Pine Orchard from Girards' Sugarbush

I'm dedicating this post to my Dad. He turned 82 yesterday. Thanks Dad for instilling my love of the Adirondacks and of hiking. Even though you'll have trouble believing this, given all the trouble you had "getting me off my duff" when I was a kid. I just want you to know that I was saving my energy for these crazy hikes. Thanks for everything. I owe it all to you.


Three separate marked trails reach the Pine Orchard east of Wells. The route from the north starts on Route 8 and leads initially to the site of a long abandoned maple sugaring operation. This is known as the Girards Sugarbush trail (Note: There are two possible starting points for this route; I'm describing the shorter one. See the notes at the end for details on the shortcut).

Route to the Pine Orchard starting at the Girards' Sugarbush trailhead on Rte 8, northeast of Wells. 

This northern route to the Pine Orchard follows an abandoned woods road through the heart of the Wilcox Lake Wild Forest. The route has its' own unique appeal but it's a tough walk. The entire 5.5 mile route is marked as a snowmobile trail and for much of the way it is wet and rough. Not surprising really; in the Adirondacks snowmobile trails tend to be wetter, rockier and more in-grown than well-used hiking trails. On the plus side snowmobile trails generally have good bridges and the two major brooks you encounter along this route are crossed by solid bridges. Adding to the fun is that whomever originally picked this route somehow managed to cover the entire distance without crossing any level ground. My GPS recorded the total elevation gain for the round trip as over 3000 feet. And trust me; that's an underestimate. This is a tough route.

In mid-march I wrote that Spring had arrived in the southern Adirondacks. In mid April, following a stretch of unusually cold weather it's fair to say that Winter has made a last stand.  On April 12th, ponds and swamps were frozen over and a dusting of snow remained in shaded areas. Spring is coming, but not quite yet.

So why walk this trail? For starters, the Pine Orchard never fails to impress. If not for the existence of the easy route to the orchard from Flatters road this trail would see a lot more traffic. But that route does exist; so why walk this trail? The main appeal is that this is wild county with forests that are rapidly approaching what we imprecisely refer to as 'old growth'. Some of the best stands of old growth forest in the Adirondacks are located in the the southern third of the Park and the forests you pass through along this route are representative of that.

Barbara McMartin offers an explanation for why these forests exist in her The Great Forest Of the Adirondacks. And it starts with the timing. The first settlers and loggers who headed north in the decades following the revolutionary war were naturally drawn to the more accessible areas in what is now the southern portion of the Adirondack Park. Some land was logged or cleared for farming during that first wave of settlement but the rough terrain limited the extent. On top of that, areas logged before 1850 have now had over 150 years for the second growth to reach full size and for the forests to assume characteristics that we associate with old growth. There is no definitive point at which a forest becomes "old growth" but, in the southern Adirondacks, areas mostly undisturbed for more than 150 years exhibit many old-growth characteristics. There are additional successional steps between 'old growth' and a climax forest, but forests left to their own devices for 150 to 200 years are getting there.

The second reason that old growth is found in the southeast is that the industrial loggers of the 19th century were primarily interested in softwoods; spruce and pine for pulp and lumber and hemlock for the tanning industry. Much of the southern portion of the great Adirondack forest was dominated by hardwoods: Maple, Beech, Ash and Yellow Birch with a half dozen other species mixed in.There were softwoods in the southern Adirondacks but those stands tended to be smaller and more scattered. McMartin states that while selective logging for softwoods did take place in the south the hardwoods were commonly skipped over. This helps to accounts for the mature hardwoods seen all along the route described here.

This route lies entirely in the Wilcox Lake Wild Forest. Wild Forest is a land use designation that permits some uses not allowed in Wilderness areas including limited motorized access. Still, coming upon the fireplace and outhouse pictured above was surprising and amusing. The fireplace is of the style commonly seen at DEC campgrounds, so maybe there was some easier access to this spot in the past. As it stands today these "facilities" sit idly in the middle of nowhere. 

Forest scene just north of the Pine Orchard.

McMartin's hypothesis that some of the best old stands of Adirondack forest are in the south is borne out by what we see today. Mature hardwoods are seen all along this route and there is a stand just north of the Pine Orchard where the canopy trees are mostly Maples with diameters greater than 30 inches with some even larger trees mixed in. This is what an old growth hardwood forest looks like.

