Cherrypatch Pond: A journey through Lake Placid’s forgotten ski loop

By Tim Rowland

A century ago, Cherrypatch Pond was a popular — too popular, some lamented — ski loop from the Lake Placid Club around the shallow waters to Notch Road (Route 86)  and back. Outdoor writers encouraged tourists to show some guts and get out into the deep ravines of the backcountry to experience the added interest of potential bone-shattering wipeouts.

Perhaps it worked. 

I have vowed never again to use the words “hidden gem” because the phrase in ADK literature is so tired and shopworn that hair starts growing out of my eyeballs whenever I read it. Instead, I will say that Cherrypatch Pond is a really pretty spot that is seldom visited, despite being right under the schnoz of the Lake Placid multitudes.

Beth and I decided to hike Cherrypatch on a late-autumn day, if for no other reason than we had passed the little sign at its Route 86 trailhead a million times until curiosity finally got the better of us. Despite being on the main drag between Lake Placid and Wilmington, less than a mile on the LP side of the intersection with River Road, there was little information we could find, and what we did find would turn out to be dated.

We parked at a pullout on a bend in the road at the pond’s outlet stream, where a herd path leads into the evergreens. Don’t be tempted by the herd path. Instead, walk along the road over the highway bridge that crosses the stream. Just past the guardrail you will see an obvious trail. But even this trail isn’t marked, and while adequately maintained, it clearly hasn’t seen a lot of traffic.

How Cherrypatch went from overuse to underuse is probably a simple matter of nature reclaiming its own — despite human efforts to develop it into a showpiece.

In the 1920s, Cherrypatch was a feature of the Lake Placid Club ski tournament, which included 10- and 25-mile loops across the Ausable’s west branch and into the Sentinel Range. While today athletes on such races pass stations stocked with electrolytes and protein gels, back then the event staff, the papers reported, handed out hot milk and barley gruel. Tell me which is worse.

The pond at that point was more swamp than lake, and open to improvement. During the Depression, a Civilian Conservation Corps crew was dispatched to dam up Cherrypatch Pond/Swamp to create a 15-acre impoundment that the Lake Placid News promised would be  “a spot of scenic beauty with the mountains towering in the background.”

The beavers and the trees had other ideas, however, and through the decades Cherrypatch has gotten less user-friendly, not more. 

But it may be even more of a delight because of its forgotten status. Cherrypatch is accessible from at least three directions, depending on your definition of accessible. A route comes in from the west near the golf course on the Old Logger’s Road, a name that makes up in charm what it lacks in grammar. The aforementioned herd path on the west side of Cherrypatch ends in a swamp, according to online reports whose veracity is always a caveat emptor situation.

The ‘advertised’ route is easy enough to follow, despite being unmarked. Even without the pond as a destination it would be worth it for the mammoth white pine and yellow birch, which may not be old growth, but are definitely getting-up-there growth, towering over the ferns and mosses and young balsam and spruce down below.

The trail bops up and down with no serious steepness to it, and a view through the trees in places of the marsh down below. At 0.4 miles it reaches a point that will be your best chance of getting an open view of the pond. At a point of land right before the trail turns left and heads up a drainage, you can bushwhack through some prickly spruce to the shore.

This was before the recent snow, and we were wearing calf-high Muck Boots, which enabled us to slosh through the march grasses for a fine view of the dark blue waters, ruddy leatherleaf and tawny cattails. 

“This is a real hidden gem!” Beth said. With my lips pressed tightly together I took a deep breath and let it out slowly before proceeding on to a point where travel along the shore became more problematic and we returned to the trail.

At less than a mile round trip, this is a nice leg-stretcher, or a chance to get a little fresh air with a pleasing reward at your destination. But if you want more, the trail does go on from here, and in fact ties in with the Lussi mountain bike trails near the golf course where if you were of a mind you could spot a car — although the distances are short enough that an out-and-back is quite doable as well.

We continued on up the ridge to the highest point of the trail before it recedes back into the valley. With snow in the ground it might be a bit tricky to follow, but the woods are open and you can follow your own tracks back out. All told, we walked a mile before turning back around.

From the ridge there are some obstructed views of Whiteface and the Sentinel Range that are interesting if not dramatic. Back in the other direction is a view of Cobble Mountain.

All told, we spend a couple of hours wandering a couple of miles and gaining 200 feet in elevation. We left convinced that we had discovered a true hidden — asset.