Chapter 711

Oct 6, 2026

Just a Pond

a picturesque setting

Had an opportunity to paddle the Boreas again. The prominent centered High Peak is Mount Haystack.

Logging company Finch Pruyn built a timber dam at first then about a hundred years ago converted it to concrete. They floated logs down the river to mills. It took government two decades to allow public access here after their purchase.

From a distance I could see the whole setting with many High Peaks in the background.

At the north end, the Third Pond, that western tributary was too shallow to go up.

Adirondacks is full of erratics, big boulders pushed by the glacier. This one sitting right in the middle of the pond.

Some sunlit grasses growing right out of the water made a contrast with the shade. ai says they are actually Tussock Sedges that built their own island from their root systems.

More grasses blowing in the wind. Gusts up to 20 mph with near whitecaps further down the ponds. Tried to get a photo but wind was blowing me away. With morning temps in the 30's you don't want to capsize, you could quickly enter hypothermia and die.

ai again corrects me, these are thin silver colored wire sedges emerging from the floating sphagnum moss marsh, inter-sprinkled with yellow orange and reddish leatherleaf, the dominant bog shrub species.

Forget ai, I know these are Lily pads. Yellow Pond-Lily the Adirondack workhorse, not the White Lily with the white flower.

This was near the end of the Third pond 1.5 miles from launch, tributary above too shallow to continue.

Beaver house. I swear the beavers emulate the background scenery they see. High peak Mount Haystack. What does ai say? No, coincidental.

Met this guy with the Old Town canoe at the parking lot. There were a handfull of canoe people mostly all hanging near the launch by the afternoon when the winds had come up. A guy with the yellow $2000 Wenonah kevlar was adding a boulder for balast weight so the wind wouldn't have as much effect on him.

No ai on my photos by the way.  Jonathan did the Boreas video linked here.