One good thing about Vanderwhacker Wild Forest, much like Moose River Plains, is most of the campsites have outhouses, which helps keep things cleaner. Many of them seemed to be in decent shape, unlike the fire pits and picnic tables (where they existed), which where rotten and in serious disrepair.
Taken on Saturday May 21, 2011 at Vanderwhacker Mountain Wild Forest.
Time to get in the truck, stay dry, and head over to Vanderwhacker Wild Forest.
Taken on Saturday May 21, 2011 at East Branch Sacandaga River.A couple of weeks ago I hiked up Goodnow Mountain, on a beautiful clear afternoon, that by the time I reached the mountain it started to cloud up and the humidity started to increase. I had previously in the morning attempted to hike up Giant Mountain in the High Peaks, and wanted to do something easier for the afternoon.
Goodnow Mountain is located at the SUNY ESF (Environmental Science-Forestry) College, just south of the Adirondack High Peaks on NY 28, just to the west of Newcomb. It’s a bit of a drive from the Adirondack Northway from the east or even a little ways from Long Lake to the west, but well worth it for the views.
About a quarter mile up the trail you pass an interesting tree grown over a rock. This is not as uncommon as you might think in the Adirondacks where the soils are poor and the ground is rocky, and trees seek to put down more roots to pick up nuetrants.
At about 1/2 mile you reach the old woods road that at one time, decades ago, provide vehicular access to the tower for forest rangers. Part of the trail is flat, but then it keeps steeper and erosion is noticable on the old road bed, no longer passable by anything then ATV in an emergency.
Further up the mountain, the trail follows a series of boardwalks that keeps most of the trail out of the mud and the muck.
Then you reach an old abandoned barn, a well, and some interesting old debris like what appears to be a tank from a hot water heater storage unit.
You ascend a ledge, with some limited views to the south.
Then their is a thick planation of White Pines along the trail as you make one relatively short ascent to the firetower.
Eventually at the last possible moment, you break through the White Pines to see the Goodnow Firetower, and almost instantly want to start climbing it for the views, unless your suffering from heat exhaustion, then you might want to look for the relatively limited shaded but open sections on the mountain.
SUNY ESF has restored to the Ranger’s cabin, and the porch is a farely popular place to sit, enjoy the view, beat the heat for a few moments.
There are many interesting views from the firetower. Here are the High Peaks looking North, the Vanderwhacker Wild Forest to the east, Kempshall Mountain / Long Lake to the west, and Blue Mountain / Blue Ridge to the South.
Here is a map of the hike.
The nine o’clock update is that it’s an awful nice day out there. It’s 51 degrees under bright blue skies lush green grass as we head up to 68. Spring time is one of the best times of the year.
Kind of sucks that I’m off to work….
Been thinking about what I’m going to do the next few weekends. In less than three weeks it will be Memorial Day Weekend. I don’t want to go up to Moose River Plains this year for that holiday but I’m undecided on where to go. Maybe Vermont, I haven’t spent much time there recently but the traffic on NY 7 is bound to be horrific on Memorial Day Weekend. Then there is Vanderwhacker Wild Forest, but that is bound to involve taking the Adirondack Parking lot all the way north, and Northway with low gas prices and good economy on a nice holiday weekend is bound to be hopelessly clogged with hundreds of thousands trying to get to the Adirondacks.
This weekend is the Lupine Festival but next weekend if it’s nice, I plan to head up to Hope Falls area or maybe NY 8 and the East Branch of the Sacanadaga. It sure would be nice to spend some time in the wilderness and hit up the Sacanadaga River for trout fishing. We shall see how things.
Have a great Tuesday. We are in the second gear of the week, but before you know it will be direct drive then we’ll shift it down into a Friday.
Typically the first spring weekend is the earliest time in shoulder season for roadside camping in this part of the country. Often by that weekend, many of the back-roads are relatively free of snow that in drier locations, roadside camping is possible.
Shoulder-season camping can be somewhat tricky as snow and mud stays a long time in the back woods of the mountains, and it’s usually still fairly cold and the days are still relatively short, however it can be done if due care is well planned.
My first camping trip of the year will probably be a weekend trip up to Wilcox Lake Wild Forest. Depending on the snow and mud conditions, I may camp off of NY Route 8 or possibly Hope Falls Road. I’d rather do Hope Falls road and maybe hike along Stony Creek, but I am not sure if it’s possible that early in the year. NY 8 is nice except for all the noise pollution from traffic.
