XC Skiing - Botheration Pond Loop

Today, I joined a Schenectady ADK backcountry ski trip on a relatively new ski trail to Botheration Pond. The 8-mile loop is just west of Gore Mountain and near Garnet Hill XC Center, NW of North Creek, NY.

Temps were in the high single digits when we arrived at the parking area near Old Farm Clearing. That was OK, since once leaving the old road from the parking area, the next 2 miles of this loop are steadily uphill, and we warmed up quickly. This portion of the trail had been heavily snowshoed, and was extremely firm and crunchy, especially in the cold temperatures. We were all hoping the downhill end of the loop wasn't going to be like this!

Reaching the height of land, we found ourselves at William Blake Pond. We skied across its surface to the far (eastern) end, and picked up the trail again in the woods.



Frozen fog/mist from overnight was clinging to everything, awaiting the morning sun.



A little further to the east, we skied across another frozen marshy area, again paralleling the much rougher trail in the woods, and rejoining it beyond the marsh.



After several interesting (read: FAST AND BUMPY) downhills, and many of us picking ourselves up out of the snow, we reached Botheration Pond, our destination. It was a gorgeous lunch spot.



Now that we were about 400-500 feet above our starting point, we were all hoping that the snow had softened in the early afternoon sun and temps near 30. The downhills were likely to be challenging enough without also being hard-packed and fast as we had seen earlier. As it turned out, that did indeed prove to be the case on both counts - softened snow AND challenging downhill runs. Some of us struggled to stay on our feet and not pick up too much speed. It was exhilarating, to say the least!

Finally, we arrived at the second of two brand new bridges that were just recently installed, making this loop possible. This one had a fairly steep ramp up to its deck, requiring strong arms to pull ourselves up. It was very ornate, as hiking trail bridges go, and part of the group posed for a picture going across it.



After a long gentle downhill through a pine forest, we reached the old road back to Old Farm Clearing that we had started in on. From here it was a relaxing, gently rolling 1.3 miles back to the cars after about 4.5 hours in the woods on a beautiful day.