Saranac Lakes 2025 - Part II

This is Part II of a trip diary which starts here.

Day 3: Monday 9/7 

I'm an early riser, so on our first day in camp I got out of my tent at about 6:30AM to face a cold, cold early Monday morning. We didn't have any plans to get anywhere in a rush that morning and everyone else had the sense to stay in bed until the temps warmed up. They may have avoided the numb fingers and toes I experienced, but they missed out on a beautiful scene of early morning mist over the water, as the cold air condensed over the relatively warm water of the lake. 

Morning mist

Mid-morning Tom and I took the motorboat back to South Creek to retrieve the things which had been left behind in the previous day's chaos, including my cooler, my Jackery power system and giant solar panel (which we really didn't need, but which I had recently gotten for a steal at a community sale and wanted a chance to play with), and our Yonkers bagels. When we got back to camp the four of us had a fancy brunch of bagels (toasted over Tom's old school stove-top toaster), cream cheese and lox. 

Campsite bagel brunch

Tom was still feeling less Tall than usual, so in the afternoon he stayed in camp while the remaining three of us went out in our kayaks to explore across the lake and up into Weller Pond. We paddled about 6 miles round-trip, including a snack stop at the lovely if unpleasantly named Tick Island (poor branding!). Not a lot of miles for a full day of kayaking, but a good easy start to the trip after the previous day's cockup (to use a British term).

My dinner of chicken vegetable stew, which I had pre-cooked and frozen in containers at home, was well received, though the accompanying gummy bear dessert was met with less enthusiasm. This was despite the fact that they were organic gummy bears from Whole Foods which according to the package were "inspired by real fruit flavors". Maybe they would have been better received if they had been that other kind of gummy - wink, wink. Traditionally we're all exhausted at night from the day's paddling, but this was an easy day so we hung out fairly late (which means after 9 PM) in the shelter and enjoyed a campfire before all crawling into our tents.

Hanging out in the shelter

So, let me tell you a little about our campsite accommodations. One of the tricks of camping is to create an environment that's right for your trip. At one end of the spectrum you see car campers who bring so much stuff you wonder why they even left home, and at the other you see ultralight backpackers who live on ramen drained through their socks so they don't have to carry the extra weight of a strainer (my understanding is that by about the third day of the trip sock-strained ramen starts to taste pretty funny). We generally aim in between those extremes: more luxury than a backpacker, since we can carry more, without going overboard, so to speak.

I had mistakenly remembered that this campsite had only a "thunderbox", that is, an outhouse without the house part, but in fact it had a full outhouse, which a previous occupant had even left stocked with toiled paper and hand sanitizer. Humorously, someone had also added a gel seat pad to the toilet seat. More luxury!

Quite commodious

Tall Tom always brings the latest iteration of his portable battery-powered shower. Here's how it works: fill the black bucket half-way with lake water. Boil some water on the stove in the grey pot and then dash through the woods with it and add it to the black bucket, resulting in a good amount of reasonably warm water. While the water is still warm, get undressed and have a lovely shower dans le nature.

Campsite shower

This trip was definitely about abundance compared with our typical kayak-based camping lifestyle. Tom had brought a big ol' tank of cooking gas, so we had plenty of fuel for cooking as well as heating water for showers. I brought a fold-up egg crate camping mat to place on top of my usual backpacker camping cot and brought my big, big tent. I also brought three pillows (two small camping pillows plus an inflatable) so I didn't have to use my clothing dry bag as a pillow, plus I brought a sleeping bag liner for extra warmth. With the Jackery power system we never had to worry about running out of battery power (I usually am very mindful about preserving power, keeping my headlamp on low, my phone on airplane mode, and so on). I already mentioned the big pile of firewood we found on our arrival, so we had plenty of wood. I carted in a full five gallon jug of water, so we didn't immediately have to start focusing on filtering drinking water. And speaking of phones, we had solid cellphone connectivity, which I consider a mixed blessing. Years back, backcountry phone connectivity was very iffy - maybe you could find a particular spot around the campsite where if you were lucky you could get voice or maybe texting connectivity. Or maybe you'd have to keep toggling in and out of airplane mode until finally the phone caught a whiff of signal and connected. Of course, before that there was a time when there was no such thing as cell phone connectivity. This time around, we had solid LTE coverage all the time. That's good in that we were able to stay abundantly connected with home and get updated weather forecasts, but bad in that we never really fully disconnected from the outside world.

Let me also talk about bear hangs. Perhaps the first lesson in backcountry camping is that at night you always suspend your food and other scented items from a tree to keep from attracting bears and other wildlife. On our previous trip to this campsite I had diligently gone through the hassle of doing a bear hang every night, while Tall Tom and Rob just stored their food in the shelter (in bear resistant bags, at least). I started once again to do a bear hang on this trip, but quickly figured that my storing my food away from the campsite wasn't going to make much difference in whether we attracted wildlife given that the other three group members were storing their food bags in the shelter. So, I gave up on my bear hang after one night and just stored my food (also in bear-resistant bags) in the shelter like everyone else. We were fine. We got a small amount of interest from mice and raccoons, but as far as I can tell bears never entered our campsite (though they were close by - more on this later).

