If we could pull it off, this needed to be a long mileage day because the previous day we didn't make it very far. Our goal was Botheration Pond (the same area where I camped three years ago). But it was 10 miles away. That's a lot on rough trails when we are stopping to inventory things quite often.
Had to take a picture of False Hellbore Veratrum viride, also called Corn-lily. I don't think I previously had a picture of it in bud.
That was fun. The not so fun part was that it was on the bank of Humphrey Brook. This was a terrible crossing in 2022. It hasn't changed. I had decided that I'd not found the actual crossing in 2022. So this day we looked carefully. We found markers that did lead us upstream, but we couldn't find any adesignated crossing. Instead of sliding down a gravel bank and wading with the fishes, we only had to wade the space pictured here. Better.
But the other side is all grown up with alders and goldenrod and no trail. We pushed through all that. Found a trail, but no markers. It led us to this.
We were momentarily flabbergasted until we realized that someone has established a campsite there. It's good that the trail is being used. Maybe not so good that people are leaving kitchen gear already. Anyway, we followed that trail back out to the main trail and got going in the correct direction. This all chewed up a bunch of time.
Saw the biggest American Toad I may have ever seen. He was well camouflaged for the dappled sunlight. But his size- more than 4 inches- gave him away!
Here's some of the kind of thing we are doing. Most of the junctions have the familiar brown and gold Adirondack signs which we inventory. But some junctions aren't marked at all, like this one. The picture probably isn't big enough that you can see there is an NCT emblem along the trail Bill is standing on. But the left fork is part of a loop called King's Flow and it only has a DEC yellow disc. We need to collect info so that NCT hikers won't be confused at junctions.
At Puffer Pond, we ate lunch at a shelter. There was a man setting up camp there who portages his canoe (a very light one, but still over 50 pounds total) and his pack all over the Adirondacks so he can fish. He had at least heard of the North Country Trail. We had a nice visit and then we moved on. Beautiful spot.
We still had over 2 miles to go and for sure a couple more rocky stream crossings. Thankfully we knew that the worst missing-bridge crossing had been rebuilt since 2022. We actually make it to the Botheration Pond official campsite about 5:30.
This is the longest backpack I've done since being sick. A little over 10 miles. But we made it, and I wasn't even totally exhausted.
New York, Adirondacks, North Country Trail, Wakely Brook to Botheration Pond, 10 plus miles.
 | See Day Four |
Lulu: "Our Dada says all that scenery looks very familiar, even though he doesn't think he has ever been to Botheration Pond."
ReplyDeleteJava Bean: "Ayyy, wow, that is a big toad! We had a toad here once but it was tiny compared to that one! And Dada wouldn't let us play with it, either ..."