I think of all the treks we did, this was the one I did the most. I don't know why so many troops signed up for this one, but for whatever reason, they did.
Unlike the load, who got to start off his career with a backpacking trip, I started off with this little gem. I am being too harsh, it is actually extremely beautiful and I greatly enjoyed it the first few times. In the end, I think I may have done it close to 10 times though.
The start is in the town of Blue Mountain. Blue Mountain is home to the adirondack museum. If you ever get the chance to visit, I highly recommend it. It is a great museum in its own right. Coupled with the beautiful location, it is a great way to pass an afternoon or even an entire day.
It would be cool if the first part of the trek began at the museum, but it doesn't. Like most canoe treks, it begins at a boat launch. Anytime you get a group of people together doing something new, it is wonderfully inefficient. It seems to take an eternity to get the canoe trailer unloaded and everyon in their canoes. When I first started guiding, I would pick the smallest person as my partner so as to keep the pace comfortable. If there happened to be an odd number of participants, one canoe would have 3 people. Most of the time, the 3 person canoe was the fastest or close to it. As time went on, I preferred to canoe by myself. All this meant was that there would be a 3 person canoe with an even number of participants.
Blue Mountain Lake is a very forgiving lake to learn how to canoe on. It is not particularly big, so there is little wind. The first day is extremely pleasant. If I remember correctly you pass from Blue Mountain Lake to Eagle Lake to Utowana and then into the Marion River. Blue Mountain-Eagle and Utowana are all connected, so there is no carrying involved. Generally, it takes only a few hours to reach the Marion River where the first carry of the week happens.
It is a pleasant enough carry, probably just over 1/2 mile or so. Interestingly, there used to be a narrow gauge railway here, just 1/2 mile long, that would transport the fat cats of wall street in the 1920s or so when the Adirondacks was a premier destination. They even employed people to walk along the train to ensure that the embers from the steam locomotive did not inadvertently cause a forest fire. All that is gone now, but it is fun that you are following the old railroad tracks - even if the tracks aren't there. You then follow along the Marion river, which I always called the Maid Marion River, until you reach Raquette Lake. The campsite for the first day is just inside the Lake, still quite close to the river. Here is where the trek falls apart a bit though.
Raquette Lake is huge, there is something like 125 miles of shoreline. Ken Smith envisioned that scouts would enjoy exploring every knook and cranny that this 125 miles offered. I am sure Ken Smith would, and did, do this. The problem was, the campsite for the next day was probably only 4 miles away from the campsite the previous night. Most groups had no interest, at all, in exploring even 100 yards of Lake that they didn't need to. I made the mistake once of not telling the scouts that our campsite was only 4 miles away and leading a trip around the lake in no particular direction. The scouts were furious when they discovered that I had "tricked" them and made them paddle further than needed. They would much rather break camp at 8 am and arrive at the next campsite around 10 am and screw around for the rest of the day. We would do some practice canoe strokes and perhaps even go out with empty canoes and see who could swamp the other person's canoe. But, bottom line, the 2nd day was a very easy day.
The third day involved an excursion to climb West Mountain. To get there, you had to paddle 6-7 miles directly across the lake. On a calm day, this was easy. There were very few calm days. Most of the time you were fighting the wind on either the trip there or the trip back. Occasionally, you got lucky and got to fight the wind both ways. Canoeing against the wind is tough. Even though canoes are not particularly big, there is enough surface area where a good breeze can really push you around. On a calm day, you paddle along and may even talk with your canoe partner or other boats that are nearby. When you stop to rest, you may drift a bit, but you largely stay in the same general location. All bets are off with a good breeze. Even if you wanted to talk, you can't because the wind carries off your voice. Moreover, you are paddling like hell just to make forward progress. In addition to fighting for forward progress you are fighting the wind as it trys to turn your canoe like a weathervane.
Once you reach the trail head for West Mountain, you walk through some swampy bits before you actually start climbing. The black flies in this area are tough. When one of them gets you, it doesn't feel like a sting, it feels more like they have scooped a bit of your flesh up and eaten it. They love biting you on the head too. It gets so maddening that the first instant you feel like one is on your head you nearly brain yourself hitting it with enough force to kill a small bird. You then repeat this process over and over and over. Other than that, it is a good hike. The views are good and it is always fun to get a break from canoeing.
After the climb, you return to the campsite from day 2. It is nice not to have to break camp or set up camp that day.
Day 4 involves leaving the Raquette Lake and heading to Forked Lake. Interestingly you pronounce the "ed" in "Forked" so it is two syllables. There is a carry between the two lakes, again pretty short and easy. Forked Lake is pretty small, so it is not a long day's paddle. There is a nice little diversion that you can take to a good swimming hole.
I have talked about Ken Smith's fondness for very short last days. Nowhere is this more evident than in the last day of this trek. You can easily see the takeout from the campsite the last night, it is probably about 1/4 to 1/2 mile away. In fact, you can see well enough that I would often know that before we even started, that Sarge had once again beaten me to the takeout. So the last "day" was really the last 1/2 hour. I frequently reached the takeout at 8 am or so and would often be back at camp by 10:30 or 11:00.
This was a great beginner trek. During the 90 miler, we paddled more than the entire 5 day trip in the first day. It would have been more fun if we could have had access to a pontoon boat on the 2nd and 3rd day in Raquette Lake. Raquette Lake is for the most part pretty built up and there are some absolutely beautiful lake front places. There isn't that much appeal in checking them out though when canoeing.
I don't have much to add here as the Voyageur has quite well covered it. I'll echo that the ADK Museum is a must not an option in my view. It is simply gorgeous and wonderfully informative. It really adds to the experience of any trip of trek to the 'Daks.
The hike along the old narrow gauge railway is pretty cool. When you reach the end, it's a short paddle to the campsite which is on a point before you enter Racquette Lake proper. The 2nd day you are supposed to canoe the short 4 miles North to your campsite. One year I had a troop from Ken Smith' hometown who insisted on following his itinerary to the 't.' So we canoed south to an inlet called Golden Beach in an area called South Bay. It was a windy overcast day. And when I say beach, I mean a shore line with a little more sand than most forested shorelines. We battled winds to get there, huddled in all our clothes and windbreakers to stay warm for a miserable hour and then went on our way.
West Mtn. - awesome. Nice clearing near the top where there was an old fire tower.
The carry to Forked Lake goes across a road with a pay phone - remember them? Every summer for about 5 or 6 in a row, I would call my Mom at work to say hi from the middle of the "wildneress" on this phone. At least two of my summers, I had a group on this trek that passed this phone on July 20, my Dad's birthday. So we would call him up and sing happy birthday.
I don't have any horrible stories about this particular trek; however one time I was on the trek at the same time the Weebs was with another group. His group was doing a really cool trek Blue Mtn. to Tupper, which combined most of Blue Mtn. to Forked, with Long Lake to Tupper, via a crazy carry from the NE shore of Racquette into Long Lake. Anyway, on the 2nd night it was pretty early and my group was winding down, so I hopped into my canoe and paddled over to the island where Webelo's group was camping. It was a beautiful, starlit, warm, calm night and I thought it might be fun to shoot the breeze with a friend while paddling around Racquette. While my group was milling around a campfire, talking and laughing, his site was dead. So being ignorant of any possible issues, I called out his name until I heard a response, "What!?" from inside a tent. I told him it was me and he basically said to go away. I found out later he was already having a tough time with his group and hating the trek and he was sharing a tent with a particularly annoying father, whom he didn't want to annoy further. So my late night paddle around the river
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