Winter Hike to Mud Lake

Last weekend's snowshow was so much fun that Randy and I wanted to get out again. Unlike last week, the 16th was warm, 30+ degrees. We didn't even wear snow pants, just long johns and regular hiking pants. I did wear gaiters to keep the snow out of my boots. So we decided to just stay close to home and hike up to Mud Lake. The trail starts about 1 mile from our house and know we'd be tired after the snow shoe, we drove the jeep up to the trail head.

Once I had my gaiters on and was strapped into my snow shoes, I decided to put my jacket in my pack. I knew the trail up to Mud Lake is pretty much uphill all the way so I started out in just a short sleeve wicking t-shirt and my fleece, no hat and glove liners on my hands.

This area usually sees snow machine traffic so we were surprised that there were no snow machine tracks. Plenty of deer tracks tho and some others, squirrel, and something that looked like racoon but really pretty big.
So we slog up the hill and curve off the the right to cross the stream on a snow covered rickety bridge. Usually snow machine traffic keeps it pretty clear of snow
but it was obvious, no machine traffic had been thru this year. Not being able to see the wide spread slats made me uncomfortable but we got over without incident.

Turning left at the old cabin, we trudged up the hill to the State Forest boundary. Even tho no snow machines had been thru, we were able to find the trail pretty well. Along this part of the trail was not only deer tracks but big areas, under oaks especially, where the snow has been scraped away and churned up. I guess by deer looking for acorns.

As we got higher up the mountain we passed several of these spots. Toward the area I knew we needed to take a right to get to the lake, there was so much of this churned up area that I wonder just how many deer were in the area. Some of the area also looked like a lot of deer had spent the night or nights. Up on the shoulder of the mountain, and with the leaves gone from the trees, we could see both Winnie's Pond and the Sacandaga. A nice view since the sun had finally come out.

With all the deer track and snow cover, it turned out we missed our right turn and ended up bushwhacking. We proceeded forward for a bit, threading our way thru bramble areas and over fallen trees until we decided to bear right, up a small ridge and see if we could spot the pond. Sure enough, we had over shot the trail and ended up at the southern end of the lake. Not a huge deal tho, we were mainly out for the hike, not a really specific destination.

By now we were both tired and we started looking for a likely fallen tree to sit on out of the bit of breeze and have a lunch break. I found a pretty good spot and we spent 20 minutes or so resting, eating and have a hot tea. It didn't take us long to get back to our bushwhack trail and we followed it back down the mountian. Not too far along I spotted where we should have turned and that made us feel a little better. It was just hard to see in the snow and being unmarked, easy to miss.


Anyway, getting down the mountain never takes as long as getting up it tho by the time we got back to the car, it was still a 3 hour hike. We got our exercise and had a good time out.