Wednesday October 4th
While planning my trip I found out about a mountain with autumn foliage and amazing views, which you could drive up. The road closed around the end of the first week in October, and that was also when peak foliage was expected. So I had timed parts of the trip so that I could visit that mountain during that last week, and this was the day when it was scheduled. I was really looking forward to it, and encouraged by the autumn colours I had seen up in the mountains so far.
I’d planned the stop the previous night to be only a couple of hours drive from the mountain. I left the RV park and drove a short distance to the small town of Indian Lake, which did have a service station, so I filled up. Just out of the town was Adirondack Lake, a beautiful scene with reflections of the autumn colours on the still lake, at the start of yet another sunny day.
I drove along more rural roads through colourful forest, going along the Hudson River for a while, which was very picturesque, lined with wonderful foliage.
After another hour’s drive, where I got onto I-87 for a while, then back onto a smaller road, I passed the beautiful Chapel Pond around 9.30. This was only a smallish lake, but had beautiful hills behind, and mirror-like reflections. I met another guy there who seemed to be contemplating going fishing. The road followed the Ausable River for a while, then came into the town of Wilmington. I turned off through the town and out, and uphill, past a little place called North Pole, complete with another Santa’s Workshop. I don’t think it was open, a little early in the season!
A bit before 10.30 I arrived at the start of the road going up the mountain. There was a payment kiosk, with something like an 8” clearance, and I was hoping the van would fit under it, but all was ok. There weren’t many cars going through, so I didn’t have to wait long, and there wasn’t a lot of traffic on the road up. It was fairly steep and windy, and there were places to pull off regularly to look at the view, which of course I made use of! Someone took a photo of me at one of the places.
The foliage was just spectacular, I think it was pretty much at its peak, by the Lord’s wonderful arrangement. I mentioned to someone at one of the stops that I had been wondering how much colour there’d be, but it seemed to be at its best, and he said something like, “You hit it out of the park”! Views unfolded of miles of mountains covered in reds and oranges, with green areas of conifers interspersed, lakes dotted here and there, and blue mountains in the distance. Visibility was excellent.
It took around half an hour to drive up, with the stops. There were a lot of people parked at the top, but still parking available. There was some kind of construction going on, and they had us drive up to the end of the road, do a U-turn and then come back and park. The area to do the turn was a bit tight but I got around ok, glad of the backing camera. From the car park, there was a summit further up. You could either take a tunnel into the mountain and get an elevator up (I think they said it was something like 40 stories up), or walk up a steep track with a lot of stairs. Of course I took the walking option!
There was something like a small castle at the end of the car park, which tradespeople were working on. I had a quick look inside. I think there was a gift store there too. The trail was quite open, going along a rocky ridge, and there were great views all the way up.
At the top, which was about 4,800 feet (1,460m) (which was classed as a high mountain, though having been on a 14,000 foot (4,300m) mountain, I wasn’t sure it was so very high!), there was a weather station and a hut of some kind. I stayed there for quite a while, walking around on the rocky summit and taking photos from different angles. There were views in all directions.
Once I got back to the car park, it was getting toward 12, and there was a little food trailer selling “sandwiches” and drinks. I bought a sandwich, since that was what was on offer, and received a burger! This was a pleasant surprise. Apparently some burgers are called sandwiches in the US. Someone said those with mince patties in them were burgers, and other burgers were sandwiches, but that rule didn't always seem to be followed. So I never did get a good explanation of when a burger was a burger and when it was a sandwich. I ate my burger/sandwich with beautiful views at an eating area there, then headed back down, having had my senses filled!
The road down was fairly steep, with low speed limits, but the van’s gears worked well down hills, and I didn’t need the brakes much. I’d read a cautionary tale of a van coming down this hill with smoke billowing from its destroyed brakes, so made sure I was light on with them, and pulled over from time to time to look at the views again.
At the bottom I took a few more photos of the road with the colourful foliage surrounding it. To get to Wilmington Notch campground where I was staying, required a short trip back nearly into Wilmington then off about 3km on another road. There were a number of “notches” in the area, I’m not sure if they were a term to describe a mountain. There were also “flumes”, which I think may have been steep gorges or ravines, maybe with water in them.
I checked into the campground, which was fairly open, with pine trees planted around. The road was on one side of the campground, and on the other side was a valley with a stream running through it, and my site was on that side. There was a rough track down from the campground to a pretty waterfall very close by, with quite a decent flow through it. My plan was to do the Bear Den via Flume Loop hike, listed as around three hours. There was a bit of a map at the campground office of the trails, but it wasn’t entirely clear, and the person at the desk didn’t seem too sure either, but the AllTrails app is handy finding the start of trails in these situations, and I found it in the end just about 1km back along the road again.
There was a small parking lot there, fairly full, but I found a spot. The track went by a pond and along what I think was a branch of the Ausable River. It was very pretty, and as I walked on this bit I met with a couple who were also hiking, and we had a bit of a chat. While we were talking, all our phones suddenly made some kind of siren alarm noise. They said it was a test of a nationwide system where the President could alert the whole nation, or local authorities could send warnings of natural disasters or other dangers. I did hear it one other time later on for real when a gunman was on the loose.
I went up into the forest from there, which was also quite green underneath, and the track started to get steep as it climbed toward the summit. The forest was nice, and there was a bit of a carpet of autumn leaves, but there wasn’t much of a view to be seen until I reached the summit, which really did have a view. On one side the mountain went up further, but there were excellent views of a large valley with stunning colours, and mountains beyond, also with autumn colours.
I got there around quarter to four, and stayed on the summit about an hour. It was so beautiful I had to tear myself away! At the top were a lot of large rocks, and there was a woman with a dog which looked like a German Shepherd, on a part of the summit a bit further away, who asked me if I wanted to come onto that area. Maybe the dog wasn’t very people-friendly. I said I wasn’t in a hurry, and she left after a while before I had come over.
Eventually I had to come down – I didn’t want to be getting down in the dark! The lower part of the hike was a circuit, so I went back the other way. It was about quarter to six when I got back, getting towards sunset, which was now about 6.30. It had changed a lot in a short time, not just because of the season, but also because I was driving east. Between Monday night and Tuesday night, sunset got earlier by nearly 20 minutes! I enjoyed the river near the parking lot, and a small set of falls there, before getting back to the campground.
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