Notes:
There is a marked trailhead for Girards' Sugarbush on NY Route 8 two miles north of the intersection of Routes 8 and 30 (on trail signs this is referred to as 'Griffens'. From this spot the trail passes over rough terrains for over a mile to the point where it intersects the route I've described less than 100 yards from Rte. 8. To bypass this section, pass the formal trailhead (assuming you are approaching from Wells), and drive an additional 1.5 miles (approximately) and watch for an overgrown woods road on the right. It can be hard to spot but there is a sign announcing Sacandaga River Access Parking at the point where the trail enters the woods. If you reach that parking area (also on the right) you have gone to far. There is plenty of parking alongside the road right at the trailhead or you can pull into the parking area and walk back the .2 miles to the start of the trail. There is a trail register 100 yards in so you'll know for sure that you are the right spot.

Wilcox Lake via Pumpkin Hollow

By the late 19th century the area north of Great Sacandaga Lake was dotted with hamlets and farms. Most of those homesteads are now gone -reclaimed by the forest-- but some of the forest roads that once connected them remain in use as trails. The Pumpkin Hollow trail to Wilcox Lake follows one of those routes.

Image One: From the Stony Creek USGS Historical Topographic map. 1:62500, 1910 Edition. The route to Wilcox Lake follows an old woods road from Willis Lake (on the left) to Wilcox Lake (top right).  

The 1994 ADK Guide to Trails of the Southern Region makes four observations about the Pumpkin Hollow trail to Wilcox lake:

1. The trail passes through an attractive and maturing second growth forest.
2. With the exception of eroded areas around Wilcox Lake the trail is in excellent condition.
3. Parking at the end of the Pumpkin Hollow road is iffy. Good parking can be found at the Murphy Lake trail head but that option adds 1.5 miles (each way) to the route.
4. There might not be a bridge over the Wilcox Lake outlet and crossing the stream in times of high water can be difficult.

As of July 2015 three of those four considerations remain true. This is a wonderful hiking route through an exceptionally attractive forest. The area around Wilcox lake does show scars from past motor vehicle access but the damage is fading. The choice on where to park remains the same but the bridge is not a problem. There is a good bridge over the outlet stream.

As part of the Forest Preserve the area around Wilcox Lake is classified as Wild Forest; a designation that allows for uses that are prohibited in wilderness areas and the Pumpkin Hollow trail is maintained (and marked) as a snowmobile trail. The ADK Guide notes that in past times vehicles reaching Wilcox lake from the Bakertown area caused extensive erosion on the hillside leading down to the lake. But I saw no sign of recent vehicle use and the eroded areas are recovering.

Image Two: Large Sugar Maple along the trail

The Trail and the Forest

The Pumpkin Hollow trail passes through an impressive, maturing, second-growth forest. With so many large trees present it appears that this area somehow escaped logging and fire reaching back into the 19th century. The forest contains a mix of species including Sugar Maple, Ash, White Pine, Hemlock, Birch and Beech.

Image Three: It's difficult to capture the 'feel' of a forest in an image (I'll have to work on this) but this is a rapidly maturing northern hardwood forest. For scale, the large tree on the right has a diameter of around 30 inches. This area contains trees that must be more than 150 years old. 

I found this forest to be particularly appealing because it looks like what I expect an undisturbed northern hardwood forest to look like. The presence of large trees of multiple species creates a dense canopy that limits the amount of light reaching the forest floor and that results in a relatively open forest understory. You can also see an open understory where stands of large Hemlock and White Pine are present but a mature hardwood forest has a different feel. When a large hardwood comes down it creates a big opening in the canopy and a variety of tree and shrubs species rush to take advantage of that. Over time these openings appear in a random pattern and you end up with a patchwork of open forest and dense little thickets. That is what I expect a climax stage northern hardwood forest to look like. Some areas along this trail have that appearance.

Particularly interesting is the presence of American Beech trees that have survived the initial kill-off caused by Beech Bark Disease (BBD). One Beech, with a diameter over 30 inches, may be the largest standing Beech I've seen since I started looking for them. Image Four shows this tree and while it looks pretty healthy my photo captured the tree's "good side". The back side of the tree shows extensive signs of BBD. One unfortunate aspect of BBD is that relatively healthy looking trees oftentimes fall victim to Beech Snap (Image Five). This happens because the disease weakens the trunk of the tree. So large trees with heavy canopies become vulnerable to breaking off in heavy weather. Beech snap is characterized by standing Beech trunks broken off cleanly 8 to 20 feet above the ground. Once you know what to look for you'll start to see these "snapped" Beech trees where ever mature Beeches were formerly present.

The large tree pictured in Image Four got me thinking about an intriguing possibility. This is the second large Beech I've seen that bears the unmistakable scar of a lightening strike. Could it be that a lightening strike kills the fungus (or the insects that spread it) giving the tree a better chance of fighting off BBD? If it takes being hit by lightening to survive then clearly it is not easy to be a Beech tree.

