Welcome to the Northern Forest Canoe Trail. The NFCT is a living reminder of when rivers were both highways and routes of communications. The Trail is 740 miles of historic waterway traveled by Native Americans. Its east to west direction begins in Fort Kent Maine, and travels through Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Quebec, and ends in Old Forge, New York. The NFCT association divides the trail into 13 sections.
Our journey was Section 2 in the Adirondack and Saranac region of New York. We hired Adirondack Outfitter in the Village of Saranac so we could leave both our vehicles at the take-out -- thus saving ourselves 2 plus hours being homeward bound.
We began at the Long Lake bridge, traveling in a north-east direction and ended 42 miles later at the Village of Sarnanc. Our trip was 3 ½ days and included two hand-operated locks to convey paddlers between waterways, and three very demanding portages totaling 11.5 plus miles.
After a 15 plus mile paddle on Long Lake, a 1.6 mile portage around Raquette falls -- which was three trips for 4.8 miles, Raquette river, stony creek ponds, the 1.1 mile Indian Carry portage, which 5.5 miles or portaging, the .4 mile Bartlett Carry into Middle Saranac, through the "Upper Locks" into Lower Saranac Lake, to First Pond into Second Pond and It continues on to the "Lower Locks" of the Saranac River, into Oseetah Lake then into Lake Flower where our final take-out was at the village of Saranac Lake.
When we do this section again we will not take our two canoes with weights of 65 and 72 pounds. Hindsight says next time we rent 40 lb canoes from Adirondack Outfitters at Village of Sarnanac.
Section 2 has no drinking water sources once we begin this water highway. Dehydration can be a major issue. We restocked our drinking water at night boiling lake water with our Jet Boil. In addition, it rained one night, and we directed rainwater from our camp tarp to our cooking pans thence to our water bottles -- thus saving Jet Boil fuel.
Our first night stay was at the Palmer Brook lean-to just after Raquette Falls, our second night was at Middle Saranac Lake on Norway Island. Our last night was on Partridge Island on Lower Saranac Lake.
More details can be found in day-by-day 50 minute web link video at OutdoorSteve.com.
Steve's latest book, Outdoor Play "Fun 4 4 Seasons" is available as an e-Book at Kindle ($3.99) and hard copy at Amazon.com ($11.95)