Day 4: Tuesday 9/8

Once again I got out of my tent early and spent some chilly time walking around the campsite checking out the views. The morning was even colder than the day before, so I got a small fire going and put up water for coffee. Critters of some kind had gotten into our trash bag; I cleaned up the mess and put everything into a new bag, which we hung in a better spot. As each person woke up they gravitated towards the campfire, and hanging out by the fire on a chilly morning was so pleasant that we wound up again getting a slow start on our day's activities. Mid-morning Béla, Jen and I finally roused ourselves and set off to explore into Lower Saranac Lake. This involved retracing the path through the twisty Saranac River which Tall Tom and I had traversed in the motorboat a few days earlier - this time with less stress since the river was largely deserted and we were in kayaks. This path took us through the lock between Middle and Lower Saranac Lakes lakes. I am the expert lock operator of the group; on this trip I worked it in one direction and supervised while my lock-operating apprentice Jen worked it in the other.

Jen and Béla in the lock

We decided to go through the ponds towards Lake Flower and scout the large boat ramp at the park headquarters, since we were looking for better places to unload at the end of the trip rather than hauling our gear up the trail at South Creek. This boat launch looked like a good option - though later on Tom came up with an even better idea. 

Paddling through the lake's islands

The shorelines in some parts of the Saranac Lakes are quite rocky and steep with little opportunity to land kayaks, particularly if one of your party has a brand new (to him) kayak which he doesn't want to scratch up by landing on rocks. With a little exploration we eventually found a hospitable spot to land for lunch near campsite 26 on Pope Island. Our total paddling for the day was about 11.5 miles.

Back at camp, Tom made a tasty dinner of chicken sausage and peppers. I skipped the mint Milano cookies he provided for dessert not because I'm virtuous, but because they are dairy and I had just eaten meat (Jewish dietary rules stuff). 

Earlier I detailed my luxurious bedding arrangement on this trip: mini cot, egg crate mattress pad, three (tiny camping) pillows, a down sleeping bag and liner. Let me tell you, it's a very cozy arrangement once one is situated, but every night the process of getting myself into the sleeping bag liner and the sleeping bag, arranging the pillows, zipping myself into the sleeping bag, and arranging the bag's hood over my head all without totally knocking the mattress pad out of place was an acrobatic feat which usually took several tries. I think I probably made a lot of noise getting settled into bed at night. Maybe that's why Jen packed up her tent and moved it farther away from mine after night one. I will say, though, that once I got everything positioned right via my nightly contortionist act, I slept quite well almost every night including being comfortably warm despite the cold temperatures. 

Sunset at Camp

Another campsite photo

Day 5: Wednesday 9/9

It's amazing how quiet the Adirondacks are. In early September in the DC area the night air is still abuzz with cicadas, and you hear songbirds all day long. Up in the north country, on the other hand, I guess September is much further along towards winter. The birds and insects are mostly gone, except for the loons with their haunting calls. We didn't even see many small critters, other than the cute tiny little Adirondack red squirrels. The only time we heard noise was when we got the occasional aircraft overflight from the nearby Fort Drum.

Fort Drum "birdlife"

By Wednesday I had finally learned my lesson: while I still woke up early, I stayed in my tent reading the newspaper and watching some more of the Billy Joel documentary on my phone until around 8 AM, by which time the temp had crossed up into the 40's. Once we were all awake we ate the remaining bagels with butter, cream cheese and Tom's friend Pam's peach butter. I've never met Pam, but she provides lots of provisions for our trips in the form of things like the green beans she "puts up" each year and gives to Tom as a gift. 

Instead of kayaking, we went for a hike. The Adirondacks contain a series of lakes, and one of the things people historically do is paddle a lake, then portage, or carry, their boat and stuff over to the next lake. In my opinion, portaging isn't all that much fun, but the portage trails between lakes are in some cases worthy hikes in and of themselves. We had heard that the canoe carry trail from Weller Pond to Saginaw Bay was such a nice hike, including a section of old growth woods, and we decided to check it out. The four of us piled into the motorboat and made quick work of the trip across Middle Saranac Lake and up into Weller Pond - the very same route which had explored by kayak on Monday.

Heading to Weller Pond (Jen says driving a boat is like driving a tractor)

The hike was, in fact, quite pretty, and there was one section of the woods where the nature of the trees changed - fewer scraggly understory trees, more big, mature trees. Given the harsh environment of the ADKs this was not lush California old growth forest, but we think we found the rare spot which had never been logged. When we got to the Saginaw Bay end of the trail we came across two old guys (even by our standards) who had kayaked over and were doing the same walk in the opposite direction. Not surprisingly, we saw them again on the way back.

Hike photos

It was a fun hike, but it was a workout for Tall Tom, who as I've mentioned, is not up to his usual tallness. When we got back to camp he relaxed while the rest of us showered. I've got to say, a warm shower, even with lake water (actually, the lake water is pretty clean) is a life restoring experience. I don't know what it is about kayak camping, maybe it's the time spent in wet neoprene clothing, but after a few days you start to smell really bad. In my case I pick up an odor which is something like rancid Cheez Doodles mixed with goat droppings, and it's good to wash it off every once in a while. I also shaved both my face and head, making me the only trip participant to freshen their hairdo during the trip.

Freshly showered

After my shower I put on fresh, clean clothes, which is a luxury when backcountry camping. Except that I had packed for slightly warmer temperatures than we wound up having, so a couple of the warm layers I had brought just in case - a merino wool base layer and my scratchy old wool sweater - got worn for the whole week. Hey, supposedly you can wear wool for a long time before it gets stinky. 

It was Jen's turn to make dinner, which was salmon croquettes with rice pilaf, with a topping of cooked beets and carrots. Dessert was no-bake cookies ("doo doo cookies", according to Tom) which never quite solidified but which were yummy nonetheless. As further proof of how lazy the local wildlife is, Jen accidentally left the leftover salmon out overnight on the picnic table, and in the morning it was untouched.

Another pretty sunset