Might do some hiking back to one of the lakes or trails in the region that I haven’t done lately. Might try some trout fishing up in the East Branch of the Sacandaga River.
The first big trip I plan to take is the Finger Lakes National Forest. I am thinking of taking off a Thursday and Friday, and doing a three night trip out there. It’s a bit of a drive out there, but the Finger Lakes are pretty, and by late April should be greening up. I enjoy seeing the open and wild farm country out there. Probably visit some of the state parks out there. I don’t have an Empire Pass this year, but I suspect most state parks won’t be charging on a Thursday or Friday in April. I might dip down to Pennsylvania for a bit on the return trip.
Assuming the snow is gone relatively early and the ground is relatively dry, I may go up to Vanderwhacker Wild Forest and camp along Moose Club Way or North Club Road. Those roads can be soft in the spring time, but a lot depends on the weather. There always is the campsites along NY 28N as another option.
I want to spend more time in Western Catskills this year. While it’s a bit of a drive, now that I know about a few of the roadside campsites up that way, I have a place to base my camp out. I only have a preliminary idea of what is back there from the two nights I spent out there on Veterans Day Weekend. There looks to be a lot of interesting and unexplored land out there.
It’s a bit of drive down there, but mileage wise, it isn’t awful. It might be a relatively quick drive if I take the Thruway to NY 28 then go straight across to NY 30. I also want to check out Tomannex State Forest in Hancock I heard a rumor on the Internet that there is some nice roadside camping along the East Branch of the Delaware River down there, not to mention good fishing opportunities.
Memorial Day Weekend I always like do something fun where I am way back in the woods. Maybe Moose River Plains. That said this year, I will not be going up there if most of the weekend is for cold pouring rain or snow. I did that last year, and it was miserable. I may have told myself repeatably that camping out in the rain was more fun then being stuck back in the city, but I was pretty much lying to myself.
The Southern Green Mountains are always nice to visit. The Deerfield River is pretty and there are some nice truck trails and hikes up in the area. Maybe hike Mount Greylock then drive north and camp on one of the forest roads not too far back from VT 9. Always fun to visit Vermont and spend time in other states.
I am usually on-call for several weeks in June, so I need to be somewhere where I have cellphone service. I have good cellphone service at Charles Baker State Forest. Maybe do some paddling and fishing on one of the creeks or ponds around there. The Rogers Environmental Education Center is always delightful in the early spring.
A list of trip ideas I have for the months of April, May, and June as we move from shoulder season to spring to summer. Also known as the first 1,500 miles.
Some of the Tea Party activist-types have been known to hold signs up that say “Keep the Government Off My Medicare”. Liberal commentators gets a kick out of that, by pointing out that Medicare is a government program and would not exist without the government. That is logical, but that is not the implied meaning — that government is something different then the public as a whole and functions the government is supposed to provide to the public.
Government doesn’t always serve the public interest. Indeed, in many cases it does not serve the public interest because of citizen apathy and because certain insiders have more power then average citizens. Laws are often written in smoke filled rooms, and are used to justify policies decades later that are not supported by the majority, but instead the small minority of special interest groups that originally got them passed.
Few examples could be clearer then Indian Lake Road, now closed at the bottom of the hill below Squaw Lake. This road went to Indian Lake prior to 2008, a beautiful wilderness lake that was great for paddling and fishing. It was closed due to Adirondack Park State Land Master Plan Act, and because the DEC wanted to “bank” 2.5 miles of Moose River Plains Road to use for then they acquired the Nature Conservancy parcels to add to the Vanderwhacker Wild Forest.
You can still walk those 2.5 miles. The road is in decent enough shape to allow you to bring a kayak back on wheels. And at least for now, you can still backpack in a campsite along the road. But then it makes Horn Lake and other places even farther back, and makes the back country even farther back. And it begs real questions: why is the government taking our public lands from us?
Tea Party folk are right to question why the government is taking things from us. the public that they should be providing things to and not taking away from us.
The Adirondack Park State Land Master Plan describes primative tent sites as follows:
25. Primitive Tent Site–a designated tent site of an undeveloped character providing space for not more than three tents, which may have an associated pit privy and fire ring, designed to accommodate a maximum of eight people on a temporary or transient basis, and located so as to accommodate the need for shelter in a manner least intrusive on the surrounding environment. (page)
The Adirondack State Land Master Plan uses the definition of a “primitive tent site” in a wilderness area to explain campsites in wild forest.
