Paddle trip completed week of June 8th..
6/8/2020: Overnight on Long Island site #1 at Blue Mountain Lake. Amazing site that faces due west at the western point of the island. It was VERY windy there, but things died down around 7pm. I built up the west-facing wall of the fire pit with additional rocks to block some wind from the fire. Plenty of deadfall on the island. Beautiful sunset from here, and also from "Rock Island" which is in the south/central part of the lake. I didn't have any issue parking overnight by the "changing rooms" on the east shore of the lake. There is a DEC register booklet there, but the paper that shows where the sites are is all faded away. To help others find them:
There are 4 sites on Long Island. They are all accessible via "docking nooks" on the the south shore of the island. #1 is on the west point, #4 is close the east. Site #2 is pretty far "in land", but 3 and 4 are closer to the water. On Osprey Island there is one site, and it's on the eastern shore of the island; the site itself is up the hill a bit and has a nice open "hill top" setup. There is, however, not much water view from the camp area. There is also one primitive site on the north-west-ish shore of Blue Mtn Lake, near where Castle Rock is, but I did not paddle over there.
If you go, make sure to paddle down to the islands in the south-west part of the lake. I got some great photos of an osprey leaving/returning to the nest to feed the babies. I didn't see any eagles though.
6/9/2020: Overnight at Cedar River Flow, site #6. Helpful folks on this forum advised me to not attempt a paddle from the Indian Lake area TO the flow via the Cedar River. That turned out to be solid advice, as that would've been completely impossible. Drove to the Wakely dam. I have a 15-yr old 3series BMW sedan and even though the gravel/sand road was dicey at times, there are very few "jutting" rocks. It's no problem. The black flies and gnats at the DEC register stand by Wakely Dam were unbelievable even by black fly standards. Be 100% certain to bring a head net, I'm glad I did, otherwise i may have actually turned around and left.
The wind on the flow was pretty strong, but not too tough. I paddled down the eastern shore scoping the primitive sites. According to the DEC register, there were only a couple people out there in the sites but none of them listed which site # they were planning to take. I ended up getting lucky at site #6. It juts out into the water a bit so you get a nice view up and down the flow. AND it had a picnic table made from a couple tree slabs. A picnic table! That afternoon, I paddled down the east shore more and, out of the couple of camp sites that are supposed to be there, i could only locate one of them. I accidentally found the continuation of the Cedar River which is buried in a patchwork of tall grass in the south-east corner of the flow. There is a barely-visible neon yellow sign post there, and it's almost entirely covered by brush. You'll know you got the right spot when you immediately come across a small but impassible beaver damn. To the left of the damn, there is a clear path of mud where paddlers can portage for a mere 10 feet and drop back in. Just after that, there's another beaver dam to your left. From there, it's a series of twists and turns into the wild and towards Carry Pond. I went on for about an hour with a black fly / gnat swarm around me, then turned back to camp.
Exiting the next day, i paddled back toward the Wakely dam and took a turn to the entrance of Payne Brook. This is completely blocked by an absolutely massive beaver dam so i turned around. When i got back to the DEC register, the black flies swarmed like mad! Luckily the buggers don't bite me, but man they are annoying. Bring that head net!!
6/12/2020: Overnight at Little Tupper Lake site #6. Plenty of parking was available at the park headquarters building and the DEC register booklet only showed a couple overnight folks. The wind was so intense on my kayak in, i had to "pull over" basically to the east side of the lake and try to hug the shore. It took me nearly 1 hour to go 1 mile to Eagle Point. Beautiful camp site! But a canoe was docked there. I walked up on shore and two guys were coming back from an attempted hike to Stoney Pond. They were overnighting at island site #3. The wind was so intense I figured I'd take a snooze in the sun for a couple hours and see if i could make it further southward later on. The wind let down a bit and I scoped out sites 1 and 2 on the north shore. #2 in particular was very nice with a western view. The guys on #3 suggested I check out #6 and that turned out to be the spot for me. It's a very wide open site up a hill and you could fit a lot of tents there. There isn't much view from the site itself, but there's a rock outcropping that you dock your boat up on.. it's THE perfect spot to eat your dinner and watch the stars. I'd say if you are looking for a sunset view, which I always am for photography, site #2 would be great.
There were very few bugs at Little Tupper, especially compared to the black fly insanity at Cedar Flow. I'd like to go back at some point, get out on the lake much earlier in the day, and make it down to the south west part of the lake on a multi-day trip - - island sites 18, 19, 15.. those all look great.
The next day, i made my way back to the DEC HQ building and stayed overnight at Old Forge on my way out. Cheers to the friendly people at the Tow Bar where I always stop! Also, I heavily used info/maps from the web site AndyArthur.org for this trip. Many thanks to that guy for taking the time to provide all this info! I also used the ADK paddler's maps as well.
