It's supposedly named after a logger who bragged that the fish he caught there were large enough to have come from an ocean. These days, the water is stocked with brook trout. Bring a kayak or a fishing pole in warmer weather, or snowshoes in winter. For those who really want to get away from it all, there's a lean-to beside the shore. https://poststar.com/get-out/hiking/grizzle-ocean-in-pharoah-lake-wilderness-area/article_1e20e9dd-d6ee-51ae-a42b-9a6b7f3e5f9c.html
A series of maps of the Pharoah Lake Wilderness in the Adirondacks available as an easy to download single PDF.
Pharaoh Lake Wilderness Map Pack by Andy Arthur on Scribd
This updated map of Crane Pond in the Pharoah Lake Wilderness shows the location of the campsites along the lake.
Good morning! Happy Sunday. Four weeks to Average High is 60 🍂. Partly sunny and 56 degrees in Delmar, NY. Calm wind. The dew point is 54 degrees. Seems like a nice morning. I’m making up some french toast 🧇 and coffee ☕ now and going to soon take a shower 🚿.
I think the plan for today is to hike Windham High Peak 🗻 and go out to my parents house 🍲 for Sunday dinner. 🚶 I haven’t done Windham High Peak in a number of years and I have think it will be a nice hike, even if last time I was up there I was under impressed by the views. 📷
Today will be mostly sunny 🌞, with a high of 75 degrees at 3pm. Two degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical day around September 10th. Maximum dew point of 57 at 11am. West wind 3 to 7 mph. A year ago, we had cloudy skies in the morning with sunny skies in the afternoon. It was humid. The high last year was 85 degrees. The record high of 92 was set in 1915.
The sun will set at 7:06 pm with dusk around 7:34 pm, which is one minute and 47 seconds earlier than yesterday. 🌇 At sunset, look for partly cloudy skies 🌃 and temperatures around 69 degrees. The dew point will be 55 degrees. There will be a northwest breeze at 6 mph. Today will have 12 hours and 30 minutes of daytime, an increase of 2 minutes and 51 seconds over yesterday.
Tonight will have a slight chance of showers after 1am. Mostly cloudy 🌧, with a low of 57 degrees at 5am. Five degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around September 2nd. Maximum dew point of 56 at 10pm. Northwest wind 3 to 6 mph. Chance of precipitation is 20%. In 2018, we had clear skies in the evening, which became mostly clear by the early hours of the morning. It was sticky. It got down to 63 degrees. The record low of 32 occurred back in 1964.
The display in my bedroom is still getting stuck and malfunctioning a lot. 📟 I think I’ve found the bad solder joint and the board, I will have to hit it again with the soldering iron. 🔬
Next weekend keeps looking increasingly hot and sunny. 😎 I think it might be good for one more weekend at the potholers after I do the Pine Bush Bird Hike 🐦 early on Saturday morning.
Been thinking 💭 about hiking back to Pharoah Lake in late October or early November. 🚶 I made up a revised map 🗾 yesterday and was thinking it would be a nice day hike. The hike back there is an easy 3 1/2 miles each way over virtually flat terrain (you gain only 200 ft in elevation from Beaver Brook Road) but the 420 acre lake 🐠 is 5 miles around it so it’s a good distance. Do it in November and all your bound to see is a few deer hunters, 🦌 the crowds 👪 will be long gone.
I haven’t talked or given a whole lot of thought towards saving for my off grid house 🏡 lately. The automatic investments are doing their thing and I’m getting closer one step at a time. Yeah, a lot of people I went to school with or know are buying houses out in the country 🐮 but I just can’t see doing that while I still live in New York. I’m fine spending a lot of weekends for now in the wilderness, camping, cooking and having fires. 🔥
Looking ahead, there are 4 weeks until Average High is 60 🍂 when the sun will be setting at 6:17 pm with dusk at 6:45 pm. On that day in 2018, we had rain showers, partly cloudy and temperatures between 55 and 41 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 61 degrees. We hit a record high of 81 back in 1930.
Crane Pond Road is a 2 mile historical truck trail in the Pharaoh Lake bureaucratically-defined “Wilderness”. This truck trail provides access Alder Pond and Crane Pond, along with access to hiking trails to Goose Pond, Glidden Marsh, Oxshoe Pond, Crab Pond, and Pharaoh Mountain.
This truck trail is popular and is frequently used hunters, fishermen, backpackers, and hikers visiting the vast lands of Pharoah Lake “Wilderness”. The wilderness distinction, is rather dubious as these lands are not historical wilderness but only designated as such on paper by the Department of Environmental Conservation and the Adirondack Porn Agency. There is few old growth forests or undeveloped land remaining in our state, and the wilderness designation is frequently abused by environmental extremists.
The entire Pharaoh Lake “Wilderness” is traversed by old logging roads, has old foundations, and other ruins of a once privately owned, farmed or logged land. Many of the hiking trails follow old logging roads. The state has developed foot bridges, hiking trails, and many lean-tos throughout the property, so man made structures are not uncommon to find in this so-called “Wilderness”.
The entire Crane Pond Road is a rough truck trail. It’s has gotten minimal maintenance by the state of New York, ever since those with an certain extremist ideological agenda attempted to get this truck trail closed off.
Some portions of the truck trail are deeply rutted, and at least this time of year, very muddy. A few places are washed out, and you have to travel past washed outs, or carefully climb over them. I bottomed out my Ford Ranger a couple of times and could feel the front-drive train pulling the back wheels along as they started to slip.
Towards the end of the truck trail, the truck trail actually crosses an inlet to Alder Pond. I didn’t try driving through this section during the high water of spring, but apparently at least one person with an old Chevy K1500 4×4 made it to the end without problems.
I drove to the pull-off right before the spot where the truck trail crosses Alder Pond. In low water, I wouldn’t mind driving through the inlet to the parking area at the end of Crane Mountain Road, but I wasn’t going to get my pickup stuck or flooded.
All and all, I am happy that citizens fought to keep this existing truck trail open, against an extremist ideological agenda of some environmentalists. It shortens the hike up Pharaoh Mountain by 4 miles, and provides easy access to many important areas.
This would have been different issue if was proposed by the NYS DEC to build a new road through the Pharoah Lake “Wilderness”. If the DEC had shown up with bulldozers, and chainsaws, to cut a new road one could have made an argument against building a new road.
Yet, Paraoh Lake “Wilderness” is not that — it’s a land that has long been minimally developed with forest access roads, trails, lean-tos, with Crane Pond Road long being minimally maintained to provide access to this important public land. It’s not a Strip Mall or Housing division, and most of the area is very wild, even if it’s somewhat developed to provide for the public access and enjoyment.