So There Is a Link to Fish Ponds!

When Mike and I paddled Cod Pond a couple of weeks ago, we were searching for the stream or flow that leads to Fish Ponds. We paddled and paddled, looked and searched, but found nothing. Yet Evelyn says she's done it, and indeed, last Friday she collected a few of her friends and paddled out the flow. They didn't make it all the way to Fish Ponds, she says, but after all the rain, they were able to slide over most of all the beaver dams, rather than carry the boats over them, a task that is a muddy pain, in my opinion.

Mike and I are still stymied about the route, but last night at a Fourth of July cookout at my place, he and Evelyn spent a good bit of time with their heads bent over several topo maps. I hope to be able to paddle that stretch because that is wild, wild country back in there.

I had a marvelous time talking to Evelyn's husband, Don Greene, who engineered the Schaefer Trail that goes to the top of Gore Mountain. I asked him my most pressing question about the route and one that all hikers are considering this summer. "How wet is it?" "Not a wet trail at all!" he answered. "Before I made the trail, I studied and studied that mountain, walking up and down it hundreds of times to find the driest way up."

So climbing Gore (elevation 3600 ft.) would be a great way to get my climbing legs back in shape after this interlude of weather. I had thought that it was too heavily traveled a trail for my clients, but this may not be the case. I'll give it a try this week.