhaps in places, not cut at all. The trail passes over a series of gentle ridges with a number of spots where the work of the glaciers is readily visible. There are old growth trees present in this section and in particular I noted the presence of old growth Hemlock. I was not really expecting to see Hemlock and the composition of this forest is different from higher elevation areas to the south and east. It appears that this would have been primarily a Beech-Maple forest with Hemlock in the wetter more sheltered places. Very few spruce are present. Maybe because conditions were not favorable or maybe becasue those were the trees cut from this area of forest.
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| An old growth hemlock. The ski pole is over four feet tall. |
