1219. Wanda's Wanda-rings: Finger Lakes Trail
Balsam Lake, NY

Finally, over thirty years since backpacking this 500-mile NY trail system near the end of my 30,000-mile "backpacking career", and over a decade since planting the Wanda's Wanda-rings series temporarily in the Arcadia State Forest of RI to represent some of the 50 or so long-distance treks that I had done all around the country in the 1980's and 1990's while trying to recover from a near-fatal accident that left me with a fractured spine, TBI, etc., I'm just now getting around to transplanting the last of them!

A couple of years ago, I had actually transplanted this box from Scout, a NY letterboxer close to the FLT in both distance and spirit who had graciously agreed to carve the FLT stamp for my Wanda-rings series so many years ago, to near the eastern terminus of the FLT in the Catskills. However, I was not very satisfied with that plant spot which was too close to a busy trailhead, so I pulled the box, and waited for another chance to get back to the FLT to find a better plant location.

That opportunity came near the end of a lovely late summer weekend in upstate NY, after hiking several of the newer offshoot loops to the FLT along which Scout had been planting boxes during the COVID pandemic. On our way home we had been planning to hike to the Balsam Lake Mountain fire tower anyway, near the highest point on the FLT, as part of the Adirondack/Catskill Fire Tower Challenge. So, when we heard that Scout and her family were planning on hiking through that very area soon themselves as part of their own end-to-end hike on the FLT, it was an easy decision about where to re-plant this box!

So, to find this particular Wanda's Wanda-rings box, drive to the dead end of Beaver Kill Road, about 11.2 miles east from its junction with Alder Creek Road (county 54) near Turnwood, NY, and park in the upper parking lot. (The last few miles are well-maintained dirt, although probably best not driven in winter.) At this point, the "westbound" FLT is now the blue-disk trail with the fire tower sign heading north. Follow it gently up for .9m, then turn left on the red-disk trail, passing the turnoff for a shelter in another half mile and a beautiful piped spring soon thereafter, to reach a junction with the yellow-disk trail where the FLT now goes west 6.6m to Alder Lake. From the tall brown mileage post signs here at this junction, simply take about 20 steps at 60 degrees to the SE corner of a large (c.6'x3') knee-high flat moss-covered boulder, and gently remove a cover rock below to reveal this rather large box tucked well beneath it!

Now, you could just return the same way 1.6m back to your car, but we highly recommend taking the lovely flat balsam-scented path just a short distance north to the fire tower with its 360 degree view from the top, then curving northeast on red-disk and south on blue-disk to loop back to the original junction at .9m and then straight back to your car. Happy trails!

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