The next day, we’re off again before sunrise, driving in the dark through the quiet outskirts of Saranac Lake, past motels and winter sporting stores and outdoor barbecue joints. Mist is rolling off the surface of Lake Flower as we enter the village proper, again turning north toward the settlement of Harrietstown. We stop the car at the spot we identified the day before - a dirt turnoff just over half a mile north of the junction with Route 186, where the highway rises onto a broad ridge, with unobstructed views to the east across miles of farmland and woodland. Behind the mountain range in the far distance, the sun is beginning to rise, and the banks of high cirrus clouds seem to all but catch fire. I set a longer timelapse here with the RX-100 while Jane eats breakfast in the car; with the RX-10, I experiment with light leak using the warm, golden rays of the early morning sun. Halfway through my first full trip with the new camera, I’m finding the 200mm reach of its lens to be creatively liberating, if not outright exhilarating, as it enables me to fill the camera sensor with smaller, more intimate sections of the landscape, emphasizing the depth and distance between the receding layers of trees, hills, and mountains.
Back on the road, we make a U-turn and return to Route 186, which we follow to the west past the local airport, along the shores of Lake Clear, and then through the spruce and pine forest of the Floodwood region. We will be returning to explore this area by boat in two days; for now, we follow the road as it threads its way between the lakes, passing over bridges shrouded in morning mist. Further south, after leaving Upper Saranac Lake, we rejoin the thoroughfare between Saranac and Tupper Lake, following that road west as it passes over the Raquette River. At Tupper Lake, we find a grungier, industrial version of the Adirondack village, a old lumber mill-town and railyard settlement, abandoned by the current century, unadorned by the ski chalets and cafés of Lake Placid, or the museums and boathouses of Saranac. In the silence of the early morning, with a thick fog rolling in off the nearby lake, the deserted village looks eerie, almost supernaturally so. We hurry out of town, past dollar stores, hardware stores, and empty gas stations.
To the northwest, over Piercefield Flow, we turn onto Conifer Road, a small back-road cutting westward toward the Cranberry Lake and Five Ponds Wilderness, in the northwest corner of the Adirondack Park. After a short drive, we reach the parking area for Mt. Arab, a fire tower peak overlooking the Tupper Lake region. Like the day before, the mid-week trailhead is all but abandoned, except for a family of local hikers with the family dog. We set off up the mountain shortly behind them, enjoying the brief, brisk climb through the trees, aided in places by wooden steps and stone staircases. Jane picks up a pair of sturdy oak branches from the forest floor and re-purposes them as walking sticks. About a mile in, the trail levels out and branches into several divergent paths as it reaches the rocky shoulder just beneath the summit. We circle to the right (southward), reaching a wooden bench with lovely, open views toward Mt. Arab Lake and Eagle Crag Lake, which remain shrouded by a blanket of morning mist. At the summit, we join the hiking family on top of the fire tower, while their retriever waits anxiously at ground level and whimpers. From the top, we’re greeting by a staggering panorama of the northwest Adirondacks: rolling hills, forests, lakes, and mountains as far as the eye can see, interrupted only by the billows of fog rising from Tupper Lake and the many surrounding ponds. As we watch over minutes, this cover is lifted by the warmth of the morning sun, and the turquoise-blue surface of Mt. Arab Lake reveals itself beneath the mist. Our friends in the fire tower point toward Eagle Crag Lake, where they own a lakefront cabin, and reminisce about long summer nights spent drinking and watching Independence Day fireworks from the water’s edge.
Climbing down from the tower, we spend some time exploring the summit, basking in the views and the clear, calm morning air. After taking my panoramas and landscape shots, I try to craft close composition with the bright-red berries of a nearby ash tree and the dark-violet elderberries growing beneath them, but give up after a few minutes. We descend the mountain to the car, and retrace our route back to the Tupper Lake. In town, I stop for gas while Jane goes inside the station to buy a cup of coffee. We head south now, following the eastern shore of Tupper Lake. We break into the bag of snacks we purchased at the Lake Placid Hannaford the day before - cheese sticks, bread rolls, and a bag of dried fruit and trail mix (Jane feeds me while I drive and try to guess the fruit). Along the way, we stop for photos on the road bridge between Tupper Lake and Simon Pond, and on the roadside at Rock Island Bay, where a painter is setting up her oils and canvas. Continuing on, we leave Route 30 just south of Tupper Lake, taking the backcountry road toward Horseshoe Lake and the Bog River Flow.
