Another snowshoe trip to Spectacle Lake

On February 5th, 2006, I headed out for a day of snowshoeing in the Southern Adirondacks. This trip I started at the Good Luck Lake Trailhead, which is 6/10ths of a mile West of Rte 10 in Arietta, Hamilton County. The high temperature for the day was 28 degrees and there were snow flurries off and on. There was only 6 - 8 inches on the trail to Dexter and as I got closer to Spectacle much of the Southeast facing slope was bare. The trail to Dexter Lake goes West past Dry Lake (shown in the next photo), which looks like it is slowly becoming more marsh than lake.


As you get within sight of Dexter, there is a steep downhill section where the trail has been washed out by runoff from the higher ground. It is an area that you need to be careful going through due not only to poor footing, but also potholes along the trail can be covered with ice and snow that are not strong enough to support a person. Once you get to Dexter Lake (see below) the trail runs straight along the South side of the lake for about a 1/4 mile until it turns and heads South and connects with the snowmobile trail heading towards Spectacle Lake.



You can see from my photo, once I got the Spectacle Lake I was down to just the liner for my parka and no gloves. I was hoping to be able to find a way around Spectacle Lake and connect with the trail going towards Third Lake, but short of bushwacking around the shore there was no way I could make the connection. There were snowmobile tracks running across the lake, but snowshoeing, especially alone, is not the time to take such risks.


As you can see from the photo below of Spectacle Lake, the snow was just about gone around the edge of the lake. On the left side of the photo you can see the snowmobile trail going out onto the lake.

After I had returned to the trailhead I spent an hour snowshoeing the trail that goes past Good Luck Lake. As usual the trail is very wet and badly torn up by snowmobiles. I went as far as the inlet stream on the south side of the lake before turning back. I estimate that I went 11 miles in the 5 1/2 hours that I was snowshoeing.