Day 2 Cedar Lake to South Lake -17 Aug 2008

I woke up early and felt great! The mist on Cedar Lake was just clearing and the loons were still calling to each other from time to time. We actually all got up at the same time, about 6 am, started a fire and began breakfast. Which for me was oatmeal that I packaged myself with brown sugar and salt. I would boil my water and place it in the pot an let it sit until it thickened. This worked well. My trail mates had coffee and croissants. In fact they had a remarkably varied diet. I on the other hand had a remarkably same diet. The oatmeal was fine each morning, but I need to work on lunch.

We were not in a hurry and took our time packing up and simply enjoyed the fine sunny morning. It was at this time that we met our first hiker, a tall Canadian solo hiker who was loaded down and moving fast. He stopped for a moment and warned us about the trail conditions south of Cedar Lakes. He told us that the trail was muddy all the way to Spruce Lake. He moved on and we started on our way South. He was right the trail was muddy, but manageable. One of the things that we enjoyed was how fast the forest and habitats changed. One minute you are in an old growth hardwood, the next you are in an area with stunted spruce, that are densely packed in a lowland wet area. A half mile later it would change again. We would take a moment to notice this and anything else that we saw. That is yet another thing that I really admire about my trail mates; they stop and observe and notice the littlest things. This is something that I really like about being in the woods. It really was nice being with people who were not as worried about getting from point A to point B, and enjoyed the trip as much as the destination.

We reached the trail head for section 5 at a clearing at the West Canada lakes area. This was the location of a DEC interior outpost. All that was left was some rocks marking the foundation. An exciting moment for me was to see and touch a fireplace built the 19th century Adirondack character French Louie, whom I had read he biography as a teenager and I was very happy to walk some of the woods that he trapped and made a living off the bounty of the Adirondacks.

Now a little story. Before we left my two companions made tuna sandwiches with packaged mayo and pre-drained tuna. Now Guide mentioned that they must eat them within 4 hours to be safe. On the trail you can loose track of time and time actually goes by a lot faster than you would think. Trail Breaker yelled back that it was 2:15 and that 4.25 hrs have pasted since the sandwiches were made. Guide said that they could not eat them. Now is that splitting hairs? NO! That was the wise and right decision 10 miles away from anywhere. They were a little cranky for a bit, but had enough other food that it was not even a blip in the day. In fact not very far down the trail we crossed a long bridge across Mud Lake and were all treated to one the best views in the Adirondacks as we looked out onto Mud Lake to the East and South Lake to the west. The tuna was forgotten. A short way past the bridge we found the South Lake Lean-to and this was a beautiful spot. This night I had plenty of energy to go and find a large amount of fire wood and we enjoyed a fine fire that night. While I was gathering firewood Guide went out and picked a mess of fresh wild blueberries that we were going to have with our breakfasts. After dinner we spent the remaining time looking at the birds and enjoying the wonders that this majestic forest was allowing us to enjoy.