Heart Lake, Adirondack Park, 25 May – 1 June 2026
Each year I try to get back up to
the Adirondack Mountains, a place where I spent summers as a youngster at
Adirondack Wilderness Camp at the north end of Long Lake (sadly no longer
extant). The good news, however, is that what was once a boy’s camp is now
state-owned wilderness land and much of the AWC campus is now back in forest—adding
more acres to the public’s wild playground in this, the largest park in the Lower Forty-eight. As a
kid, I backpacked, mountain-climbed, and canoed across the Adirondack
landscape. It was challenging, often grueling, and strangely satisfying.
Anyway, these days, at my age, I like to settle down into a nice camping spot and do day walks out from that base. Of late, I have camped at Heart Lake, at the Adirondack Mountain Club’s “wilderness campground” adjacent to the Adirondak Loj, where, yes, I am in the woods, but where I can drive right up to my campsite (with picnic table!) and I am only a short walk from a bathroom that offers a hot shower. This is “lux” for wilderness camping, I must say. I love the convenience. If I so desire, I can also book a hot breakfast at the nearby Loj, which also has rooms (that quickly book up seasonally) for those who want to be in the forest but do not want to sleep on the ground. Heart Lake and the Adirondak Loj (with its Roosevelt/Dewey simplified spelling reflecting its Gilded Age origins) is the best location from which to venture out to climb in the Adirondack’s “High Peaks” region—Mount Marcy and Mount Algonquin are nearby, as are dozens of other rocky and challenging climbs. This is what I like to do, get out on the trail, but return to the comfort of my base camp and carry no heavy backpack (torture for somebody my age—actually torture for somebody of any age). Even in the 1970s I hated carrying a heavy backpack while trying to negotiate a rocky and muddy trail.
This year I did my standard set of hikes, some short climbs, and even led a bird-walk and gave an evening bird talk to the local crew at the Loj. It was great fun. I spent a week based at Heart Lake and never once ventured into nearby Lake Placid.
On my drive up I took the “back way” through Harrisburg and Scranton, then taking 84 east to 87 in NY, then up the Northway to the exit to Keene Valley. With two meal stops this was an 11-hour trip. I set up camp at 5:30PM and listened to the songbirds that welcomed me to my campsite: Black-throated Green, Blackburnian, and Myrtle Warblers; and Blue-headed and Red-eyed Vireos. Such a nice welcome!
26 May. Cold! Clear sky! I
lead a bird walk around the campus and we get “oohs” and “ahs” when we lure in
a male Blackburnian Warbler for all to see. That firey throat is a show-stopper! We also encounter a noisy male Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, doing its oddly erratic drumming.
Always, my first climb is up
Mount Jo, just behind the Loj. This provides a steep ascent and a lovely vista
south into the High Peaks—one of my favorite vistas on Earth!
In the PM I bicycle back north up to the North Elba pastures, about 5 miles distant. Biking this familiar road reminds me how hilly things are in the Adirondacks (one easily ignores that in a car). I had hopes of hearing or seeing Bobolinks, but no luck (I have read this grassland-loving species is in steep decline).
That night, comfy in my tent with the nice thick sleeping pad, I suffer a burst of day-one leg cramps that waken me not long after falling to sleep. This is one way I am reminded of my age...
27 May. This morning I
bicycle to South Meadows Road and drop my bike in the woods and hike up Mount
Van Hoevenberg. This is a nice long woods walk that also produces stupendous
views of the High Peaks.
From the summit I get good cell phone coverage and call home (something I cannot do from the campsite in the woods). I photograph Magnolia Warbler, Myrtle Warbler, and Ovenbird this morning.
My campsite (#23) hosts my tent, a picnic table, and of course my car. I am wakened from my PM nap today by the sound of gnawing, which sounds as if it is coming from the underside of my car (parked next to the tent). There is an overly friendly Eastern Chipmunk who “owns” my campsite, and I believe this stubby-tailed scamp may be consuming some tasty rubber hose or wiring accessible from the underside of my Nissan. That worries me! To prevent the chipmunk from eating my car I start providing a cache of luscious nuts at the edge of my campsite. This seems to do the trick (even though feeding wild animals is a contravention of local rules). Not sure what else I could do…
Singing adult Ovenbird in deciduous forest interior.
28 May. Today I head up Nye Mountain, the nearest of the “46”—those Adirondack peaks that top 4,000 feet elevation. Climbing the “46” is a fixation for many Adirondack hikers. I completed the 46 in 1975. These days, the climbs are longer and more difficult than they were for me in that preceding century. I travel light and I move slowly. Still, each year the trails seem to be ever-more challenging. And these days, I do not hike to the summit, I just make my way up into the spruce-fir zone where I can hunt for the Adirondack specialities: Bicknell’s Thrush, Blackpoll Warbler, Boreal Chickadee, and Black-backed Woodpecker.
