Paddling Around Round Lake

By Christopher Angus

I am standing on a magical little island near the south end of Round Lake. After clambering up a steep bluff, I have an unencumbered view. The island itself is open, almost parklike, with a carpet of honeysuckle and blueberry bushes. I can’t recall ever seeing an island in the Adirondacks totally devoted to white pines--not a spruce in sight. We are regaled with a loon concert from at least eight birds. Perhaps disgruntled at our presence, the loons dance about the water, flapping wings and skittering across the surface.

New Life to a Canoe Circuit

Our guide is Bill Brown, director of science and stewardship for the Adirondack Nature Conservancy (ANC). Before we set out from the former Whitney headquarters on Little Tupper Lake, Bill spreads his maps on the sandy beach and shows us where we will be going and what the significance of the area’s purchase from International Paper will be. Round Lake is part of a 26,500-acre conservation deal initially brokered by the ANC in 2001, he explains. The tracts – three in all--include 16 lakes and ponds; 85 miles of rivers and streams; large, intact northern hardwood and spruce-fir forests; and some 4,000 acres of pristine wetlands. The new purchases will link 195,000 acres of “forever wild” Forest Preserve lands and will, in the years to come, bring new life to a forty-mile canoe circuit that has been closed to the public for more than a century.

It is purchases such as these that keep the Adirondacks in the forefront of wilderness protection in the Lower 48 states and entice visitors in search of solitude from across the Northeast and around the world. Sometimes, beauty of this sort can change lives.

Flagship of the Fleet

Our little flotilla of canoes and one magnificent, new guideboat belonging to Alex Velto, executive director of the Northern New York Community Foundation, heads down Little Tupper, under a bridge and into the channel leading to Round Lake. Water levels are very low in this summer of extreme drought. Though the channel into the lake is wide, it is choked with lily pads of all sizes. They close in until we must push through them.

I comment on how clear the water seems, which brings a reply from David that its clarity may be caused by milfoil. This is not the invasive Eurasian watermilfoil but a native; Round Lake remains free of invasive aquatic invasive plants, and will stay that way if paddlers are vigilant about cleaning their boats before putting them into the water.

Easements Exemplified

We lunch at the north end of Round Lake, having futilely chased Alex’s guideboat down the length of its choppy surface. Bill points out five camps that line the lake and will be removed before the area is opened to the public. He leads the way on a short hike that takes us to an old concrete dam that was responsible for creating the “round” in Round Lake in logging days. Today it more closely resembles a triangle. We explore the dam, which still elevates the lake about four feet, and the low gorge below it. After more tramping through the woods we come to a wonderful series of waterslides surrounded by moss-covered boulders. Betsy and David identify purple gentian, rock tripe, goldenrod, turtle head, and bunch and hobbleberries.

Duncan Cutter, a retired high school English teacher, points out an almost invisible bird’s nest at eye level in a dead tree. Though we all passed within inches of it, his sharp eyes were the only ones to pick it out.

It Wasn’t Always Wilderness

Across the stream is the largest patch of normally reclusive cardinal flowers that any of us has seen. Bill points to an out-of-place rock channel that lines the stream and runs for at least a hundred yards or more--apparently a man-made effort to more explicitly direct the logs flowing down from the dam. The labor this construction must have taken deep in the woods defies imagination.

Back at the Little Tupper launch site, other paddlers are heading in the opposite direction toward Rock Pond, beyond the upper end of the lake. I feel privileged to have been among the first to see what will soon become another favored destination, one certain to bring about more of those wilderness conversions.