Thu, Jul 23 to Sun, Jul 26 – Lake Kushaqua to Little Clear Pond, Adirondacks
Leader: Russ Faller
This was a joint outing with AMC.
We met at the Buck Pond Campground, in the remote northeastern hamlet of Onchiota, on Thursday afternoon, and unloaded our canoes & gear at our tent sites. Then shuttled the cars to Little Clear Pond’s parking lot in the St. Regis Canoe Wilderness.
On Friday morning, we launched and paddled into the Kushaqua Narrows then through the Rainbow Narrows into Rainbow Lake. We landed at a tent site near Clear Pond and The Flow. It was once a point of land. This is the place Legs Diamond, a notorious gangster of the 1920s & 30s had an Adirondacks camp. Legs was a bootlegger and killer. He was given the nickname “Legs”, some say, because he was a good dancer, while others said it was because he was hard to kill. Since Legs was the target of so many assassins, he had a canal dug to turn his point of land into an island, making it easier to escape assassins and the police.
After putting up tents, we paddled across Clear Pond and up The Flow, until a high beaver dam encouraged us to turn around. Some decided to paddle around the esker dividing Rainbow Lake. Others returned to Legs’ “island” to swim.
On Saturday, we paddled SW down Rainbow Lake, portaged to Jones Pond, then took the Jones Pond Outlet into Osgood Pond. After paddling through a canal, that was dug by hand in the 1800s so that people could paddle to church, we camped at the lean-to on Little Osgood Pond. Over the rise behind the lean-to, we found a good place to swim in Osgood Pond. A couple of paddlers chose to go back to Osgood Pond and up the Osgood River to checkout the campsite.
On Sunday, we continued through the rest of the canal and crossed Church Pond to portage across Paul Smiths College campus. After stopping at the campus store for cold refreshments, we launched onto Lower St. Regis Lake, paddled into Spitfire Lake, then Upper St. Regis Lake to a very short portage to Bog Pond. Another short portage took us to Bear Pond. We crossed Bear and portaged into Little Long Pond to camp. Since there were 11 of us, the leader had to get a Ranger’s permit and promise that we’d split up into 2 separate sites.
T-storms had been forecast for Sunday afternoon/evening. We did hear thunder, but the storm missed us. We only got light rain that came after we had set up our tents and tarps. It could be said that that we were blessed by the weather god.
On Monday morning we portaged into Little Clear Pond and landed by our cars by midday.
We had a wonderfully revitalizing and relaxing journey through beautiful Adirondacks lakes, ponds and inlets. We also had a terrific group of paddlers. All very capable, friendly and helpful. It was heart-warming to see people, who had never met before, bond together and become friends in such a short time.
Rich made the car shuttle some much more efficient by hauling his canoe trailer up. Rich was also instrumental in keeping us on course when the way looked confusing. Lou & Dom took suggestions on tandem paddling, learned quickly and did well. Everybody helped make this trip easy to lead.
Participants were: Gregg H, Rick C, Chris B, Eric L, John S, Lou N, Dom S, Rich C, Izumi C, Piotr P, & the leader, Russ Faller.
