Vanderwacker

What's lurking outside my tent?

The ruffling of leaves

give me pause

and makes me wonder

What's lurking outside my tent?

Is it a bear or a wolf or racoon?

Or maybe it's a moose or a deer?

Can it be a redneck serial killer?

What's lurking outside my tent?

It's probably just a bird

But as I lay here struggling to sleep

I'm left to wonder

What's lurking outside my tent?

What's lurking outside my tent?

D & H Railroad

The trail up to Vanderwacker

Some Irene destruction

One of many spider webs on the trail

Some more of the trail

The Sewards and the Santanonis

Looking west

And it didn't suck!

Algonquin and Colden and some of the other high peaks

The Vanderwacker Fire Tower

A family

The dirt road to Vanderwacker

After camping among the stars in the middle of nowhere, I set out for an early morning start to the VanderWacker fire tower.  The first mile of walking would be on a dirt road to the trailhead followed by 2 miles of trail to the summit of Vanderwacker.

I will long remember this trail as the spider web trail.  When I hiked the A. T., if I woke up early enough I would run into many spider webs.  I considered this "breaking trail", similar to winter hiking in snowshoes.  Today I broke trail.  On this trail, I must have ran into more spider webs than I have in my whole life combined.  On the plus side, the walk down would not be that bad.

Nevertheless, this trail was memorable.  It passed some classic Adirondack marshes.  Lots and lots of mushrooms along the way including some massive ones I found on a tree.  About a mile from the summit, I passed a cabin used for the fire tower.  From here, the trail became far more steep and even more spider webs.

After some more huffing and puffing, I came upon the fire tower.  A rarity, the cabin of the fire tower was open.  I like that a lot.  Amazing views to be had from here.  Many of the high peaks could be seen.  Algonquin, Colden, Marcy and the Dixes were all in view.  West of the high peaks, the Sewards and the Santanonis could be made out.  A couple of the other fire tower mountains were in view, Snowy and Blue.  Many lakes to the west could also be made out, many with some fog still hovering on top.  Vanderwacker is part of the Vanderwacker Mountain Wilf Forest.  From the vantage point of the tower, it's rightly named.