Northern Forest Canoe Trail - Segment 1, Day 1

Every year, my brother and I try to do a multi-day kayak or hiking trip in the Adirondack mountains in Northern NY. For some reason we always aim for the fall, and so far that's worked out well for us. There's fewer people and bugs, it's definitely not hot, and the scenery is even more amazing. But, we've had a bit of rain and a few nights the temperature has gotten down to freezing.

Last year, the three of us did our first overnight kayak trip. We travelled from Long Lake to Tupper Lake via the Raquette River. It was a new experience for us and we overthought and overpacked way too much of the wrong stuff, and left out important items. Also, I had cut my foot down to the bone a week prior (long story), and that did not help at all on the one carry.

We didn't have much time off to go anywhere else, so when researching new routes for this year, I found that we had actually done part of the Northern Forest Canoe Trail, a 740 mile route from Old Forge, NY to Fort Kent, Maine. Since Old Forge is even closer to us, we decided to the first of the 13 segments (if you buy the map), which starts at Old Forge and ends where we started last year in Long Lake. According to the map, it's about 43 miles and had 5 carries (or portages) this time, but they were all ones you could use wheels on.

I uploaded my GPX to a few sites and found the best results so far with CalTopo. You can find my route here, but I would highly recommend buying the map at least for the lean-to, portage and rapids information as I only marked a few waypoints on my map. If it's your first time overnight kayaking or canoeing, I'd buy the book too, but I don't really think there's a ton of extra information that makes it a worthwhile purchase. The NFCT website has a trip planner, but I wouldn't rely on it with poor cell service in many of the areas, and it's hard to immediately know if a campsite is a campsite or has a lean-to, among other problems.

Early Saturday morning, Ben, Ryan and myself left Syracuse to meet Bo and Karen who stayed overnight in Old Forge. They were going to be in a We-no-nah 2 person Kevlar canoe and planned to leave the trip early on Sunday. We dropped off our kayaks (all Wilderness Systems) in Old Forge, and drove to the Long Lake DEC boat launch to leave a truck for our ride home, then back to Old Forge. Final preparations and a bathroom break at the Town Clerk's / Visitor's center and we were on our way. The launch is right at the dam and public beach, and you travel on a section of the river for maybe 1 mile before you get to First Lake. There are some very neat boat houses along this section of the river.

There is a hugely discernible difference between First, Second and Third Lake, but a very cool windy river section between Third and Fourth. Fourth Lake is bigger than First, Second and Third Lakes combined, and early on you come to Alger Island Campground. There are a lot of lean-tos on the island and we stopped because Bo had been there years before with his brother. After a brief break, we continued on to the end of Fourth Lake (with a seaplane taking off over the top of us) where we planned to stop for pizza and beers in Inlet.

If you get the chance, Screamen Eagle/Matts Drafthouse is a great riverside bar with 50 of beers on tap and awesome pizza. I couldn't believe it, but Bo and Ryan wanted to get a Hawaiian pizza. At least there were 2 of them that wanted it so they would finish it. Meanwhile, Ben kept remarking how stopping like we had was not roughing it and we shouldn't be stopping there. But soon enough we had to continue on and get to where we were camping on Seventh Lake.

Fifth Lake was basically a pond but at the end of it was our first portage to Sixth Lake. Compared to the last trip, we all had a set of wheels for the carry of .4 miles. You go up a dirt path to Route 28, go along it a ways to Sixth Lake Road where you cross and shortly after put back in. For this trip, everyone's wheels worked wonderfully, but more to come.

Bo and Karen were much faster in the canoe for the carry and almost immediately took off in Sixth Lake. This was good as we were quite a bit faster than them in our kayaks. Sixth Lake is small, but once we got to Seventh Lake, it finally started to seem more like the Adirondacks I'm used to - quiet and less populated!

There's 3 lean-tos on Seventh Lake, 2 on the northern shore and one of them was much larger than the normal 8 person lean-to. I know the DEC says that lean-tos are to sleep up to 8 people but when I've slept 6 people in one before, it seemed tight even then. I think the second lean-to on Seventh Lake was big enough for 12-14 people.

Our goal was the lean-to on the last island on Seventh Lake. Ryan went ahead on the left hand side and had to drag his kayak across sandbars so I don't know if it could be considered an island in October. Thankfully no one had taken the lean-to on the island (but looking back, we never saw anyone camping on any of the lakes, just a few in one of the campgrounds so maybe we shouldn't have been worried).

We quickly set up camp as sunset was around 6:15 which we managed to get a nice view of on the other end of the island. No one was hungry from all the pizza not too long beforehand, so we built a fire and forced Ryan to stay awake. I was knew I wanted to have the Backpacker's Pantry Three Cheese Mac and Cheese which is possibly the best freeze-dried meal I've ever had, and had that for a late dinner. Finally to bed.