Mountaineering

Hiking with Barbara

by Bill Ingersoll

July 15, 2001 was Barbara McMartin’s deadline to finish her book Perspectives on the Adirondacks. She had spent several years doing the research, the interviews, and the writing necessary to complete the project – one of the factors that had kept her from hiking as often as she used to. She had been working on that book and talking about it as long as I had known her. Now that it was done, she intended to celebrate the occasion with a hike that she had had in mind for some time, a hike to Spectacle Lake.

I had known Barbara for well over a year at that point, and while we had spent much of that period talking about past hiking trips we each had done and about places we liked to go, we had not yet gone on a hike together. Therefore, when the time came for the trip to Spectacle Lake, she included me as a part of the package.

On Saturday the 21, I met Barbara and her husband, Alec Reid, at their house on Canada Lake around eight in the morning. I rode with them to Arietta, just a few miles to the north on NY Route 10, where we parked at the second bridge over the West Branch Sacandaga River.

This was not going to simply be a hike to Spectacle Lake, for Barbara had brought her Grumman canoe along. She told me that this was one of the first canoes that Grumman had made after World War II, and that she had received it from her father in 1946 or 1947. It was in such great shape that I would never have guessed that it was 54 years old. There hardly seemed to be scratch on it, but she assured me that this was not because it had been coddled during its long life – no modern Kevlar canoe could stand the test of time so well, she boasted.

Her plan today was to paddle the canoe across Good Luck Lake and then wheel it down a snowmobile trail to Spectacle, a large lake at the heart of the forest with numerous bays to explore. She had mentioned this trip to me several weeks earlier, and I was curious as to why she was so intent on visiting Spectacle in this manner. She had no doubt hiked and skied to it many times before. She did mention that someone she knew had paddled the lake, and no doubt hearing about this adventure had prompted her to want to try it for herself.

We launched it on the river just below the bridge and paddled upstream, over the remains of an old crib dam, to the confluence with Good Luck Lake’s outlet. However, water levels were so low that summer that the outlet looked like a narrow ditch. Barbara did not recognize it, and we paddled past it unknowingly. Around one bend, we came upon a green heron on the bank, with its long beak pointed skyward. It allowed us to get so close we could have touched it with our paddles.

“That was worth the price of admission,” Barbara commented quietly as we observed this seldom-seen creature.

When we came to a large beaver dam on the river, we realized our mistake and turned back for the “ditch.” Although the water was down, the outlet was still navigable. Marks on the alders suggested the river had dropped as much as three feet since spring.

We paddled across Good Luck Lake to a large campsite at the west end. When we landed, Alec and I lifted the canoe – with all of the gear – out of the water and through the campsite, where I watched as he rigged the canoe to a wheeled carrier for the overland trip to Spectacle Lake.

Barbara assured us that the distance between the lakes was only a mile, and that we should be there in half an hour. With that in mind, we set off. The three of us took various stations around the canoe to help walk it through the woods. Twice, the carrier bounced free of the canoe and we had to stop and strap it back down. The trail was in fine shape, but the rocks and roots were plentiful enough to make the trip difficult. There was no graceful way to wheel a 50-pound aluminum canoe down so long a trail, we quickly discovered.

Although we thought we were setting a decent pace, there appeared to be no end to the trail. As Alec and I pushed and pulled the canoe onward, Barbara asked me how I would like to do this for a six-mile trip.

I thought she was kidding. “I think I’ll pass,” I said.

“Really? You wouldn’t want to do it?” She wasn’t kidding, and she looked a tad disappointed.

As I then found out, she was planning a long camping trip to the Cedar Lakes the following summer, and part of those plans involved carting this canoe into the wilderness, the same as we were doing today, but over a much longer trail. She was hoping that a successful journey today would inspire Alec and me to enlist our canoe-carting services on that trip, as well. Neither of us responded.

Thirty minutes had stretched to seventy inexplicably by the time; at last, we arrived at the east shore of Spectacle Lake. We set the canoe into the water and proceeded to make a clockwise circuit of the many-lobed lake. She once wrote: “Spectacle Lake was obviously named for its lobes, which suggest a pair of eyeglasses. However, the first surveyors must have failed to discover all of the lake’s circular recesses, or else they had in mind a many-eyed monster outfitted with a very peculiar pair of spectacles.”

At the western end of the lake, we discovered a heron rookery consisting of five active nests. In the canoe, we were able to paddle past the feet of the tall snags in which the nests were perched, and we could see silhouetted heads furtively sticking out. I have observed this rookery from the shore several times since then, but never as closely as that day in the canoe.

There were also gulls on the lake, which at one point began to dive-bomb in our general direction. They were trying to protect their young, who were out for a swim on the water. A large hawk swooped out of the woods towards the lake, but it was immediately chased back by one of the brazen gulls.

We spent two hours on the lake that day before returning the Grumman to its carrier and guiding it back down the snowmobile trail. This time, Alec and I had worked out a technique for walking with the canoe, and we set a much better pace. Barbara was not impressed, however, and she chastised us several times for walking too fast.

Later, I checked Barbara’s own guidebook and found that the distance between the lakes was actually 1.8 miles, which explained why it still took over an hour to get back to Good Luck. Hey, even the best of us make mistakes now and then.

That was the first of four hikes we did together, but it was the last time we brought the canoe along.

It was Barbara’s trail descriptions that originally introduced and enticed me to many portions of the Adirondacks, and it was the historical research she provided in her guidebooks that formed the basis of my own understanding of Adirondack history. And, of course, it was Barbara who got me into the guidebook business myself. While I take pains to use my own voice and my own observations while writing about the pursuits and the places that I love, I find it impossible to distance myself very far from Barbara’s influence.

She passed away in September, but her words and observations will continue to introduce people to the Adirondacks for many years to come.

If You Go…
There are several good approaches to Spectacle Lake. A trail that begins on NY Route 29A just east of Pleasant Lake leads hikers to the lake’s south shore after a 5.8-mile trek past Third and Fourth lakes. The route from the east, via Good Luck Lake, begins from a large parking turnout on NY Route 10, just north of the “second bridge” in Arietta. In this case, follow the main snowmobile trail to a four-way junction at 0.5-mile and bear left. At 1.5 miles, bear right for Spectacle Lake, which is 2.8 miles from the highway. From this same trailhead, it is also possible to approach Spectacle by way of Dexter Lake, for a total distance of 4.1 miles.

Bill Ingersoll lives in Barneveld. He is revising Barbara McMartin’s Discover series and is co-author of several books. All of these routes are described in Discover the Southern Adirondacks, revised and reissued for 2005.

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