Image Four: A Large American Beech

Image Five: Beech Snap. Large Beech trees that appear to be holding their own against BBD can fall victim to Beech Snap. This occurs when a weakened tree is unable to support the weight of  its' canopy and the trunk snaps.

The Pumpkin Hollow trail also passes through an area where very large and old White Pines are seen. A number of trees with diameters greater than 36 inches are present and a few are approaching 48 inches. Trees of that size must be more than 150 years old and could be more than 200 years old. This got me thinking about the well-known Pine Orchard located just five miles north of the Pumpkin Hollow Pine stand. I've not yet visited the Pine Orchard but it would be interesting to compare measurements of trees from both areas. If the measurements show that the two sets of trees got going at about the same time it might shed some light on the history of this forest.

Wilcox Lake

Despite concerns about vehicle access and erosion Wilcox Lake is an attractive and worthwhile destination. As mentioned, eroded areas near the lake are starting to heal and the shoreline is in good shape. According to current maps there are two lean-tos at Wilcox Lake though that could change. The one that I visited is in bad shape and could topple over at any time. 

Image Six: Wilcox Lake

Image Seven: The eastern lean-to at Wilcox lake. It looks like the bottom tier of logs from this lean-to rotted out and that layer of logs was somehow removed. The current structure is not connected to the floor and the walls are leaning precariously. It looks like it could fall down at any moment.

Parking

Image Eight: You can park at the Murphy Lake Trail head on Pumpkin Hollow Road (far left) or you can drive past Willis lake and try to make your way to the small parking area found where the red and blue lines meet on the map.

You have a choice to make when deciding where to park. There are signs and good parking at the Murphy Lake trail head on Pumpkin Hollow Road. As seen on the map (Image eight) this parking area is at the far left where the red line begins. If you start hiking at that point you'll walk the road past Willis Lake and up a couple of hills. After a mile and a quarter you'll come to a couple of camps on the left. Just past the second camp the road narrows and gets much rougher. From there it's another 1/4 mile to a small parking area and the DEC barrier at the start of the trail part of the Wilcox Lake trail (roughly 5.5 miles to Wilcox Lake from there).

Or, you can drive that same route. From Willis Lake to the camps the road is in pretty good shape but there's no clearly safe place to park along that section. Once you pass the camps the road is not at all car friendly and the last hundred yards or so before the parking area is extremely rough. I inched my Subaru Forester toward the parking area and found a decent place to pull off just at the point where I couldn't go any further. Which was good because backing out was going to be very difficult.

Ground Truthing in the Fishing Brook Range

The sequence of images below show progressively closer views of a small mountain in the Adirondacks. In images three and four I've outlined an area of special interest; an area that I know to be a dense spruce thicket. I know that because on a recent Saturday (Oct. 2014) I was there; trying to bushwhack to the top.

Viewing my route in Google Earth, and applying my newly gained knowledge, it's relatively easy to differentiate among the different types of cover found along this ridge. There are thickets comprised mostly of stunted and densely packed Spruce and there are areas where mature deciduous trees dominate. Images three and four clarify the distinction with outlines around the dense thickets. Outside of the outline you can make out individual trees. Inside there are thousands of small trees, mostly spruce, jammed together in a nearly impenetrable thicket.

Image 1: The Fishing Brook Range. The pink line is the boundary between Forest Preserve and private land. The distant marker is the summit of Fishing Brook Mountain. (Source: Google Earth)

Image 2: The contrast between thickets and the more open deciduous forests starts to be visible. The tops of individual trees can be seen in the more open areas. (Source: Google Earth)

Image 3: The dense cover areas have a distinctive look when compared with the surrounding forest. (Source: Google Earth)

Image 4: A closer view from a slightly different angle. A practical route along the ridge would stay to the left and avoid the thicket areas such as the one marked by the outline. (Source: Google Earth)

Ole 3400

I had set off to try to reach the top of the unnamed 3400 foot peak south east of where the Northville Lake Placid Trail (NLPT) reaches its' high point near Long Lake. The trail crosses a ridge at just over 3000 feet and it’s a pleasant 3.5 mile walk to this height of land (south from Rte 28N). I've hiked in this area many times and I've been intrigued by the ridge that runs from the trail to the summit of Fishing Brook Mountain. Getting to the height of land by trail is easy. But from there it's a 4.5 mile bushwhack to the summit of Fishing Brook Mountain. Along the way are several smaller peaks and a couple high elevation ponds that I'd like to see close up. This is wild and little visited country.

Image 5: Along the ridge on a previous outing. October 2013.

