moose mountain summit, well almost

I had a map of the hike. I was toldto park at the end of chipmonk lane and ask permission from the ownwers to use trail. I did just that and walked until i hit the first sign. It said Mckensie 2.7 miles. I wanted to go to minnowbrook up to loch bonnie so I continued on. I saw a sign that said loch bonnie .9 mi and moose mtn 1.2 miles. It was a easy to follow trail and I came out at the lean to at loch bonnie. that is were the trail seem to end. All the way up i saw white disk marking the spot. The last one I saw was at the lean to. I backtracked about 5 minutes to see if I missed a trail to the left or right but did not see anything so I returned to the lean to. the only way possible for the trail to go was over some wet grassy area. It was very wet and soggy and I did not see any sign of a trail on the other side or any foot prints any where. I tried to bushwack a little t the right of the bog but my history with bushwacking has not been good so I gave up on that. I thought about trying to go across the wet grassy area but If I stepped into a spot up o my kness I maynot get out so i returned to my car. I was .3 miles from the summit and I had to turn around . luckily I did mckensie a few yeaers ago so I figure the views would be about the same. To let out my frustration of not summiting I stopped at cobble hill and pounded that out. I am glad I did becasue the views were great and I got to watch a couple of lacross games live. I never saw one live before. Man those guys are either tough or crazy I don't know which mabe both. Ok someone tell were I went wrong. I bet i had to go across that grass to the right of the lean to.

look at it this way... you did way better than myself a couple years ago. I couldn't find a place to start the trail and after some frustrating searching and asking... I decided to go in and do McKenzie. Hadn't done it - enjoyed a unique hike in misting weather with some rather neat clouds blasting around the top. I gave Spencer some crap for his guidebook, but he said it was vague on purpose... 'splain that??. So George - we should tackle it together!

It is very tricky there at Loch Bonnie. You need to cross the bog at that point. The trail is on the other side of the narrow arm of the bog on the right. If you can not cross you need to go around it in the woods. On the other side it is very easy to see and follow and is well marked.

Te trails are open to the public and the trail officially starts at the marina/boat dock and follows along a seemingly paved surface for a while before finally leaving the areas of the camps. Respect to the owners is needed.

There is a cool little book out just about the SOA Trails, the Mountaineer sells it. It was published by the guy who is in charge of maintaining and reopening the trails. The view is similar but unique as well.

We climbed those mountains five years ago (five years ago yesterday, in fact) so maybe I have it wrong, but my memory is that the trail went directly up to Moose, with Loch Bonnie being on a spur trail.

I don’t remember us having a map, unless there was one accompanying the then recently published article in Adirondack Explorer, so there may have been more to those trails than I was aware of.

Were you hugging the lake, Adk_dib, then turning left to go up to the lean-to, or slanting up the mountain and somehow ended up at the lean-to? I’m picturing the lean-to as being a hundred yards or so downhill through the woods, a right turn off the trail.

I know we went down and took a look at the pond and lean-to, then returned to the junction where there was a sign, and I think there was some reason I immediately wanted to go back down but didn’t feel like expending the effort.

I’ll have to check my pictures when I get home.