Day six of a northbound thru-hike on New York's Northville-Placid Trail reads like a miniature adventure novel: a tarp ripped off by midnight winds, a sun-soaked recovery, and the quiet thrill of realising you might actually finish the thing.
The hiker, writing for The Trek, spent a rough night near Wakely Dam as rain and gale-force gusts hammered camp until around 2am, blowing the tarp down mid-storm. Morning brought blue skies, and a sunny day on the trail was enough to dry out clothes and pack — if not the fatigue. From Wakely Pond, the route climbed gently into the Blue Mountain Wild Forest, with a welcome water stop at Bower Brook for filtering, a face wash, and a Bandana laundry session.
The day's centrepiece was Stephen's Pond lean-to, which sits in a piney grove above the water — a good spot for lunch, blister patching, and sketching on the shore. A short 2.5-mile stretch of wide, easy trail then led to Lake Durant Campground, where the writer found genuine waves rolling on the pond, a sandy beach, and even a snapping turtle crossing the road. After crossing the highway, a trail sign marked the start of the Blue Mountain Lake to Long Lake section — a milestone, since it meant entering the final third of the roughly 133-mile route. At that point the hiker had covered about 91 miles, a personal distance record.
Not everything was smooth after that. The trail toward Tirrell Pond turned rugged, overgrown and faintly marked — the hiker lost the path more than once and needed GPS to get back on track. A chance meeting with two older hikers added some perspective: one had thru-hiked the NPT solo in six days and described it as body-wrecking, with monotony as the real enemy. A stop at the O'Neill Flow lean-to was tempting for the night, but mileage goals won out. The day ended at Tirrell Pond — surprisingly with cell service — with hammock camping and plans for chili in Long Lake the next day.
For anyone weighing up the NPT, this leg captures the trail's character well: it's an Adirondack long-distance route that mixes gentle forest walking, lean-to culture and lakeside campsites with stretches of rough, poorly blazed path where navigation skills genuinely matter. September is a lovely window — warm days, cooling nights, fewer bugs — but storms can still roll in hard, so a tarp or tent setup that survives wind is worth thinking about. Hammock campers will find plenty of trees; the trade-off is exposure on exposed pond shores.
Who's it for? Strong day-hikers curious about their first multi-day trip will like the campground and lean-to infrastructure, while experienced backpackers get a quieter alternative to the High Peaks. And if a stormy night in the woods sounds miserable rather than fun, the Blue Mountain Wild Forest section can be sampled as a shorter loop with the same lakes and pine groves.
The Trek