Image 6: Spruce thicket along the ridge.

My recent hike was a test of the feasibility of making a longer trip along the ridge. And a test run turned out to be a wise thing to do. I didn't make it to the top of even the first peak along the ridge. Just a mile from where I left the trail I was turned back by rough terrain, the limited daylight of a late October day, and those spruce thickets previously mentioned and shown in image six. 

I did keep a GPS track of my hike and when I overlaid the route I followed on the satellite image the areas to avoid became visible. The spruce thickets look different than the areas where the forest is more open. I might have guessed at these distinctions before the trip but now I have no doubt. If it looks like the areas outlined in images three and four, go around. And this is not too surprising. In the Adirondacks, the ecological transition zone between 3000 and 3500 feet tends to be a particularly difficult place to travel. A lesson that I relearn every few years.

As for Fishing Brook Mountain, making the summit by following the ridge is rather serious undertaking. A much more feasible route would be to stay at a lower elevation in deciduous forests on north side of the ridge. Image seven shows the area as seen from the south. The red line on the left is the NLPT and the light red lines delineate the boundary between Forest Preserve and private lands. Based on my ground truthing the lighter green areas are deciduous forests while the darker greens are conifer dominated forests.

Image 7: The area as it would appear if viewed from from an airplane flying south of the ridge line  Route 28N is visible along the top of the image. Long Lake is off image to the left; Newcomb to the right. (Source: Google Earth)

Satellites and Sensors

Digital images like the ones we view in Google Earth are actually a form of sensor-gathered data. A digital camera contains a light sensitive sensor divided into a grid of cells organized into rows and columns (commonly called pixels). When an image is made the sensor assigns a number to each cell. These numbers represent the color and intensity of the light striking each cell and those numbers are saved to a file. When you view the image the numbers are converted back to the appropriate colors for display. Modern image sensors have millions of cells and can differentiate among millions of distinct colors.

Larger sensors record values for more cells and this is one of the factors that determines the quality of a digital image. Generally speaking, more expensive cameras contain larger sensors and produce higher quality images. But sensor size is not the only factor that determines image quality. The lens system of the camera focuses the light on the sensor so lens quality imposes a limit on the amount of detail that a sensor can resolve. For satellite imagery the number of pixels in the sensor, and the quality of the lens, are main limiting factors on the level of detail we can see in the final images.

Ecological Succession and Environmental History

For the purpose of picking better hiking routes we can analyze the data simply by viewing the imagery in Google Earth (or other similar systems). Combined with a bit of on-the-ground experience it's relatively easy to see differences in the types of ground cover and terrain. But what about more subtle distinctions? What if I wanted to differentiate among the ecological communities present in an area? The distinctions between communities can be subtle and it oftentimes comes down to recognizing species assemblages that we are not going to visible in satellite imagery. We can make broad assessments from satellite gathered data; the communities present in a spruce thicket will be different from communities found in deciduous forest. But recognizing the more subtle distinctions requires additional data and commonly that data has to come from poking around on the ground.

My interest is in ecological succession and how ecological communities change over time. At any given place, the assemblage of species present will be governed by soil, climate, topography and disruption. You don't find flamingos in the Adirondacks but you do find different types of trees on north facing slopes as compare to south facing slopes just a short distance away. Over time the communities present at a location will reach an equilibrium but even that climax state shifts over time in response to changes in the larger environment. On top of this, very few locations in the Adirondacks are at the equilibrium state because of disruptive events that include logging, fires, storms and disease outbreaks. The Adirondack forests we see today are not what existed 250 years ago.

The north side of Fishing Brook Mountain bears forests at varying stages of succession aligned with the effects of disruptive events that have occurred in the last 120 years. Most of the ridge has been logged, some places more than once. There have been fires of varying sizes. There have been storms such as the hurricane of 1950, the derecho storm in 1995, and the ice storm of 1998. And currently the forests are being altered by non-native diseases and insects. In particular, Beech Bark Disease has killed the majority of large American Beech trees previously present in this area.

The variable matrix of forest stages present on this ridge became evident to me as I struggled along the ridge on my hike. In places I would break out of the dense thickets into open areas with a low cover comprised mainly of ferns and a canopy dominated by large Yellow Birch (Betula alleghaniensis).  Neither of these community types are likely to be climax communities and the pattern of occurrence seemed unnatural as well. Teasing out the sequence of events and transitions that led to the current pattern is in the realm of environmental history. To me these little patches have an interesting story to tell. This is a topic I plan to return in upcoming posts.

Note:

There are several recognized communities that include Yellow Birch but the stands on this ridge are most likely the result of some past disturbance.