Water, Water Everywhere:
The Views from Ampersand

by Mark Bowie

There’s a sequence of footage in the 1997 documentary Adirondack Blue that lingers in my mind’s eye. The videographer is filming from a helicopter as it circles a bare rock peak. As the camera focuses on hikers atop the summit, numerous waters whirl dizzily beyond them. The viewer is left with the impression of water spreading to all points of the compass.

In planning the photography for my new coffee table book, Adirondack Waters: Spirit of the Mountains, I was determined to include water views from that mountaintop. But first, I had to decipher which mountain it was. Pouring over topographic maps and guidebooks, I concluded it was most likely Ampersand, in the northwest reaches of the High Peaks Wilderness Area.

Ampersand Mountain The hike is 5.6 miles round-trip so plan on it taking about four hours. The 1,775-foot ascent is rated moderate to difficult. The Ampersand Mountain trailhead is on the south side of NY Route 3, which is 7.3 miles east of the junction of Routes 3 and 30 east of Tupper Lake. There is a parking lot on the opposite side of the road that also serves the 0.5-mile trail leading to Ampersand Beach on Middle Saranac Lake, a wonderful place for a swim after the climb.

The trail steepens dramatically through a section Barbara McMartin noted was once considered the “worst in the Adirondacks.” Within the last decade the Adirondack Mountain Club’s Professional Trail Crew constructed a rock “staircase” to navigate what was once a bouldery, rooty, often muddy and precipitous slope. Even after conquering the staircase, the steep grade continues unrelentingly. With height, spruce takes over the forest. About a mile beyond the cabin, we emerged into a glen, where paper birch, ferns and balsam joined the spruce. Soon after, we scrambled over a series of rock ledges, then onto the bald anorthosite peak.

I write in the book, “With perfect timing we summited just as the sun rose over Whiteface Mountain. Far below us spread the most spectacular gathering of Adirondack waterways we’d ever seen — a 360-degree panorama encompassing the three Saranac Lakes, the Saranac River snaking between them, and a myriad of ponds and streams — all gleaming amidst velvety green forest. The sun set bands of altocumulus afire and illuminated layers of mist hovering over the waters.”

The vast sweep lay as if untouched by man. Henry Van Dyke, in an 1885 article in “Harper’s New Monthly,” had written of his views atop Ampersand: “A soft, dazzling splendor filled the air. Snowy banks and drifts of cloud were floating slowly over a wide and wondrous land. Vast sweeps of forest, shining waters, mountains near and far, the deepest green and the faintest, palest blue, changing colors and glancing lights, and all so silent, so strange, so far away that it seemed like the landscape of a dream. One almost feared to speak lest it should vanish.”

Ampersand has three prominent summit knobs; its bare peak a legacy of Verplanck Colvin’s surveying crew.  In 1873 they cleared it for triangulation lines of sight to neighboring mountains. The fire tower that was later sited near the easternmost knob has long since been removed.

The views from on high recalled those magnificent revolving images from the video. We were definitely on the correct mountaintop. I was so moved by the breadth and variety of waters that dominate the vistas that I’ve included a 180-degree panoramic image of them in the book.

Dave Cilley, owner of St. Regis Canoe Outfitters in Saranac Lake and producer of the Adirondack Paddler’s Map, describes the Saranac Lakes, Kiwassa, and Oseetah Lakes and other waters just north of Ampersand as the Crown Jewel of Adirondack paddling. They’re at the crossroads of several historic canoe routes linking the Raquette, Saranac, St. Regis and Osgood Rivers. The Saranac River is a major component of the Northern Forest Canoe Trail, which stretches from the central Adirondacks to Fort Kent, Maine on the Canadian border. Beyond the Saranac Lakes, Tim and I could see numerous lakes and ponds in the St. Regis Canoe Wilderness Area.

Lower Saranac Lake is popular today with canoe campers. It’s a classic Adirondack lake — forested to the shore and dotted with 50 islands. The islands and much of the 17 miles of shoreline are state-owned and dotted with campsites, many with inspired views to the High Peaks. Henry Van Dyke wrote, “The Lower Saranac Lake, Round Lake [Middle Saranac] and Lonesome Pond [Kiwassa Lake] are all stretched at its [Ampersand’s] foot and acknowledge its lordship. When the cloud is on its brow, they are dark. When the sunlight strikes it, they smile. Wherever you may go over the waters of these lakes you shall see Ampersand looking down at you and saying, quietly, “This is my domain.”

Ampersand’s vistas north and west are more watery and less mountainous than those south and east. To the east, however, lies a strikingly pretty body — the hourglass-shaped Ampersand Lake — beneath the hulking masses of the Seward and Sawtooth mountains and Stony Creek Mountain. Completely privately-owned today, the lake was the site of the “philosopher’s camp,” where in the mid-1800s several distinguished Boston scholars, artists and scientists including Ralph Waldo Emerson, James Russell Lowell and Louis Agassiz gathered to explore the surrounding area.

The Sewards actually rise 1,000 feet above Ampersand Mountain, but lack its fine water views. Van Dyke described Seward Mountain as “a solemn giant of a mountain standing apart from the others and looking us full in the face. He was clothed from base to summit in a dark, unbroken robe of forest. Ou-kor-lah, the Indians called him — the Great Eye... At his feet, so straight below us that it seemed almost as if we could cast a stone into its clear brown depths, lay the wildest and most beautiful of all the Adirondack waters — Ampersand Pond [Ampersand Lake].”

Scanning the horizon further east and north, Tim and I saw Nye, Cascade, Hurricane, Slide and Whiteface mountains. McKenzie Mountain fronts Whiteface, towering above Oseetah Lake. From Ampersand you can also see the fire towers atop Mount Arab and St. Regis Mountain, and with binoculars on a clear day the towers atop Debar, Loon and Lyon Mountains.

For more information, consult “Discover the Northern Adirondacks” by Barbara McMartin and Bill Ingersoll (Lake View Press) or “Adirondack Trails: High Peaks Region” edited by Tony Goodwin (Adirondack Mountain Club).

Many Adirondack mountains offer glorious views over waters. But to me, none outshine Ampersand’s. The bare summit, with its panoramic aerial perspective, provides ample reward for the demanding climb.

Mark Bowie of Pittsfield, Mass., is a professional nature photographer and writer. His new coffee table book “Adirondack Waters: Spirit of the Mountains” is scheduled for release in July. To order, visit www.markbowie.com.

©2000-2006 Adirondack Sports & Fitness. All rights reserved.