Lake Champlain’s Bali Hai
By Eben Punderson, Explorer Correspondent
The boat traffic was heavy that Sunday
afternoon, and our sea kayaks were
being bounced around in the crosspattern
of wakes thrown off by much larger
boats in more of a hurry than we were.
As my wife, Jill, and I paddled at our leisurely pace we
saw up ahead the low profile of a loon. It dove and resurfaced
as our boats approached and, in that setting, floating
so close to the surface, we felt an affinity with it. For a
minute we lost track of the loon, but suddenly it popped
out of the water about a paddle’s length away. In the
moment it remained before diving again, we were eye to
eye with the loon and could see every detail of this beautiful
bird. I was once again reminded of the advantages of
being in a sea kayak.
This chance encounter came at the end of our three-day
excursion on and around Valcour Island, and it typified our
experience. Though we happened to be there on one of the
busiest weekends of the season, exploring in sea kayaks
allowed us to become quietly and intimately acquainted
with this special island just a few miles south of Plattsburgh.
While the lakes and rivers of the Adirondacks have
spawned a rich tradition of canoeing, rowing and river
kayaking, it’s easy to forget that the Adirondack Park boundary
runs down the middle of Lake Champlain—the nation’s
largest lake after the five Great Ones, and a newly emerging
mecca for sea kayaking. Three-mile-long Valcour Island,
with its sheltered coves, sandy beaches and high bluffs,
forms the easternmost point of the Adirondack Park. And it’s
now entirely in public ownership, a small, but lovely addition
to the state’s “forever wild” Forest Preserve, made possible
by the founders of the Adirondack Nature Conservancy.
The island lies a mile from shore. Shoving off from the
landing, I tried to imagine the Battle of Valcour Island that
took place here in October 1776, when Benedict Arnold
moved out from his hiding place on the west side of the island
to intercept the British Fleet sailing down from Canada.
Those warships have been replaced with fleets of pleasure
craft, which on a summer weekend swarm about Valcour
and tie up four and five abreast in the island’s numerous
anchorages. Valcour’s proximity to Burlington, Plattsburgh
and Montreal makes it a popular destination, so an
overnight stay at the height of summer is more a communal
than a wilderness experience. This came as a surprise
to us, for when we set off on Friday afternoon the parking
lot at the landing was empty, and there was one sailboat
anchored in Smuggler’s Harbor on the island’s eastern
shore where we decided to make camp. By sunset however,
15 more boats had tied up in the harbor, many from
Montreal, and strains of conversations in French drifted
across the water to our campsite.
Yet the island’s heavy seasonal use does not detract from
its unique beauty and should in no way discourage paddlers
from coming ashore. Several of the campsites are
well away from the popular anchorages and, according to
Forest Ranger Tom Gliddi, midweek and off-season use is,
as one would expect, dramatically less than on an August
weekend. Despite the number of boaters sharing Smuggler’s
Harbor with us, our stay was quite peaceful; at night
we lay on the rocks and watched for shooting stars, and
woke to a loon calling in the early morning calm.
Although the state classified the island as “primitive,” the
campsites are nonetheless quite comfortable. All have outhouses,
a picnic table and a fireplace with a grill. The sites on
the northern end have sandy beaches; those on the rocky eastern
shore are nestled under hemlocks and overlook limestone
ledges that slope down to the water, with views across to the
Green Mountains and down the lake to the horizon. Occupancy
of the campsites is first-come, first-served.
After leaving the landing, Jill and I paddled southeast
around the island with a light northwest breeze easing us
along. As we rounded the southern tip of the island, the
wind conditions allowed us to hug the base of the sheer
limestone cliffs and peer into the deep fissures at water’s
edge, where the waves gurgled and hissed. Jill spotted a
mallard duck perched on a ledge inside one of these small
grottoes. Then, looking up about 30 feet, we saw what
Ranger Gliddi later told us was a raven’s nest, built of large
sticks on a ledge.
Around the island’s southeastern tip the cliffs change
from solid rock to layers of sedimentation, which has
buckled and waved to form beautiful patterns. This softer
rock also shows the effects of the weather and waves on
this unprotected shore, and we poked our boats in under
great, scalloped overhangs. Farther along, where the cliffs
give way to a pebble beach, we pulled in for a rest.
Although outnumbered by motorboats and sailboats, we
did see several other kayakers either camping on the island
or paddling around it. Just north of where we camped, on
Tiger Point, we encountered a group of about a dozen
young kayakers on an extended trip. They told us they had
built their own kayaks in a course given by the Lake
Champlain Maritime Museum, near Basin Harbor, Vt.
