Skiing through history on trails around Adirondack Fish Hatchery

Search for fresh snow leads to winter wonderland of untouched trails

By Tom French

As every winter seems to confirm changes in our climate, the search for natural snow becomes more urgent for those who want to squeeze in every precious day of winter that they can.

Such was the case with a series of lake-effect snow and rain events in late November and December that dropped upwards of 4 feet in bands across the northwestern Adirondacks, melted it away within days, and replaced it with another significant weather event.

My friends, Doug and Susan Miller of Saranac Lake, ventured to the vicinity of the Adirondack Fish Hatchery in the midst of the later snowstorm and experienced such white out conditions while skiing that Doug made NCPR’s Photo of the Day and they insisted I join them for a return trip three days later. 

I left the greenery of Potsdam, passed through the dusting of Santa Clara, and entered a wonderland of snow as I approached Paul Smiths with trees covered in a heavy layer of snow frosting.

A ‘different world’

By the time I met Doug and Susan at the parking area on Station Road near the fish hatchery, three miles west of Lake Clear, I was in a different world. 

The parking area is adjacent to the recently opened Adirondack Rail Trail which was pressed from recent snowmobile activity. The Saranac Inn Station opened at this location in 1892 and lasted until 1957. A cattle pen and coal chute were located along double-ended sidings across the tracks.

The Saranac Inn was originally a small hotel with fifteen rooms on a peninsula of Upper Saranac Lake, about two miles to the west. Built circa 1860 by Daniel Hough, it became known as the Prospect House before it was the Saranac Inn. Enlarged over the years, it encompassed several buildings and could accommodate a 1000 by the time it closed in 1962. Presidents Grover Cleveland and Chester Arthur along with New York state governors Charles Evans Hughes and Al Smith are known to have been guests. It was destroyed by fire in 1978. The Saranac Inn Golf and Country Club was once part of the complex.

After clicking into our bindings, we skied the 300 yards west to the rail trail’s intersection with the Bone Pond Truck Trail, where we turned right. 

Despite over a foot of snow on the ground, large trucks or trackers had recently traveled the road to Little Green Pond. Miraculously, an almost perfect ski track survived in the median between the treads in the road’s ruts. Doug, a former DEC employee at the hatchery, suspected the harvesting of round whitefish eggs.  Round whitefish spawn in November and December. 

Fish hatchery sights

After crossing the smelt spawning channel, (rainbow smelt are raised for the salmon in Little Clear Pond), we followed the treads to Little Green Pond.  

I confirmed the work with the hatchery, which has been raising round whiteface, an endangered species in New York, for over a decade.

We continued on the trail with yellow ski disks around Little Green as it passed through large stands of hemlock. The ski track was well packed. The trail swings down along a northern bay of Little Green then up toward Bone Pond. A short spur leads to the edge of Bone. Brian Mann did an Adirondack 101 piece about pond swimming in Bone for NCPR in 2014. Shortly later, we encounter the only significant (and I’m using the word lightly) downhill followed by the only herringbone ascent.

When we reached the Fish Pond Truck Trail, we went right, though you could return to the parking area by heading left. We followed the truck trail for about a third of mile before turning onto an unnamed trail back to the rail trail at Rat Pond. The turn is not marked. If no one has gone before you, look for a no bicycles sign on a tree and the remains of a blue disk on another.  They appear regularly a few yards from the start of the trail. If you miss it, you will encounter a hill on the truck trail and you will know you’ve gone too far.

Untouched trails

This section of our loop was the most disused.  One or two people may have traversed its course before us. Our skis sank into the fluff. We found evidence of where Doug had circled a blowdown three days earlier. Another third-of-a mile later, we were skiing down the embankment to the rail trail for our mile-plus return to the car.

When we reached the Fish Pond Truck Trail, which parallels the rail trail for a half mile, we scurried off the railbed and followed in the tracks of others who had blazed before us.  We passed the entrances to several drive-up campsites (there are nine along the shores of Little Green Pond, free on a first-come basis in the summer). It was glorious skiing with perfect kick and glide along a level grade. 

Unfortunately, at some point, snowmobilers had decided the rail trail wasn’t good enough and they had wrecked the pristine ski track. That said, despite it being a Sunday with a warming trend threatening to take away our snow, we only saw or heard five sleds during our entire two-hour, 3-and-1/4-mile ski.