Wolf Creek- Day 178

  The beginning of this day was all on dirt roads. The road junctions were well marked, for which I was grateful.

Sure enough, at Red River, I began to see many designated campsites. These are for car campers. Each site ideally has a picnic table, a latrine, and a stone fireplace. In reality, most sites randomly had two of the three, or several broken items. This is a very popular area for weekend family campers. It's possible that my stealth camp the previous night wasn't illegal. The DEC site isn't too specific, but I think dispersed backcountry camping is allowed.

I took a break at one of the sites (broken picnic table, no fireplace, marginal latrine), and a ranger drove by. When I started walking again, he was coming back the other way. I flagged him down and asked him about the condition of the trail to Wolf Creek. I'm feeling gun shy about off-road trail, in case you can't tell. He said it was passable and marked as NCT. He said he, personally, went through last fall and helped put up the markers. I also asked about the condition of the bridge over Wolf Creek, and he said it was there. He also mentioned a nice clearing just past the bridge where I could camp.

At the end of the road... big smile on my face! An actual NCT emblem in the Adirondack woods. And, I was not going all the way to Wolf Pond, but only to Wolf Creek, another 2 miles.

Well, there just had to be some challenge for the afternoon. This was one of the harder climbs, going up about 500 feet. That wouldn't have been too bad, but a lot of the trail was the typical Adirondack, rocky, washed out trail/creek, so the going was slow and difficult.

Near the top, the bedrock broke out in some places, which reminded me a lot of Minnesota- similar volcanic geology, so I shouldn't have been surprised.

It took me almost 2 hours to go those two miles, but sure enough, there was a nice bridge at Wolf Creek.

I was glad, because looking down from the bridge, the creek was rushing through rocks below me.

It would have been fine, though, because upstream was a nice placid spot where I filtered water. I could have crossed there, but I didn't have to!

Sure enough, there was a clearing just past the bridge, but I didn't like it. It was right beside the trail, it had berry bushes, and was in full sun. However, I poked around in the woods behind that clearing, and there was another clearing. It had either been a cabin site or a dump. There was all kinds of rusty junk piled around. But it was hidden from the trail and there was plenty of open space for a tent. I'll spare you another picture of the same tent in brown woods, but this was a really nice place.

Miles today: 13.5. Total miles so far: 2263.1

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