The Elusive Indian Head Trail
I left Starbucks around 8am and took NY 9N North direction Keene, NY. Somewhere around Roaring Brook Falls, the road curves into NY 73. The entire trip should have taken 1 hour 45 minutes, but I saw a turnabout with a port-a-potty and a beautiful view of a lake and mountains. The name was Chapel Pond. This was the perfect place to make my breakfast of Kashi cereal with a banana and almond milk. I took a little time to just sit and enjoyed the view.
There was a nice dry breeze blowing with a little sun and I realized this was an opportunity to dry out the the tent. There were large boulders scattered about, obviously strategically placed to prevent me from taking my car down the hill for some close up views of the pond. I breeze was very effective at drying everything out. If only it could have removed some of the mud as well.
About five miles down the was my destination. Although I thought I was well prepared for a hike, I hadn’t gathered everything together. I must have looked old or frazzeled because a woman asked me if I needed any help. I explained that I wanted to hike to Indian Head and take some photos from the top. She told me that it was a difficult hike and would take at least 4 hours or more. Mind you, it is now around 10:30. She gave me her topo map and explained that I needed a reservation. The entrance was across the street but I couldn’t park there without a reservation.
I decided to go for using her 1:64500 map. I spent an hour following the wrong trail. I met someone on a very steep part of the trail and he explained that this was private property and that this trail wouldn’t take me to Indian Head.
At this point, I remembered that I had the AllTrails app that does an excellent job of routing you through the back trails. I looked up my trail once I got service and saw where I had made my mistake. The trail is actually called “Indian Head and Rainbow Falls” trail. After getting on the correct trail, I walked for about 15 minutes when I realized there were huge black clouds forming over Indian Head. So, I headed back.
At the entrance, there was a ranger and she explained to me the process of making a reservation on line. I drove into Keene, NY where there was Internet access and made a reservation for tomorrow at 8am.
I made a reservation at the KOA (Kampgrounds Of America) North of Lake Placid. It about a 30 minute drive from Keene. This is the cleanest campground I’ve ever been in. If all KOAs are this nice, I’ll be searching them out as I travel. They have clean running showers that don’t require me to drop in quarter every minute and they have flushable toilets. Everything is well organized and there is a camp store with basic groceries.
After my iron skillet pizza with salad dinner, I took a bike ride on the trails around the campground. This was actually very difficult with steep, rocky hills. I had to turn back because of all the tree roots and logs on the path.
Hopefully tomorrow there’s no rain and I get a chance to hike to actually hike the Indian Head and Rainbow Falls trail.