Duck Hole, Adirondack Backpacking Weekend: October 10-12, 2009

I have been longing to go back to Adirondack for a backpacking trip since last summer backpacking with Jason, Gillian and Marc to the Flowed Land area. It just happended that we all have the Columbus Day weekend free so Jason put together another backpacking trip, this time, we're going to the Duck Hole.

We're supposed to hike-in together from Upper Works trailhead, but some minor detour delayed Jason and Gillian. After a phone call exchanged, Kim and I headed in first, hoping to secure one of the two Lean-Tos at Duck Hole to ourselves.

It was drizzling lightly when we got to the trailhead, we started the hike after 8PM. Both Kim and I have never been on the trail to Duck Hole, with the rain, fog and dimming headlamp, we're having difficulty finding the poorly marked trail. A dozen of times, we would wander off and turn back to the last "obvious" area and started over from there. Slowly and carefully, we made our way to another section where the trail was overflown and turned into a swamp. We crossed the swamp by balancing on a slippery log, while we're trying to find where the trail continues, we heard some voices in the distance, it was Jason, Gillian and Steve caught up with us. After much searching around, Steve found the trail and we're continued a short walk to the T-Junction, where the Lean-To is just around the corner.

We rolled into the lean-to around 12:30 AM. Both lean-tos were occupied, the 3 girls shared one with a couple and the 2 boys set up their tarp tents at the front yard of the other lean-to, which is a couple hundred feet away. We quickly changed out of the wet clothes, rolled out our sleeping pad, climbed into the bag and fell into deep sleep.