Pharaoh Lake Wilderness & Deer Leap

To get started I have to go back a bit. It just occurred to me that posting my thoughts about the hikes I have done might be fun, versus just writing them in a journal for my own pleasure. This year has been amazing for hikes. Jenn and I started in the late spring and have been practically hiking every weekend since then.

The first adventure into the wilderness was in early June. Thankfully Jenn's parents have a house in Paradox. We used that as our base and did a fun day in Pharaoh Lake Wilderness. With no real plan, besides hike until we can't walk any more, we headed in. We walked up a lovely road (couldn't drive the car up there because it was scary, if only we had 4WD) along side a stream. We discussed the fact that kids in Albany have no idea the Adirondacks are in NY state.

We had a blast just wandering around in the wilderness. We chatted about education, men, stress, and about where to go next. We haven't made it back there yet to camp but there are a lot of places we need to see before we start repeating hikes. We were gone for about 4 hours and loved every minute of it. Hiking buddies for life! 

Crane Pond

Oxshoe Pond

The bugs were pretty bad in all of the wet places we approached. The 20% Deet bug spray wasn't helping all that much. We continued on our journey to a group of SUVs and trucks. Most of the people were fishing at one of the many ponds in the area. We hit up Crane Pond, Adler Pond, Oxshoe Pond, Crab Pond, and Glidden Marsh. I'm pretty sure we came out with more bug bites than photos. There were so many trails to turn to. We discussed going back with some camping gear and more people to make a full weekend out of it. Luckily there are lean-tos all over the place as well.

By the way, we have a thing for bridges. If we cross one, there will be a picture of some kind. Don't ask, because we don't know why.

Our second hike this year was Deer Leap in the Tongue Mountain Range. It was a bit easier than we anticipated but worth the view once we found it. The trail head was easily accessible on Route 9N. After tripping over the huge roots of the enormous trees we started our ascent to the view. About 20 minutes later we hit the split where you could go to Deer Leap or continue up towards Brown Mountain and Five Mile Mountain. We considered going there but it was super hot and getting more humid every minute. 

We reached Deer Leap, within 15 minutes, with utter disappointment. You couldn't see a damn thing! Being the adventurous types we figured it has got to be better than this. You have to hike down this little deer path to a huge cliff. The view from there was amazing. We could see Hulett's Landing, Agnes Island (we camped there this summer too), and Island Harbor. It was a near perfect day.

Bright sun, not a cloud in the sky. We took tons of pictures, as always. This hike was nice because there weren't very many people around. It was perfect for a hot, humid day. It was a little too easy for our liking, but I'm sure we will be tackling some that are too hard.