Hiking the Northville - Lake Placid Trail

Bob and I have a grand plan to someday run the entire 133 mile length of the Northville - Lake Placid Trail and set a new record.   The current record is on the order of 40 hours end to end.  In order to do this, we thought we ought to reconnoiter the entire trail in order to plan when to start, which direction, where to have aid, etc.  So, we made a first pass of the trail from South to North.  That took from 1996 to 1999 to complete.

While we were doing that, we learned a lot - about backpacking, ourselves, our feet, how far we could go in a day, how much we could carry, and how to get un-lost.  We also found a place called Duck Hole that we really liked.  I made a recon trip there one weekend after sitting on the jury for a capital murder trial.  It was partly to get away and partly to recon the trail into Duck Hole from the Upper Works.

Later that autumn, we spent a long weekend at Duck Hole, and learned a lot more, mostly about people this time.

Our first trip in 2000 was to revisit Spruce Lake.  It had been our first stop on our first backpack, and we had liked the spot a lot.  It was even better this time, because we were in no hurry.  I went back to Spruce Lake on Labor Day Weekend, and again at the end of September.