| andyzee thanks for posting the photo of Avalanche lake - Its been a few years since I have been up there. Avalanche Lake is one of my all time favorite spots in the Northeast. I have been through there at least 6 time. When my son was 12 (now 29) I took him backpacking up past Avalanche lake. We camped between Avalanche Lake and Lake Colden closer to Avalanche Lake side . Nice camp site at the time. Next morning tied up all our food and left campsite to climb Algonquin. I never seen my son so proud of what he had accomplished when he got to top of the Algonquin. He was walking around talking to everyone at the top. I have a photo of the two of us at the top of Algonquin from that day in the dining room. After we hiked down I noticed a lot of tree bark on the ground where our food was hung up. I could not remember seeing that much bark on the ground. That night I got a lazy and did not tie the food up as high. Sure enough a 400lb black got into it (DEC ranger estimated his size at 400+lbs). He was still there eating our food in the morning. We got a real close look at this guy. I shoosed him off with banging pots and pans. He left us with one hot chocolate package. We packed up and hiked out. We were leaving anyway . We hiked out hungry but with the experience of seeing a huge animal in the wild next to our campsite. |