Boreas Ponds, Adirondacks, NY

[Gamma1214]

I'm just pleased the pixelated photos weren't some "artistic license" experiment. Interesting effect but I'd hate for that to catch on... could trigger a migraine or anger issues.

Hope you get it sorted.

 

[Alan Gage]

Whether or not I'd get the same result using larger files, I don't know, but at the moment, I haven't the patience to resize them all, again.

I don't blame you for not wanting to mess with it anymore but, for what its worth, the ones I uploaded were all from the full size image you sent me, letting the forum do all the resizing. I had the same result using downsized image as well. The forum has done a good enough job for me that I never bother to resize before hand.

Alan

 

[Marc Ornstein]

I don't blame you for not wanting to mess with it anymore but, for what its worth, the ones I uploaded were all from the full size image you sent me, letting the forum do all the resizing. I had the same result using downsized image as well. The forum has done a good enough job for me that I never bother to resize before hand.

Alan

Thanks Alan. I have a suspicion that Glenn's boat may indeed be the culprit - well sort of. If I recall correctly, in the original batch of photos that I uploaded, only those with his boat in them were effected. I suspect, that whatever mechanism the program uses to "prepare" the photos for the website got "confused" by the cloth weave pattern. Perhaps when the "attach files" method is used, the program processes the photos differently. That's my hypothesis, until someone pokes holes in it.

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

As @Marc Ornstein, whose many talents include photo uploading, has pointed out, he and I paddled Boreas Ponds on July 23, 2026. Later over pizza in Little Italy Restaurant in Tupper Lake—after eating in Little Italy Restaurant in Saranac Lake the night before (go figure?)—he and I agreed it was the most scenic lake either of us had ever paddled in the Adirondacks as well as the most all-around interesting.



The "ponds" are actually one connected lake with three lobes. We didn't make it into the 3rd lobe/pond. So, I demand a rematch next summer. To help Marc's photography, I can paddle one of his boat designs, my Savage River Illusion, but it has a Textreme checkerboard layup that is even more eye-confusing than the Swift Keewaydin 15 carbon/Innegra twill layup I was paddling this summer.

Meanwhile, here's my photo record of what we did do.

Marc doesn't do JetBoil crap. So, after eating breakfast on padded thrones in the elegant Hotel Saranac restaurant, we took off for the unknown.

About 0.1 miles from the put-in, there is a smaller, designated parking lot with capacity for six vehicles, two of which are for handicap use only.From what I understand, a special permit is required to access this parking area

I had a special access handicapped permit, which gave me the code for the locked gate to the small parking lot close to the put-in. After breakfast we stopped at the main Ranger Station in Ray Brook to find out whether the gate code was still current. It was.

Down the Northway to the exit for Blue Ridge Road aka County Road 84. Drive west on that until you reach the sign for Gulf Brook Road, which is a six mile gravel drive to the main Four Corners Parking Lot.



Here is the Four Corners Parking Lot where unhandicapped and unpermitted mere mortals must park.



And here is the locked gate at Four Corners, opening which allowed us to drive the 0.7 miles to the special permit parking lot instead of portaging or wheeling the distance. I couldn't operate the lock but Marc, with his safe-cracking skills, could and did.


Here is the lower special parking lot, which had one other occupant, an older guy with a sit-on-top kayak. (Older, sheesh Glenn, probably younger than either of us.)



The put-in is 0.1 mile from this parking lot. Marc and I chatted with some guy and his girl friend who had something to do with establishing the handicap access system in the Adirondacks, and was pleased to see it being used. The wheels and chair were not ours.



At the put-in there is a bridge over the dam. In one direction, looking out over the lake, we could see a mountain with a landslide on the side. That became a visual reference point for us as we explored the various arms and flows and islands in the lake.



On the other side of the dam, the Boreas River becomes a vertiginous class 4 whitewater run down to the Hudson River . . . but not that day.



On the water, the lake quickly opens up to scenic vistas, surrounded almost 300° by the Adirondack High Peaks.



The interesting variety of the lake begins around the first bend. There are several inlflows of streams that are occluded by dead trees and choked with logs to provide some slalom paddling, most expertly done by Marc's bow paddler, Rascal.



There are many large floating bogs with labyrinthine passages in which we spied carnivorous pitcher plants and sundews as well as orchids.




There are also several islands, one a prominent rock.







With acres of lily pads stretching out in many directions.




And more flows with cadaverous trees.





Marc was fascinated, if not obsessed, with photographing a trio of loons, which actually followed us back to the put-in, where Marc kept snapping them after he was snapping a snake.




That evening, we had pizza at Little Italy Restaurant in Tupper Lake, which touts having the best rated pizza in the Adirondacks according to Adirondack Life Magazine. Marc and I gave the pizza a B at best . . . and Boreas Ponds an A+ for scenic and varietal paddling interest.

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

Something weird happened to the photos when I uploaded them to this site. That moire' pattern effect is not on the original photos and doesn't show on those uploaded to Facebook.