1. All structures and improvements permitted under the guidelines covering wilderness areas will be allowed in wild forest areas. […]
Here is the wilderness “primitive tent site” regulations per the APSLMP:
1. The structures and improvements listed below will be considered as conforming to wilderness standards and their maintenance,rehabilitation and construction permitted:
— primitive tent sites below 3,500feet in elevation that are out of sight andsound and generally one-quarter mile from any other primitive tent site or lean-to:
(i) where physical and biological conditions are favorable, individual unit management plans may permit th establishment, on a site-specific basis, of primitive tent sites between 3,500 and 4,000feet in elevation, and,
(ii) where severe terrain constraints prevent the attainment of the guideline for a separation distance of generally one-quarter mile between primitive tent sites, individual unit management plans may provide, on a site-specific basis, for lesser separation distances, provided such sites remain out of sight and sound from each other, be consistent with the carrying capacity of the affected area and are generally not less than500 feet from any other primitive tent site;
Also, in wild forest, so-called groups of primitive campsites are allowed:
Small groupings of primitive tent sites designed to accommodate a maximum of 20people per grouping under group camping conditions may be provided at carefully selected locations in wild forest areas, even though each individual site may be within sight or sound and less than approximately one-quarter mile from any other site within such grouping, subject to the following criteria:
— such groupings will only be established or maintained on a site specific basis in conformity with a duly adopted unit management plan for the wild forest area in question;
— such groupings will be widely dispersed (generally a mile apart) and located in a manner that will blend with the surrounding environment and have a minimum impact on the wild forestcharacter and natural resource quality of thearea;
— all new, reconstructed or relocated tent sites in such groupings will beset back a minimum of 100 feet from themean high water mark of lakes, ponds,rivers and major streams and will be located so as to be reasonably screened from the water body to avoid intruding on the natural character of the shoreline and the public enjoyment and use thereof.
Despite threats from PROTECT! and Residents Committee to Protect the Adirondacks, the Adirondack State Land Master Plan has never been litigated in court, so there is no legal interpretations of the ASLMP outside what has been decided by the DEC and Adirondack Park Agency.
Many different wild forests have taken that definition to different meanings…
At Ferris Lake Wild Forest, particularly on Piseco-Powley Road, it has been taken to mean roadside campsites, where vehicles can access, and people are free to bring in a pickup camper or recreational vehicle if they so choose. Indeed, the draft UMP and the Adirondack State Land Master Plan both mention roadside camping. The Ferris Lake UMP goes as far as to describe various sites, and how big of a vehicle can fit in individual campsites. The sites have fire rings and outhouses, which is consistent with that definition. A minority of sites also have picnic tables.
This is common in most wild forests with roadside campsites, including Black River Wild Forest (North Lake, Woodhull Lake), Debar Mountain (Mountain Pond, Jones Pond, etc.), Ferris Lake Wild Forest (Powley Road, G-Lake Road, Edick Road, Mountain Road, etc.), Moose River Plains, and Vanderwhacker Wild Forest (Moose Club Way, Northwoods Club Road, NY 28N, Cheney Pond, Blue Ridge Road), Wilcox Lake Wild Forest (NY 8, Pumpkin Hollow, Hope Falls, etc.).
On the polar opposite would be Lake George Wild Forest, particularly along Darcy Clearing Road and Hogstown Road, where all of the campsites have been relocated and blocked off to prevent any vehicle use or non-tent use. The argument here is that primitive tent site must be taken literally in the dictionary sense, and that any use of vehicles, such as truck campers or recreational vehicles are inconsistent with the Adirondack Park State Land Master Plan.
Similar policies on restricting use of motor vehicles in roadside campsites exist in a minority of other wild forest campsites (like the lower portion of Harrietstown Road and Garnet Lake in Wilcox Lake Wild Forest), however the majority of forests allow some roadside campsites, with vehicle access.
But let’s be honest, most wild forests allow unrestricted roadside campsites for a variety of vehicles, including pickup campers and recreational facilities. This has been going on for over 100 years, basically as long as their has been motor vehicles in the Adirondacks, and certainly as long as recreational vehicles and truck campers have existed. Most public lands, outside of NY State also do not have much in restrictions on roadside camping.
It’s tough to take away from people what they are already granted, and enjoy, especially if the rational is limited. People enjoy roadside camping in a variety of vehicles, and in many locations. For many people, they have been coming to the backcountry for decades, parking their truck or RV, and enjoying all of the solitude and pleasure that roadside camping.