Cedar Lakes

By Bill Ingersoll

One of the benefits of knowing the Adirondack backcountry over the course of so many years is the ability to observe changes wrought on the landscape by natural forces. Yes, many of those changes are imperceptible during a human lifetime, but a few unfold much more rapidly. The wilderness I once knew is no longer the same one I visit today, in some ways.

This observation especially applies to the Pillsbury Mountain Trailhead in the West Canada Lake Wilderness, which I have been visiting for several decades. Asides from my suspicion that the French Louie Loop has grown in popularity, the terrain itself has changed in subtle ways. Storms have eroded once-gentle trails, and century-old dams have aged into natural obsolescence. Familiar places find new ways to surprise me.

This month, I am recommending the hike from Pillsbury Mountain to Cedar Lakes, a route I’ve enjoyed so many times that it shocks me I’ve never described it in these pages before. Cedar Lakes is a plural name given to a singular body of water; its four primary lobes suggest separate bodies of water, but asides from the bay called Beaver Pond, they all constitute the same lake.

The Cedars are a natural lake, but several generations ago they were enlarged by a dam and remained that way through most of the 20th century. However, in the mid-2000s that dam began to fail – not catastrophically, sending a raging flood down the Cedar River, but gradually, as water exploited a soft spot under the structure. The result now is a lake with a shoreline that breaks with Adirondack tradition, the forest’s edge not quite meeting the water any longer. 

The hike to Cedars can be done in a day, but the destination demands an overnight visit. There are three well-spaced lean-tos along the western shore, as well as opportunities for tent camping where the wet and thickly-forested terrain allows. The lowered water levels have not diminished its charm. I was reminded of the place’s beauty on a visit earlier this fall, where I was surprised to have the place to myself – or at least the northern third, where I camped. If it’s too late in 2024 to navigate the seasonal roads leading to the trailhead, then file this information and plan your expedition as soon as the opportunity presents itself.

Getting There – The Pillsbury Mountain trailhead is also one of the most popular entry points for the West Canada Lake Wilderness interior, but it is located at the end of a rugged gravel road near Sled Harbor in the Perkins Clearing Tract. Follow NY Route 30 for 8.2 miles north of Speculator (or 15.6 miles south of Indian Lake), where Perkins Clearing Road begins at an intersection near Mason Lake. Follow this road for 3.4 miles from Route 30, passing Mason Lake, and turn right onto Old Military Road, which crosses the Miami River a mile later and reaches a large clearing a little over five miles from Route 30. This is Sled Harbor, where low-clearance vehicles often park.

The road to the official trailhead, however, turns right at 5.1 miles. This too is called Old Military Road, referring to an ancient precursor cut through the wilds in the 1810s. When I first started coming here this road was barely passable to cars, but in more recent years DEC has been taking better care of it, a few bumps notwithstanding.

Still, there are a few timid souls who elect to park at Sled Harbor and walk this first 1.2-mile section, which gently ascends 250 feet to the upper parking area. It takes no more than 30 minutes to walk to this point.

The Trail – Of the two trails that begin at the remote Pillsbury Mountain Trailhead, this adventure begins on the one leading northwest, beyond a stone barricade. Now called the French Louie Trail (after a guide and fisherman famous for making the West Canada Lakes his home in the 19th century) the route to Cedar Lakes begins as the abandoned extension of Old Military Road, closed in the 1980s to vehicle traffic. It was for many years in fine shape for hiking, but a torrential rainstorm in October 2019 caused much of this section to gully. It is still OK for hiking, but a few surviving sections of the original gravel surface remind of us the recent past.

The gullies aside, the first 1.6 miles of the hike are mostly uphill – gently at first, with a massive washout at 0.8 mile to get our attention. But then the grade begins to steepen, climbing a rubbly slope before leveling off in the pass between Blue Ridge and Pillsbury Mountain. The total ascent is only about 300 feet, but that last section can be tiring.

At 1.6 miles the French Louie Trail bears left at a well-marked intersection. However, the direct route to Cedar Lakes continues straight ahead. It soon pitches down off the mountain, losing a portion of the elevation you just worked so hard to achieve. Within a few minutes you approach a large stream, Stony Brook, where the remains of a bridge still stand even though the structure itself has been gone as long as I can remember. Hikers now step across on stones to the right.

At 2.2 miles you reach a new bridge built through a wetland, crossing the stream called Grassy Brook – the same exact stream as Stony Brook, but here renamed to reflect the change in attitude.

The next two miles are mostly flat, except for a few minor pitches here and there. While the balsamic woods are beautiful, your attention might be distracted by the aging infrastructure that plagues this section – various types of bog bridging in stages of disrepair, making hikers wonder if would be better to just step in the mud. The situation improves somewhat as you round the base of Noisey Ridge, with its noble hardwood forests.

At 4.2 miles you reach the site of the old Cedar Lakes dam, where the trail makes a hairpin turn to the right. (To the left are two designated campsites, both in excellent shape, though neither are located on the main body of the lake.) The trail crosses the Cedar River on a bridge below the dam and reaches a junction with the Northville-Placid Trail at 4.3 miles.

Turn left for Cedar Lakes, passing through the extensive meadows where an old Conservation Department ranger station once stood – look for the old root cellar to the right. The northernmost lean-to is ahead at 4.5 miles, on the periphery of those meadows.

I’ll end my trail description here, but this is hardly all there is to see. The next lean-to is 0.7 mile farther south along the N-P Trail, and the southernmost shelter is another 2.4 miles beyond that (7.6 miles total from the parking area). I’ve always harbored a preference for those two outer lean-tos, but that is perhaps because of my personal bias for remoteness.

This northernmost end of Cedar Lakes is the largest of the lobes and arguably the most scenic, and the lowered waterline has revealed a series of interesting sand and gravel beaches. The shape of the lake is now more or less as French Louie knew the place, though there is an unusual number of rocks dotting some of the shallower areas, way more than you’d expect to see. My hypothesis is that these rocks once anchored boggy hummocks, which washed away during the decades when the water was high, leaving behind these odd remains. The fact that few woody plants have taken root in the exposed beaches tells me some fluctuation in the water levels still occurs in the spring.

Bill Ingersoll is a co-founder and the vice-chair of Adirondack Wilderness Advocates, as well as the author of Wilderness Camping in the Adirondacks, published in 2024 by North Country Books. For more information on the area described in this article, please visit: adirondackwilderness.org/west-canada-lake-wilderness.