Day Ten- and Out to Pillsbury

Almost immediately in the morning we crossed West Canada Creek, another of the memorably beautiful spots.

We were focused on doing our job, but to keep moving. We wanted to get off the trail in good time. Ate lunch at Pillsbury Lake which is perhaps my favorite shelter location on the NCT in the Adirondacks. The lake is truly beautiful.

It even has a rocky island!

This picture is for David Snoek who advised me to keep my feet dry! This pretty much sums up the day.

One really good thing I can report is that this entire stretch is at least minimally marked with NCT emblems. This includes the two intersections with the Northville-Lake Placid Trail where one might get confused. It's only a beginning, but it's good to see those reassuring markers every once in a while.

Now Marie has taken over the spotting and helping duties. I'll have to get a picture of her tomorrow. I'll also explain our slight change of plans then. She scoped out a church spaghetti dinner for us that was yummers! But now I have to get some things ready for tomorrow. It is our last trail day, and we can use the daypacks, but it is going to be long and difficult.

Miles hiked in 2025: 291.3
Miles hiked on NCT in 2025: 175.1

New York, Adirondacks, North Country Trail, just east of South Lake to Pillsbury Mountain TH. 9 miles

See To South Lake

Day Nine- to South Lake

Getting ready for another two days of backpacking. Diane fed us french toast and sausages for breakfast (early). We are living pretty high on the hog. Worst part of the morning was that it rained quite a bit during the night, but things looked like they were going to improve for the day.

It took three hours to spot the cars. Only 17 trail miles, but not many roads to connect them. Along the way, we had to do more tree clearing. Some sawing of limbs again (do we get paid by the road commission?), but one place there were chunks of a broken limb in the middle of the road. I hopped out to sling them off the side and discovered a small semi-casualty of the fallen limb.

It seemed to be only dazed, but barely able to fly, if at all yet. I think it's a chickadee. We moved it to the side and hope mama comes to find it.

This kind of landscape looks so much like northern Minnesota. Not a lot of places like this, but interesting.

This wetland seems to be on the way to becoming a bog with mats of sphagnum moss collecting on the surface.

A beautiful pitcher plant in full bloom.

Our main goal was to get past South Lake. This is a favorite spot of mine just because the bridge is so weird. It spans the lake, and it was damaged somehow in the past (ice?) so it's all at crazy angles. But it's sturdy, just slopey.

It was the weekend, and we saw some other hikers. Two were notable in that they seemed to not have a brain between them. They knew where they had started hiking (where we were headed), so I knew what trail they must have followed. (But they didn't know where they were hiking to.)

I asked them if they had crossed South Lake bridge. (It was less than a mile behind them). They had no clue. I ask you, "Is not that bridge memorable if you had just crossed it?" Anyway... we had hoped to stop for the night at West Canada Creek shelter. But the other hikers thought it was occupied.

So we were walking along trying to decide where we wanted to stay when this campsite appeared beside us. We had no problem making the instant decision to make it ours.

We only hiked 8 miles, but they were difficult. Lots of mud and rocks and a big climb. We were happy to eat dinner and crawl in the tents away from the bugs. However the weather was great. We are being smiled upon.

Miles hiked in 2025: 282.3
Miles hiked on NCT 2025: 166.1

New York, Adirondacks, North Country Trail, Indian River TH to just past South Lake, 8 miles

See Being Flexible

Day Eight- Being Flexible

Woke at 4 am to rain. We knew that was possible. We didn't really want to start the next backpacking leg in the rain because the first two miles are going to be difficult even if the trail is dry. So we went to plan B.

With intermittent showers we thought we could get in the two sections that we had planned to do the day after the backpacking. Spoiler- we managed the hikes, but not the dripping sky.

The Adirondacks are stunning no matter what the weather. Dramatic moments on the road as the storm clouds cleared out and the mist rose.

We started with a drive to the Blue Hill Trail. That had to be hiked as an in-and-out because there is no vehicle access to the south end. There's a "road" there, but, um, you need a truck to drive it.

This is a beautiful section, although it probably won't be on the final NCT route. It was actually the most foot-friendly trail we've walked yet with fewer rocks and mud holes. It does climb 400 feet and then drop back down 200.

