New York State's Adirondack Park is larger than several other states put together. The park totals about 6 million acres, 3.5 million of which are privately owned. The remaining acres are constitutionally protected forestland of one designation or another. It would take about a whole day's worth of driving to circumnavigate the park. The park has two confluences within it, this being one, and nearly extends far enough north and south to touch two more confluences. 44N75W is in the middle of the Five Ponds Wilderness area.
Dave and I started our day at 6AM, heading for Belfort. That's the town nearest the confluence, and it's even fifteen miles away. We met at the church and combined our supplies into my truck. We headed down Long Pond Rd., a paved road for the first five miles anyway. It turned to dirt at Oswegatchie Camp. We were able to drive from there to the Middle Branch of the Oswegatchie, where the bridge was out. We switched to foot and put on the bug helmets. It would have been easier had the bugs actually been able to carry us aloft; it only seemed as if they could.
We proceeded in a largely NE direction, following the jeep trail. While it tended to be marshy, it was clear of brush and relatively level. The jeep trail petered out and became an ATV trail. We took that to its terminus, which was two piles of tarped material along with two wood stoves. What they were doing on state forest preserve land we have no idea.
From there we bushwhacked a half-mile up the side of Sitz Mtn. The confluence was found quite readily in a patch of woods no different than any of the woods we had walked through for miles. Two things were different. We found a campfire circle, and numerous trees with scars that indicated that they had had plastic marking tape tied around them. One tree a few feet from the confluence point still had a band of yellow tied to it. As it was choking the tree, I removed the tape. Given that quite a number of trees were so marked, I don't think that anybody was trying to mark the confluence point.
Dave took the obligatory picture of the GPS (his) (mine), and I took a picture of him taking a picture of his gps.