Now they were testing their craft—and honing their
skills—on a five-day expedition following a portion of the
Lake Champlain Paddlers’ Trail.
Beginning near Vergennes, they had paddled down Otter
Creek into the lake, spent a night on the Vermont side, then
proceeded toward the New York side and camped at
Schuyler Island, before heading north to Valcour. Now
they were preparing to paddle back across the lake for a
night at Law Island, on the Vermont side, but were waiting
for the wind to die down before embarking.
Weather on Lake Champlain is fickle. The wind can
come up fast and when it’s out of the southeast it can kick
up a steep and choppy sea. We experienced this kind of
weather on our second day, when we set off to paddle
around the island, a voyage of about eight miles. As we
paddled north, a gentle breeze pushed us along. By the time
we got around to the southwest tip the wind had grown
stronger. Sitting in our kayaks in the calm of the protective
lee of the headlands we’d skirted the day before, we
watched sailboats out on the lake heel sharply as they
tacked into a stiff southeast breeze. Whitecaps danced just
beyond the tip of the island, and we could hear the waves,
grown to three or four feet on the long fetch up the lake,
smash into the cliffs just around the corner. The conditions
weren’t dangerous for sea kayaks (though an open canoe would
be easily swamped), but we knew we had to pay attention and steer our boats into the waves to keep
from being swept broadside. Cameras
were stowed and sprayskirts cinched as
we came out from behind the sheltering
cliffs to meet the wind and waves head on.
Later, wet but exhilarated, we regrouped
in a protected cove on the eastern side and
continued up the shore with the wind at our
backs to complete our circumnavigation.
If it’s too rough to paddle, there’s plenty
to do on shore. Hiking trails cross the island
in two places and trace the perimeter, connecting
all of the campsites, in a wonerful
6-mile loop walk. The island exhibits a
wide range of forest types and many rare
flora species, including ram’s head lady’s
slippers, a rare orchid. On our hikes we saw
lots of deer tracks, a ruffed grouse, and the
odd sight of a great blue heron standing in
the trail. Herons are common on the island,
which is home to a large heron rookery.
When we came upon the heron on the
ground, we wondered if it was a young bird
that had fallen out of its nest.
Our walk around the perimeter revealed
much of the island’s natural and human
history. Well-preserved marine fossils can
be found in the limestone bedrock
deposited some 450 million years ago.
More recently, Valcour supported two
farms, and one of the trails leads through
overgrown pasture and past the rusted
remains of farm equipment. On Bluff
Point overlooking the channel stands a
stone lighthouse, built in 1874 to safeguard
the increasing commercial shipping
traffic at that time. It was decommissioned
in 1931 and purchased in 1986 by
New York state. The Clinton County Historical
Association has restored the lighthouse
and opened it up to visitors. The
structure is accessible by a trail that follows
the edge of Bullhead Bay.
On our third and final day we were
awakened before sunrise by the sound of
waves crashing on the rocks just feet from
our tent. The water had been flat calm
when we went to sleep, but overnight that
southeast wind had picked up and was
even stronger than the day before when we
made our dash around the southern end of
the island. We were supposed to meet Rich
MacDonald, a conservation assistant with
the Adirondack Nature Conservancy, that
morning on the other side of the island, but
decided to walk across rather than paddle
around, hoping that the wind would die
down before we were ready to break camp
and leave for good.
But by the time we returned to our
campsite, with Rich and his brother Ramsey,
the wind was as strong as before.
Putting safety before pride, we pressed
our new companions into service for the
three-quarter-mile portage to the leeward
side of the island, where we put in and
paddled back to the landing.
Thus ended, on a rather anticlimactic
(but dry) note, our long weekend of
exploring Valcour Island by paddle and
by foot. Due to our means of exploration,
we had been on intimate terms with the
island and its surrounding waters. The
experience was not diminished by the
fact that we had shared the island with
many other boaters. Soon after departing,
Jill and I were already contemplating a
return in the fall, when we will find far
more solitude. Or perhaps we will
explore elsewhere on the lake, for our trip
to Valcour gave us a tantalizing hint of
the possibilities for sea kayaking on this
120-mile-long waterway with its varied
shoreline, its islands, coves, beaches and
wild marshes, its thriving birdlife and
rich human history, its quaint villages
and ports of call, and its endless small
surprises.
Map by Nancy Bernstein
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