It goes past a nice beaver pond. Yeah, there are lots of these, but I haven't shown you many yet.

Many blue flags. Common, but always beautiful

One of the things I love about the Adirondacks is that you never know what you may see as you drive around any curve in the road. I have no idea what peak this is, but it's pretty cool!

We stopped at the campsite to check in with Diane who was having a nice relaxing day (which is what she wanted). The steady rain was done but there were little pop-up showers happening. We had one more short piece of trail to do.

Diane hiked a short way in with us on the snowmobile trail up the west side of Oak Mountain. She said she liked listening to us do the inventory stuff. The big news of that section is that it's all grass and weeds in the summer. Think pop-up rain. Think soaking wet. Think climbing up another 200 or so feet in wet berry bushes and ferns.

Then we came over the top on to Oak Mountain Ski Resort property where I helped build trail in 2020. Then it was downhill on nice clean trail, and we were done for the day.

Diane fed us another wonderful dinner of Cornell recipe barbeque chicken and macaroni and cheese! It's amazing to have hot food just appear without having to work for it. We are so thankful she wanted to come be part of this adventure.

This means that we will start the two-day backpacking tomorrow. There will be at least one more batch of rain tonight. Hopefully that will be the end of it. The backpacking starts with a big climb up a very rocky trail that is more or less a creek, so we'd like it to not be totally wet and slippery.

So no blog tomorrow for sure.

A total of about 8.5 miles today.

Miles hiked in 2025: 274.4
Miles hiked on NCT in 2025: 156.1

New York, Adirondacks, North Country Trail, Blue Hill Trail and Oak Mountain. 8.5 miles

See Food, Friends, Fire

Day Seven- Food, Friends, Fire

One of the requirements for a day off is ice cream!

Then Bill and I went hunting for our next free campsite, east of where we had been. We found an adequate one that was quite nice. Next event was the arrival of Diane, here to spot us for the next few days.

Bill and I had set up our tents, and the potty cabana out in the trees. Diane quickly added her tent and we are suddenly a village.

Some actual resting occurred!

Diane wanted to bring food for us for the evenings and breakfasts. Sounded good to us! I forgot to picture the dinner, but it was a yummy bean and veggie one-pot meal, and homemade cookies for dessert.

For the first time in a long while an evening on a hike was relaxed enough that we built a campfire.

The mosquitoes haven't been as terrible as usual for June in the Adirondacks, but they ramped up a little yesterday, and the smoke helped keep them at bay.

With storms predicted or not, and every weather site disagreeing and changing every ten minutes, we will decide which phase of this trip to do next in the morning.

See Racing for the Motel

Day Six- Racing for the Motel

We had under seven miles to go to get to the car and a motel. We were on a mission!

We had to climb 700 feet and after that it was "all" downhill to Raymond Brook TH.

A loon sang throughout the night and I caught this picture in the morning of it shaking out a leg.

It was a day of bad bridges...

And good, even new bridges!

We began the long downhill with high hopes for speed. I "remembered" it as a gentle grade with mostly smooth trail through dryish woods. Ha! I only remembered the couple hundred good feet apparently. The trail dropped 1300 feet over several miles with really difficult footing and a number of steep areas.

One of the most fun things is this historic ski rescue shed from the 1930s. Yes, this is a ski trail. You can see how much snow was typical by the height of the shed.

I also forgot about this beaver flooding. The trail used to go right through that area (I know because there are blue discs on trees out in the water). Now it crosses the dam and climbs up to a ridge on the far side. Still mostly marked with flagging ribbon. Things happen slowly here. I would think that in three years it would have been marked with discs.

One more interesting encounter. There was a team of four researchers from the health department out doing a population study on deer ticks. She wanted to tell us all about it!

Another quarter mile to the car, motel in North Creek, shower, lunch (tuna melt for me, burger for Bill), laundry, sorting, blogging, etc. No one can trash a motel room like a couple of hikers!

Despite the elevation challenges, we finished around 1 pm. Not too shabby!

Miles hiked in 2025: 265.8
Miles hiked on NCT in 2025: 147.6

New York, Adirondacks, North Country Trail, Botheration Pond to Raymond Brook TH. 6.5 miles

See Longest Day