My mom and I hung out at Chapel Pond this past weekend and we were surprised at how warm it was! We also noticed that most of the leaves were off the trees there. It was a beautiful morning.

This set of photos is a throwback to one of my first high peak adventures. It was an unbelievably beautiful day on the summits of Wright, Algonquin, and Iroquois. My friend and I practically had the whole summit to ourselves on that Friday. It's nice to look back and appreciate the adventures you've had in the past. This was the last hike I went on before leaving for my First Year at St. Lawrence. I will always remember the surreal feeling I had when looking out on the Adirondack Park from perhaps on the best vantage points. It truly was a fantastic day.

Today, students in Vertebrate Natural History at SLU visited some impressive beaver habitat along the Wolf Lake trail. Starting from the southern trailhead and following the "blue" trail on the Nature Up North trail map, we encountered a series of smallish beaver dams along a creek as we hiked toward Moon Lake. At the top of the series of dams is a larger beaver pond with clear signs of current activity. We continued another 100 meters along the trail to the very large (about 7-8' high) beaver dam depicted in the photo with students in front of it.

I went fishing on the Ausable River with my buddy Tommy and Ian. Tommy had just gotten an Austrian sheep dog named Keurl. He fished all afternoon with Keurl in the pouch of his waders. This was the last time I was able to fish during open trout season (ends on October 15th) although the Trout Management Areas (TMA) are open rear round. We caught one brown trout.

On Halloween I led a hike up Ampersand Mountain, which is one of the Saranac Six. On the climb up, we saw the coolest ice that had formed on some of the rocks. There was a layer of ice on the rocks but we could also see water running under it making really interesting patterns. It was really beautiful and very mesmerizing. Has anyone else seen ice like this before?

After trekking away from our St Lawrence vans, down into the small valley, our class set down our gear and donned our waders. This is a regular occurrence for our Limnology class, our weekly lab periods are spent investigating the local freshwater ecosystems and today was the final day of the field work portion of our curriculum. It was a beautiful day and the picturesque babbling brook was sparkling in the sunlight. We settled into our various jobs, proving to our professor that we have mastered the techniques required for the course, while still being efficient and having a great time.

The weather was fair, a bit gloomy but there were still opportunities for lots of great views. There were however many more people than I thought I would ever see on top of a mountain! Lots of dogs too, we must have seen 150 people and three dozen dogs!

To get out and learn about and admire the fall colors, a group hiked Mt. Arab, a two mile round trip hike with an elevation gain of 750 ft. At the peak, we spent time painting the fall colors with water colors and admiring our time in nature! It was such a great way to appreciate our local surroundings and I really encourage you all to get out there and explore this way of engaging with nature!

Best,
Claire

Students in my Vertebrate Natural History class and I had a great visit last night with Mark Manske, owner of Adirondack Raptors, helping him net and band saw-whet owls. Mark has both state and federal permits, plus years of experience in the safe, proper ways to work with raptors. On this project, he runs a saw-whet owl banding station, working to band the owls during their fall migration. These are the smallest owls in the northeast, weighing in at about 90 grams (=3 fat mice). They prey on deer mice and are preyed upon by larger owls, among other things.

The beautiful fall colors on the St. Regis River made for a perfect day of fly fishing with my friend Jeff. We caught a couple of Brown Trout, one bass and a few good size shiners.