This day’s pay-off is a nesting Black-backed Woodpecker. The bird has chiseled a fresh nest hole about 15 feet up in a mature White Birch at about 3,800 feet elevation in a zone dominated by Balsam Fir. This is an area that got hit in 1950 by a big windstorm that knocked down most of the high elevation conifers in large swathes of those north-facing ridges of the High Peaks that received the brunt of the storm’s winds. In the early 1970s, hiking thru that “blowdown” on trailless peaks (like Nye or Street) was nightmarish. Today, the “herd path” up the mountain makes the hiking easier, but these high elevation areas are still recovering (hence the presence of White Birch and lots of ancient downed spruce and fir deadwood).
I find the woodpecker nest because the birch is right next to the trail and the bright white wood chips from the nest construction are littering the ground and the trail. I look down and see the fresh workings and immediately knew I have something good. A female Black-backed makes whinnying notes and flies right up to the nest hole, just a few feet from where I am standing.
I spend the next two hours at this spot, watching the woodpecker (and hoping to see and photograph the yellow-capped male—no luck!). I also attempt to lure in Boreal Chickadee, Bicknell’s Thrush, and Blackpoll Warbler. These three all complied, in their own way. The chickadee comes in for a quick look but never really shows itself before retreating. The Blackpoll Warbler comes right in. It calls for me, but these days I can barely hear the bird even with my hearing aids set on high. Several Bicknell’s Thrushes move all around me but remain super-shy—all I ever see is a dark blur of the passing birds. They do give alarm notes, however (though they do not sing). The woodpecker at its fresh nest hole is the prize of the day. I am able to photograph the bird at its nest hole with my iPhone—that’s how tame the bird is.
The hike down is slow and hindered by degrading weather. There are lots of baby American Toads in the trail as well as a few Red Efts and a Garter Snake. Also two species of Trillium.
29 May. This AM I hike the Mr Van Trail to Marcy Creek Bog, where I photograph Mourning Warbler, Nashville Warbler, Chestnut-sided Warbler, and White-throated Sparrow.
In the PM I do a local walk around the Loj grounds in search of obliging breeders. Blackburnian Warbler and Yellow-bellied Sapsucker are the two cooperating species.
The Loj environs was burned by a giant forest fire in June 1903. Foresters have since replanted much of the accessible burned land with stands of Norway Spruce and Austrian or Black Pine (nonnative species favored in the 1960s by “scientific” foresters). These large stands of now-mature conifers do lend a quite “boreal” feel to the area, and do provide breeding habitat for conifer-loving warblers such as Black-throated Green and Blackurnian. Still, it would have been better to plant with native species…
30 May. Awaken to cold and
cloud and rain. I get a late start as a result. I do a big trail circuit: Heart
Lake to South Meadows Road to the Truck Road to Marcy Dam and then the Van Hoevenberg Trail back to Heart
Lake. Highlight of the walk is an encounter with what I think is a Least Weasel
running across the trail, carrying either a small rodent prey item or one of
its own weasel young. The sighting is brief but iconic. The weasel is small and
short-tailed. Problem is, the guidebooks report that this small predator does
not inhabit the Adirondacks. Might this be a novel range extension? No,
probably not. It was most likely an Ermine, another of the short-tailed weasels—and
a lifer for me.
The preceding night’s cold and
rain produced snow-caps on the highest summits this morning—fun to see snow
atop Marcy and Algonquin! The snow has melted by mid-PM…
I am always struck by the low density of breeding/singing songbirds in this forest. Lots of empty forest with nobody singing at all… The Ovenbirds, Black-throated-Blues, Black-throated Greens, and Myrtles are widely scattered. Is the forest habitat “filled” with breeding birds or is much of it empty? (Seems the latter). Wonder why? The habitat looks great!
This evening we get 50F temps and
a heavy storm that produces a big dose of sleet/hail (white balls of ice). This
fills the tarp that is strung over the picnic table and weighs it down. The
temp at 6:45PM is 48F. Cold and damp! A reminder I am in the North Woods!
1 June. I am up early, break camp, and take the Crown Point Bridge across Lake Champlain and cross Vermont and New Hampshire on my way to give a talk in Cambridge, Mass. The drive is rural and verdant and the highlight is a spectacular breakfast at the Rochester Café in Rochester, Vermont. It’s fun crossing the Green Mountains and hilly central New Hampshire at this time of year. I am already thinking about a return trip!
