"Wait till Otis sees us..." -Dexter Lake (club)

Another trout pond recon trip with Dan as a short overnight. We ventured into the Ferris Lake Wild Forest. This would only be my second foray into this area, the first being the fall trip with Jeff a couple years back. I will also be exploring more of this area in the near future as part of the NPT-west. With only a few inches of snow, we left our snowshoes in the car and headed down the trail. We passed by the gate and a half mile later came to the first intersection with the trail register. We had been following some tracks and they continued in our direction of travel. If the folks who made them signed in at the register these were quite a few days old. The Dexter and Dry lakes trail continued on another 1.6 miles to Dry Lake. At this point the tracks we were following turned around. There was a wet area which we needed to navigate around/over to continue. We poked around a bit at what looked like a good place for a campsite, but didn't see anything. Just under a mile to the eastern edge of Dexter Lake. The trail had a few rolling hills, but no big elevation changes. The trail followed the southern shore of Dexter Lake. An old trail sign and a small campsite appeared before the next junction.

As we neared our turn, we opted to head the other way just to see the drainage of Dexter. There were some neat rock formations here, but other than that not much else caught my eye. We crossed the bridge over the main outlet and then another. The beavers have been busy here. On the other side of the lake we entered the area where the old maps showed structures. While there were no remains, a few artifacts could still be seen scattered around. we chose this area to make camp as it has already been impacted by man's presence. Plenty of firewood in the immediate vicinity too. We set up camp and collected wood. Dan needed to make a repair on his knee brace and then put together a few seats for us by the fire pit. With everything set up, we took an afternoon walk to Knapps Long Lake. An old guide book talked about an easily discernible roadway. even in winter it was quite easy to follow mostly because there was no other way to go. It only took about 20 minutes for us to get to the dammed up outlet. We each took a shore and gave ourselves a 20 minute turn-around time. Dan on the north, and me on the south. My side had a steepness which slowly began to narrow to the shoreline making walking difficult. I soon had to head uphill away from the lake's edge. A few contours up and it was easier walking. I made it quite a ways around before the 20 minute mark. I was able to get back to the shoreline here and look out over the lake. A few potential campsite areas piqued my curiosity, but they bore no fruit. I headed back to our rendezvous point, staying along the higher contour until it was time to drop down. Dan had found the continuation of the old roadway, it must have crossed the outlet farther downstream.

We headed back to camp to get the fire going and have something to drink. So far it hadn't been very cold for a winter trip. With the fire going and some relaxing we enjoyed the glow over the lake from the setting sun. Soon the stars appeared, then were obscured by clouds and re-appeared. We each had our own dinner and couple cold barley drinks. some dark chocolate for dessert. We stayed up as late as we could, but it was probably still before 9pm when we retired.

We stashed some tinder material under a fallen tree in a dry spot for the morning as well as some other kindling. Good thing as there was some icy snow overnight. With the pre-arranged kindling and the charred logs from last night a morning fire was easy business. Snow returned on/off through the morning, it was also warming up. We had plans to check out some other nearby ponds which are supposed to have fish, but we opted to head out and then explore other access points and take a day hike instead. We drove to Powley Piseco Rd and took the unmarked path behind campsite 2 to House Pond. while the pond looked to have a small channel dividing the lake into 2 parts, there was only one main section and the channel flowed into marshland area. These ponds and trails off P-P road I have not explored at all, not sure why. We ate lunch on the drive back back. Great little over night trip to a new spot. will need to come back and explore more.