Ents,

The Adirondack Park encompasses about six million acres of northern
New York, but the area is not uniformly mountainous.  While the High
Peaks region in the northeastern part of the park includes rugged
peaks that rise 3000’ above surrounding lands, a gentler terrain of
low irregular hills and scattered small lakes predominates in the
park’s southwestern quadrant.  Occasional northeast-southwest oriented
ridges with steep eastern sides hint at the more rugged terrain to the
northeast, but they rarely rise more than a few hundred feet.  As
Barbara McMartin points out in The Great Forest of the Adirondacks,
even though that terrain posed little impediment to 19th century
logging operations, the region’s dearth of desirable timber species
caused loggers to concentrate on other parts of the Adirondacks.
White pine, the most sought after species of the time, occurred
throughout the mountains in only limited populations, and red spruce,
the second most desired species, became abundant only at elevations
higher than those common in the southwestern Adirondacks, generally
slightly less than 2000’.  Hence, a mixture of cleared, highgraded,
and untouched lands were incorporated into the park.

The Ha-de-ron-dah Wilderness Area lies on the western edge of Old
Forge, the largest town in the southwestern Adirondacks (although
still not large enough to have a traffic light).  On June 25th, my dad
and I crossed the area on a series of unmaintained trails.  Flat
sections of trail traversed low areas of second growth forests that
frequently gave way to beaver ponds.  

Beaver Lodge - photo by Jess Riddle

Black cherry, red maple and
sugar maple dominate the overstory with the cherry occasionally
forming nearly pure stands.  Red and striped maple saplings pierced
the sea of hay scented fern and bracken fern covering the forest floor
to form a sparse understory.  Near the ponds, red spruce and balsam
fir mixed into the overstory and the ferns gave way to goldthread,
bunchberry, false violet, and blueberries.  

Sedge meadow in old beaver pond - photo by Jess Riddle

Vegetation in and on the
edges of the ponds varied with time since abandonment, and ranged from
sedge meadows to shrub thickets that included speckled alder,
leatherleaf, wild raison, and chokeberry.

Between Big Otter Lake and Simon pond, two glacier produced water
bodies, the old trail weaves between several 200 to 300’ high hills
and through a much less disturbed forest.  Yellow birch, frequently
two and a half to three feet in diameter, forms most of the overstory
with scattered red maple and formerly beech.  

13'3.5" dbh x 85.3' tall yellow birch - photo by Jess Riddle

Beech bark disease has
killed most of the beech over a foot in diameter leaving canopy gaps
that either smaller beech or striped maple have filled.  Near streams
and lakeshores, red spruce, although none that look old, and scattered
hemlocks also reach the canopy.  Except in a few lake shore areas,
intermediate wood fern dominates the herbaceous layer, and witch
hobble forms a patchy understory.  The most productive forest grows on
level areas elevated perhaps 30 to 50’ above adjacent streams or
lakes.  In that setting, hemlocks reach about three feet dbh and the
largest yellow birch seen was 13’3.5” x 85.3’.

Jess Riddle