On July 6, my 2 sons and I headed up to the Putnam Pond Campground, in the Adirondack Park to begin a 3 day back pack in the Pharaoh Lake Wilderness Area. Last year my youngest son, Timothy took a leave of absence from his work and hiked the Appalachian Trail. Springer to Katahdin May 1 to Oct 5. In July we joined him for 4 days in Virginia and afterwards we decided that the three of us should continue to plan on doing a trip like that once a year. The criteria for this years hike was, no early mornings, easy mileage, with a nice campsite at the end preferably on a pond so that they could fish, trees for Tim's and my hammocks, (Sean sleeps in a tent), and within easy driving distance from Williamstown, MA. The Pharaoh Wilderness seemed to fit the bill and I planned a nice loop out and around from Putnam pond. Three 6 mile days and a 2 mile hike out on the last day, with one mountain. All hikes would end up at a pond.
We found a nice campsite on Crab Pond the first night. We were out on a point on Pharaoh Lake the second night and on Grizzle Pond for the third. In the thumbnails the first picture is the Crab pond campsite taken from my hammock. The second is a picture from the other side of Pharaoh Lake looking towards the #2 campsite and the third and fourth are Tim's Hennessey and my Clark with the new Warbonnet Mamajamba tarp on Grizzle Pond. I got a good test Friday night when the clouds opened up for a real hard downpour and all remained dry under my new tarp.
The heat and the bugs really slowed me down, so the time on the trail ended up being a lot longer than I had planned for. The campsites made up for all the agony and the campfires kept the bugs at bay. The boys got a lot of casting practice in and actually managed to catch a few undersized fish. it was a good thing none of us planned on trout for dinner.
There is a fuller description of our trip, with videos and pictures on my blog which you can access at this link:
http://sleepybrewing.blogspot.com/20...ilderness.html
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