A few miles past the Bog River Falls, where the Bog River empties into Tupper Lake, the smooth asphalt gives way to a well-graded, dirt road. We continue past the campsites and campervans on the shore of Horseshoe Lake, driving several more miles through the forest to a Y-intersection with a gated fire road. There, we park our car to the side of the leaf-littered road. After a quick lunch in the car (bread, cheese, oranges, and chocolate milk), we set off on a long walk (7 miles round-trip) to Hitchens Pond and to the top of nearby Low’s Ridge - named for Abbot Augustus Low, a lumbar baron from Brooklyn who owned forty-thousand acres of the surrounding woodlands in the early 20th century. The fire road makes for a mostly flat, easy stroll, which takes us through stands of mixed hardwood forest, and past open stretches of bog spruces and tamaracks. The rapid transitions between plant communities, and the lovely autumn colors draped over all of them, make for compelling photographic subjects even in the midday light under largely cloudless skies. We pass the time by chatting and admiring the scenery.
Over two miles in, we emerge from the forest at the concrete dam between Low’s Lake and Hitchens Pond, where a group of canoeists is finishing a portage. Missing the trailhead sign for the Hitchens Pond Overlook, we initially continue along the fire road toward the Sabattis Scout Camp for several minutes before realizing our mistake. We backtrack along the lake shore and find the turnoff to the northwest, tucked behind the ruined foundations of Low’s old manor house. Setting off on this trail, we begin a roughly 1-mile climb to the top of Low’s Ridge, along narrow forest paths that skirt and switchback their way along the edge of the mountain. Near the top, after a bit of scrambling over flat granite blocks, we reach the rocky ridgeline and are rewarded with impressive vistas to the south and east.
From the ridge, we scan from the south, toward Lake Lila and the undulating hills of the William Whitney Wilderness, to the east, where the Bog River flows out of Hitchens Pond in a sinuous, meandering curve. Behind the river stands the imposing figure of Goodman Mountain, surrounded by the rounded peaks of the Long Lake region, and beyond them, the broad, rising massif of the central Adirondacks. Jane walks to the northeastern end of the ridge and plants herself on the granite, while I take my landscape shots, utilizing the leading curve of the river. We also set the tripod for a couples’ portrait before turning to make our way downhill. During the descent, we catch up with a hiking group of older women, one of whom has fallen and suffered a gash in her lip. We lend them a bandage and antiseptic ointment from our first aid kit before continuing down to the dam. From there, we make the long walk back along the fire road to our parked car.
After driving out to the main highway, we turn north, headed back toward Tupper Lake. During the planning phase, I’d originally wanted to turn south here, making a full circuit into the central Adirondacks in order to explore Long Lake and the watershed of the Boreas River. However, time considerations and a distaste for accommodation-hopping won out, and we opted for a more streamlined trip, focusing on photography in the areas around Placid, Saranac, and Tupper. So we backtrack toward Saranac Lake, attempting to first stop at the Bartlett Carry (a historic portage trail) between Upper and Middle Saranac Lakes for golden hour photography. We find that the carry road leads to private, waterfront property, so we turn our car around and move on.
A few miles east, we enter the Saranac Lake Islands Campground, where I’ve identified some lovely lakeside views across Second Pond. We park our car in the campground parking lot and walk out on the wooden boat dock; unsatisfied with the angle, we walk out of the campground and carefully pick our way through the brush along the edge of the nearby road bridge, which offers a higher perspective across the water and toward the High Peaks. Although I initially meant to reserve this southeast-facing view for sunrise, it’s become clear that I have too many sunrise locations, and too few days left to accomplish them. Footsore and tired from over ten miles of hiking and climbing, we decide to settle for a somewhat average session of late afternoon photography, skipping what indeed turns out to be an unspectacular sunset with high cloud cover.
