An easy Adirondack Day

On Thursday, I picked up Mom & Dad and started off to the Moose River Plains for an easy day of short hikes in the Adirondacks. First up was an old hunting camp, referred to as Kenwells…

Kenwells

Not much information can be found online about the camp, one picture here and an article here. I found info on the hike in a guidebook, and it sounded interesting. We drove from the Limekiln Lake entrance of Moose River Plains back about 10 miles or so to campsite #111, the trail itself starts by campsite #114.

The trail is just about a mile and was pretty easy to follow, even without markers.

About the half mile mark, the path dips down to the bank of Otter Brook in a couple places so you can step out and get a few pictures of it.

With about a tenth of a mile to go, the path splits off to the left. In front of you you can see the remnants of an old road. We missed the split and ended up bushwhacking back up to the path. On the way back I took what dead wood I could find and tried to mark where the split was, going so far as to prop a long branch in a tree to help block the wrong way.

We hit the clearing shortly after of where the house used to be.

If you walk around, it’s very easy to find things left behind, we never did find the old donkey engine that was used to generate power, but I did find an old bed spring.

If you head downhill, you’ll get to the shore of a small pond.

Once we got done poking around, we headed back to the campsite to get lunch, and head to stop number two…

Kenwells specs

• 2.02 miles
• 336 ft elev gain
• 1 hour 21 minutes

Sawyer Mountain

Sawyer I picked because even though the summit itself is closed in, there were two overlooks, and it wouldn’t be that difficult of a hike. (second link) It was a popular spot, even in the afternoon on a weekday. When we were arriving, one car was just leaving, and while registering notice another couple that had just come off the trail were from Israel. We found the trail really easy to follow, even with all the different variations of trial markers they used.

It only took a little over a half hour to reach the summit, then on past it to the farther lookout.

After spending a few minutes there, we headed back up and over to the first overlook that we skipped on the way up.

Got back down to the car and headed to the last hike of the day.

Sawyer Mountain specs

• 2.39 miles
• 751 ft elev gain
• 1 hour 30 minutes

Cathedral Pines

For being the shortest hike of the day, it was the one that gave us the most trouble. At only a tenth of a mile, how hard could it be to find a 6 foot tall stone memorial in the middle of the woods, when you have a lake on one side and a road on the other? Pretty difficult if you don’t remember to print out a guide. (second link) We started down the trail located right next to the trail sign.

The trail was pretty easy to follow except that other trails kept intersecting with it.

Eventually we hit the short of Seventh Lake.

We wandered a little bit along the lake shore, looking back into the woods also, still not seeing it. After about 5-10 minutes, decided to just call it a day and head back. On the way back, at one point, noticed a red trail marker off to the right on one of those intersecting trails. Decided to follow that and after a hundred feet or so…

The Memorial is dedicated in the memory of 2nd Lt Malcolm L. Blue. It used to be fastened to the tree behind it, and I did see one mention that NY Governor Dewey took part in the dedication.

You can see the coins left there by previous visitors. It turns out at the roadside sign, there were two trails going into the woods, if we had taken the one on the left, instead of the one right next to the sign, it would have led us right to the memorial. After getting a few pictures we headed back to the car and to Old Forge for dinner at Randy’s Restaurant before heading home.

Cathedral Pines specs

• .46 miles
• 75 feet elev gain
• 21 minutes

To see all my pictures from today, click here.