Happy paddling!
6/8/2020: Overnight on Long Island site #1 at Blue Mountain Lake. Amazing site that faces due west at the western point of the island. It was VERY windy there, but things died down around 7pm. I built up the west-facing wall of the fire pit with additional rocks to block some wind from the fire. Plenty of deadfall on the island. Beautiful sunset from here, and also from "Rock Island" which is in the south/central part of the lake. I didn't have any issue parking overnight by the "changing rooms" on the east shore of the lake. There is a DEC register booklet there, but the paper that shows where the sites are is all faded away. To help others find them:
There are 4 sites on Long Island. They are all accessible via "docking nooks" on the the south shore of the island. #1 is on the west point, #4 is close the east. Site #2 is pretty far "in land", but 3 and 4 are closer to the water. On Osprey Island there is one site, and it's on the eastern shore of the island; the site itself is up the hill a bit and has a nice open "hill top" setup. There is, however, not much water view from the camp area. There is also one primitive site on the north-west-ish shore of Blue Mtn Lake, near where Castle Rock is, but I did not paddle over there.
If you go, make sure to paddle down to the islands in the south-west part of the lake. I got some great photos of an osprey leaving/returning to the nest to feed the babies. I didn't see any eagles though.
6/9/2020: Overnight at Cedar River Flow, site #6. Helpful folks on this forum advised me to not attempt a paddle from the Indian Lake area TO the flow via the Cedar River. That turned out to be solid advice, as that would've been completely impossible. Drove to the Wakely dam. I have a 15-yr old 3series BMW sedan and even though the gravel/sand road was dicey at times, there are very few "jutting" rocks. It's no problem. The black flies and gnats at the DEC register stand by Wakely Dam were unbelievable even by black fly standards. Be 100% certain to bring a head net, I'm glad I did, otherwise i may have actually turned around and left.
The wind on the flow was pretty strong, but not too tough. I paddled down the eastern shore scoping the primitive sites. According to the DEC register, there were only a couple people out there in the sites but none of them listed which site # they were planning to take. I ended up getting lucky at site #6. It juts out into the water a bit so you get a nice view up and down the flow. AND it had a picnic table made from a couple tree slabs. A picnic table! That afternoon, I paddled down the east shore more and, out of the couple of camp sites that are supposed to be there, i could only locate one of them. I accidentally found the continuation of the Cedar River which is buried in a patchwork of tall grass in the south-east corner of the flow. There is a barely-visible neon yellow sign post there, and it's almost entirely covered by brush. You'll know you got the right spot when you immediately come across a small but impassible beaver damn. To the left of the damn, there is a clear path of mud where paddlers can portage for a mere 10 feet and drop back in. Just after that, there's another beaver dam to your left. From there, it's a series of twists and turns into the wild and towards Carry Pond. I went on for about an hour with a black fly / gnat swarm around me, then turned back to camp.
Exiting the next day, i paddled back toward the Wakely dam and took a turn to the entrance of Payne Brook. This is completely blocked by an absolutely massive beaver dam so i turned around. When i got back to the DEC register, the black flies swarmed like mad! Luckily the buggers don't bite me, but man they are annoying. Bring that head net!!
6/12/2020: Overnight at Little Tupper Lake site #6. Plenty of parking was available at the park headquarters building and the DEC register booklet only showed a couple overnight folks. The wind was so intense on my kayak in, i had to "pull over" basically to the east side of the lake and try to hug the shore. It took me nearly 1 hour to go 1 mile to Eagle Point. Beautiful camp site! But a canoe was docked there. I walked up on shore and two guys were coming back from an attempted hike to Stoney Pond. They were overnighting at island site #3. The wind was so intense I figured I'd take a snooze in the sun for a couple hours and see if i could make it further southward later on. The wind let down a bit and I scoped out sites 1 and 2 on the north shore. #2 in particular was very nice with a western view. The guys on #3 suggested I check out #6 and that turned out to be the spot for me. It's a very wide open site up a hill and you could fit a lot of tents there. There isn't much view from the site itself, but there's a rock outcropping that you dock your boat up on.. it's THE perfect spot to eat your dinner and watch the stars. I'd say if you are looking for a sunset view, which I always am for photography, site #2 would be great.
There were very few bugs at Little Tupper, especially compared to the black fly insanity at Cedar Flow. I'd like to go back at some point, get out on the lake much earlier in the day, and make it down to the south west part of the lake on a multi-day trip - - island sites 18, 19, 15.. those all look great.
The next day, i made my way back to the DEC HQ building and stayed overnight at Old Forge on my way out. Cheers to the friendly people at the Tow Bar where I always stop! Also, I heavily used info/maps from the web site AndyArthur.org for this trip. Many thanks to that guy for taking the time to provide all this info! I also used the ADK paddler's maps as well.
Happy paddling!
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