Southern portion of Oven Lake
Recently, I returned from an 8-day sojourn into the heart of the Five Ponds Wilderness of the Adirondack State Park. Despite the immense challenge of blow down from the 1995 Microburst, I returned to the area with the idea of making it all the way to Oven Lake and several other water bodies in the immediate vicinity. Unfortunately, the original plan from this trip was truncated somewhat due to a late start, an early lack of motivation and some rain showers the first couple days.
Other than the first couple of days, the weather was rather nice although a tad too warm for my liking when bushwhacking (especially the second half of the trip). Although the first two days were rather light as far as miles and/or effort, this was more than made up for by at least three other marathon days in either distance or overall effort. The hardest day included some highly difficult going through some very dense new growth immersed within 100 percent blow down.
Instead of the usual access from the north via Wanakena, the 10+ mile long Bear Pond Road was used combined with some unmarked, unofficial trails and/or herd paths to gain access to Sand Pond (which is typically the end of the line as far as marked trails from the north). Using Bear Pond Road allowed me to drive way into the interior and avoid spending a long day (or more) getting into position to begin the bushwhacking portion of the trip. Unfortunately, the plan did not work out as originally conceived as it took me over a day to start the bushwhacking portion of the trip and the same amount of days to hike out too. But at least those days were not as long as arduous as they would have been if I hiked all the way out to Wanakena.
Water bodies remained my daily destinations for the most part, ranging from small beaver ponds to mile long lakes with a river thrown in for good measure. Included were revisits of some old haunts from my historic Stillwater to Cranberry adventure from last year (e.g. Streeter Fishpond and Wolf Pond) as well as some new places such as Oven Lake, Cracker Pond, Gal Pond, West Pond and the northern portion of Robinson River. In addition, Rock and Sand Lakes were visited during the entrance and exit to the area.
Blow down near Oven Lake
Some note worthy items included fording a river, the prodigious amount of moose scat observed, a friendly visit from a family of river otters, a day-long struggle through virtually 100% blow down for a mile along Oven Lake, mosquito levels of near Biblical proportions (we are talking Old Testament here), finding a beaver dam exactly where I needed one for once and spotting the most interesting bird of the whole trip while half-naked and cleaning up at my car at the conclusion of the entire trip.
Expect a full chronicling of adventure to appear here soon.
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