A trifecta of adventure
Where do those trails go?” I wondered. The map showed a small trail system, whose outline looked like a loopy, potbellied cartoon character riding a unicycle. Sure, there was Pole Hill Pond at the upper end, but the trail swung far and wide of it twice, a hugely indirect route. What was the dinky little loop down at the foot? I’ve been looking at Adirondack trail maps most of my life and could not decipher this weird pattern of black dashes.
Yet here it was, on the National Geographic trail map that accompanies my Adirondack Mountain Club’s “Guide to Eastern Trails,” so I could explore it for work. How did those trails get there? Who knew about them? What was that pond like? They were on a new parcel of state land, so the state Department of Environmental Conservation couldn’t yet have built them. Itching to check all this out, I headed for the top of Lake George’s Northwest Bay, above Bolton Landing.
North Bolton is a quiet corner of the Lake George basin; the traffic thins out, the houses are far apart, the ice-cream stands are left behind. Better yet, state land and a couple of Lake George Land Conservancy (LGLC) preserves take over. In this little neighborhood, it turns out there’s a span of four-plus miles