I have my control program set to accept images only up to 8000 kb. The program says this will: "Provide the maximum attachment file size in kilobytes (KB). Attachments over this size will be rejected. The configuration of this server limits this value to 32,768 KB." I chose 8000 kb six years ago because that seemed more than sufficient for the phone photos that most people now take and upload. However, I have also set the control program to reduce accepted images down to a maximum of 950 x 950 pixels in posts, a size that fills my 15.5" laptop screen.

I don't know what happened with your Boreas pictures. I assume your high end camera is producing very high resolution raw images, but have no idea how that would translate to the 8000 KB maximum. Your pictures weren't rejected but had blurs and artifacts. I don't really understand the relationship between KB and pixel density, and I can only guess, with some help from AI, that Xenforo compresses and handles or rejects images differently from other sites.

I'm sure I can make some adjustments or add some third party image processing program, but no one else has ever had the issues you had with the Boreas images, Marc. Besides you've earlier posted many other high quality images on the site apparently without problem.

 

[Marc Ornstein]

As @Marc Ornstein, whose many talents include photo uploading, has pointed out, he and I paddled Boreas Ponds on July 23, 2026. Later over pizza in Little Italy Restaurant in Tupper Lake—after eating in Little Italy Restaurant in Saranac Lake the night before (go figure?)—he and I agreed it was the most scenic lake either of us had ever paddled in the Adirondacks as well as the most all-around interesting.

View attachment 157265

The "ponds" are actually one connected lake with three lobes. We didn't make it into the 3rd lobe/pond. So, I demand a rematch next summer. To help Marc's photography, I can paddle one of his boat designs, my Savage River Illusion, but it has a Textreme checkerboard layup that is even more eye-confusing than the Swift Keewaydin 15 carbon/Innegra twill layup I was paddling this summer.

Meanwhile, here's my photo record of what we did do.

Marc doesn't do JetBoil crap. So, after eating breakfast on padded thrones in the elegant Hotel Saranac restaurant, we took off for the unknown.



I had a special access handicapped permit, which gave me the code for the locked gate to the small parking lot close to the put-in. After breakfast we stopped at the main Ranger Station in Ray Brook to find out whether the gate code was still current. It was.

Down the Northway to the exit for Blue Ridge Road aka County Road 84. Drive west on that until you reach the sign for Gulf Brook Road, which is a six mile gravel drive to the main Four Corners Parking Lot.

View attachment 157266View attachment 157267

Here is the Four Corners Parking Lot where unhandicapped and unpermitted mere mortals must park.

View attachment 157268

And here is the locked gate at Four Corners, opening which allowed us to drive the 0.7 miles to the special permit parking lot instead of portaging or wheeling the distance. I couldn't operate the lock but Marc, with his safe-cracking skills, could and did.

View attachment 157269
Here is the lower special parking lot, which had one other occupant, an older guy with a sit-on-top kayak. (Older, sheesh Glenn, probably younger than either of us.)

View attachment 157286

The put-in is 0.1 mile from this parking lot. Marc and I chatted with some guy and his girl friend who had something to do with establishing the handicap access system in the Adirondacks, and was pleased to see it being used. The wheels and chair were not ours.

View attachment 157270

At the put-in there is a bridge over the dam. In one direction, looking out over the lake, we could see a mountain with a landslide on the side. That became a visual reference point for us as we explored the various arms and flows and islands in the lake.

View attachment 157271

On the other side of the dam, the Boreas River becomes a vertiginous class 4 whitewater run down to the Hudson River . . . but not that day.

View attachment 157272

On the water, the lake quickly opens up to scenic vistas, surrounded almost 300° by the Adirondack High Peaks.

View attachment 157273

The interesting variety of the lake begins around the first bend. There are several inlflows of streams that are occluded by dead trees and choked with logs to provide some slalom paddling, most expertly done by Marc's bow paddler, Rascal.

View attachment 157274

There are many large floating bogs with labyrinthine passages in which we spied carnivorous pitcher plants and sundews as well as orchids.

View attachment 157275
View attachment 157276

There are also several islands, one a prominent rock.

View attachment 157277
View attachment 157289

View attachment 157279
View attachment 157280

With acres of lily pads stretching out in many directions.

View attachment 157281
View attachment 157282

And more flows with cadaverous trees.

View attachment 157283
View attachment 157284
View attachment 157285

Marc was fascinated, if not obsessed, with photographing a trio of loons, which actually followed us back to the put-in, where Marc kept snapping them after he was snapping a snake.

View attachment 157287
View attachment 157288

That evening, we had pizza at Little Italy Restaurant in Tupper Lake, which touts having the best rated pizza in the Adirondacks according to Adirondack Life Magazine. Marc and I gave the pizza a B at best . . . and Boreas Ponds an A+ for scenic and varietal paddling interest.

Great trip report, Glenn. Thanks for a fine collection of beautiful photos of the ponds, its surroundings and Rascal. I appreciate your including me in a few, as well. As for a remake and trip to the third pond, I just checked with Rascal and he says that our schedule is clear, so, you're on.