Climbing Coney Mountain

The sun finally came out today so we climbed Coney Mountain to get a beautiful view of the fall leaves.  It seems to be the height of the color.

Hiking to Cobble Ledge

We had a great day today.  We drove past the toll road up Whiteface Mountain in Wilmington to the trailhead for the Cobble Ledge trail.  The trail leads a little over one mile to a marvelous overlook.


It will be a great place to view the fall colors.

After the hike the group went to the A&W in Wilmington for lunch.  Then some of us went to the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center, which we had heard about but had never been to.  We saw wolves, coydogs, fox, black bear, and many birds of prey.

Hiking to Bridge Brook Pond

We had a very full day today.  First on the agenda was a "Mystery" hike with ADK Northwoods chapter.  We met at Moody boat launch to consolidate into fewer cars since there is very little space to park at the trailhead.  Then we drove down Route 30 and turned into Route 421.  From there it is about three miles to the trailhead for the newly marked hike to Bridge Brook Pond.  It is clearly marked if you know where to look, but the sign is tucked in off the road a bit.  It was a very nice 2-mile hike to the pond, with Black Pond at the mid-point, for a total distance of 4 miles.  The temperature was only in the mid-70's but the humidity was high so we were all pretty hot by the end.  That meant a post-hike stop at Skyline for ice-cream was definitely in order.

We got home and cleaned up then headed back out for dinner and a very nice chamber music concert in Lake Placid.

Another Beautiful Adirondack Day

We did an interesting explore today.  We drove 4.8 miles down the road in Massawepie, as directed by the entry for the Massawepie Mire hike on the Tupper Lake webpage, turned right, drove another 0.2 mile and parked on the right near the gate to the old railroad grade.  That is the beginning of a 5-mile trail through various habitats, primarily the huge bog, though there are more trees at that end of the bog than where we were a couple of weeks ago.  The trail looked pretty good near the beginning, so took the bikes off the car and started off.


Unfortunately, what the trail description did not tell us was that in many places the railroad ties are still in place.


We rode a bit further, trying to ride along the side, which was too wet in places.


After only about a mile we gave up, parked the bikes along the trail, and started walking, not that walking along unevenly spaced railroad ties is much fun either.  About one and a half miles from the beginning we reached the bridge across the Grass River.


The trail after that was greatly improved with no ties and not too soft for bikes.  And the bunchberry plants (Cornus canadensis) were prolific in spots.


We only walked about another quarter mile before turning around.  From the satellite view in google maps it looks as though you should be able to enter the trail from the other end off Route 3, near Grass River Flow.  We will explore that another day.

Massawepie Mire

We had a nice hike this morning through land owned by the Boy Scouts in the area of Massawepie Lake.  We took trails we had never been on before and ended at an overlook at the edge of Massawepie Mire, a very neat bog.

It looks as though you can get farther on the bog if you drive south, so I'm determined to do that before the scouts arrive.

It was very warm, in the 80's for the second day in a row, and the deer flies were already out, in addition to black flies and lots of mosquitoes.

After the hike we went to Raquette River Brewery for lunch.