Exploring the Clarksboro Trail

 The Clarksboro Trail on Tooley Pond Rd. is named for a small community that existed around there in the 1800s. I have looked in my St. Lawrence County histories (Hough & the 3-volume Landon set) but find no reference to it consequently I don't know much detail about when it existed or how large it was. I have been told that it was an iron mining operation. The photo above is the start of the trail on the Tooley Pond Rd which runs from DeGrasse, NY to the vicinity of Cranberry Lake.

The trail follows a rough and rain-rutted old logging road up a fairly steep incline. The photo below looks down that road. It is not a promising start to the hike.

At the top of the incline is a clearing that served as a staging area for the loggers and if you look to the right there is a blue disk trail marker on one of the trees. After going through a copse of trees you come into a blackberry patch which is a bit confusing due to a web of herd paths created by berry pickers. It is even more confusing coming back out. I ended up bushwhacking back to the clearing on the way out. I was probably paying too much attention to the abundant blackberries and not enough to trail finding.

After re-entering the woods it isn't far to "the wall", a 70' high rock face. This is a 3 frame stitch panorama that really doesn't do it justice IMO but I didn't have anyone with me to provide scale. 

I shot a horizontal panorama which makes it look curved. It isn't. It is relatively straight.

In a large crevice high up on the right was a twig nest, perhaps for a Peregrine Falcon?

It did not appear to be occupied. The trail turns left along the base of the rock face and follows the contour of the land around and upward.

There is some impressive stonework on this section, the stairs in the photo below, and 2-3 shorter ones above it.

Beyond that and near the top was a lovely stretch of woods with ferns. The trail turns sharply right in the ferns and from there, it is fairly level to the two overlooks at the end of the trail, the first being a right turn that takes you past a glacial erratic and the other straight ahead.

Past the boulder is the viewpoint. It is a nice view at any time of year but I suspect a spectacular one in autumn.

The second overlook is to the left and can be reached by a herd path but it requires going down a fairly steep rock face which might not be a good choice if it is wet. In any case, it is only a short hop back to the trail and then to the right. The view is similar. I forget which one I found this small birch on.

As with any trail, you see different things going back down.

This thistle was in the middle of the logging road.

My AllTrails app failed to record the stats for the hike. The trail is not on AllTrails and the app insisted that I had gone to Sinclair Falls which is on the other side of the road. It is a fairly short hike that is not difficult. The rock face alone is worth the hike. The steepest bit is the old logging road at the start. I will be doing it again and I may make a video of it. Enjoy.

All the photos were made with an Olympus OMD E-M5 III and a 14-150 mm lens. All processing including panorama stitching was done in Adobe Lightroom Classic.

Things went right at the VIC...

 

This outing was inspired by Donnelly's ice cream. The season is almost over and I have been down to the Adirondacks very few times this summer due to the pandemic. Wednesday's flavor is chocolate twisted with vanilla, my favorite and I wanted to try my idea from the last post at Lampson Falls of making a drone panorama that looks straight down at the bottom and pans up to the horizon at the top of the pan. 

I got the ice cream first (priorities you know) and then went to the Paul Smiths VIC. The panorama above was made on the boardwalk through the marsh on the Boreal Life Trail. It is a selfie of sorts because that's me at the bottom.

Farther on where the boardwalk and Barnum Brook come close to each other I launched the drone again for this straight down photo of some water lily pads and a couple of Bullhead Lilies.

Part of what appeals to me about drones is shooting straight down because  it reduces the landscape to patterns and I am attracted to pattern. A woman passing by was sufficiently offended by my drone to comment that that was the last thing she expected to see there. Perhaps I was a bit defensive but I told her I had checked and they are allowed. Personally I don't get the animosity toward drones. I understand that the buzzing sound can be annoying but they fly for a very short time. Mine has a 30 minute battery but to get any significant number of photos in the field you have to plan what you want to shoot and keep your individual flights as brief as possible. I also try to use it when no one else is around but I didn't see her coming. 

Later I went to the boardwalk across the end of Heron Marsh and made another panorama of that but I stepped back out of the straight down frame at the bottom of last shot. I don't like this one as much. The boardwalk is too straight to be interesting and there is too little else that stands out but I consider it a 'study' for another try in early October with autumn color. All those tamaracks in the middle will be orange and the forest on the horizon will be colorful. I will redo this view this then.

In between I shot a number of my usual intimate views of plants and mushrooms (below). A couple out walking with their children and a stroller (yes, most VIC trails are stroller friendly, at least if you have the type with bike type wheels) asked while I was photographing a white mushroom "Is that a Death Angel mushroom?" and I had to confess that I can't identify mushrooms. I just photograph them because I find them interesting.

Edit: I have since confirmed that the two white mushrooms below are "destroying Angel" mushrooms, Amanita verosa.

Destroying Angel

Destroying Angel

In the process of creating the panoramas in Lightroom I discovered that even though the individual frames were JPGs, the combined image was DNG, a RAW format. As I have noted before, one of the things I about the Mavic Mini that I was disappointed about was that it didn't save the files as RAW files. I don't understand that because all digital images start as a RAW format. They are converted in camera to show them on the screen just like editing software converts RAW so that you can view it to do edits. Why the manufacturer of a drone or camera chooses not to allow saving the RAW data and only the converted JPG file escapes me. When digital photography began I suspect it was to save space on memory cards but in recent years the cards have so much space (my drone card is 128 GBs) that it is no longer a concern. In any case, the conversion back to RAW in panoramas is enough to tempt me to shoot all drone stills as at least two frame pans.

Enjoy the photos and thanks for reading.