DSettahr
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I went up DeBar Mountain yesterday (Sunday) with my friend Will. It was a nice little hike that turned out to be not so little after all. We were told that we would have to hike in through the Meacham Lake campground to the main road, but found the entrance road was plowed to within a quarter mile of the entrance station. Finding the trail from the campground was a bit confusing; the guidebook mentions looking for campsite number 48 but we never found it. If you follow the main road through the campground, you’ll see signs for a trailhead and the DeBar Mountain Trail that lead you down a dirt road 0.5 miles from the campground to the real trailhead.
The DeBar Game Management Trail (basically a truck trail) had about an inch of packed snow and ice from snowmobiles, but the crampons from our snowshoes helped us to travel down the road fairly quickly. When we got to the actual DeBar Mountain Trail itself, we found it to be fairly well packed down from snowshoers and skiers. The trail initialy starts out level, and then slowly begins to climb to a height of land. After crossing over a ridge and descending slightly, you reach the DeBar Lean-to. Never have I seen a lean-to with that much graffiti. It doesn’t look like it gets a lot of overnight visitors, but I bet a lot of day hikers from the campground pass by it in the summer.
After the lean-to, there is only one way to describe the trail: steep. It crosses a small valley and begins to go straight up DeBar Mountain itself. Sections were covered in ice. Crampons would have been nice, but we got by with our MSR Snowshoes. We also saw bear tracks near the summit, so they are awake and moving about.
The summit has a nice view of the Santa Clara tract and the northern Adirondacks. We were able to pick out St. Regis and Azure Mountains in the distance. A lot of what was in sight was forested lands with very little evidence of human habitation anywhere.
Overall, the hike took 5 hours, a little bit longer than we expected. In the summer, it should take less time without the added hike in to the trailhead, as well as the ice on the steep section near the summit. It’s a nice hike to a decently sized mountain in the northern Adirondacks.
The DeBar Game Management Trail (basically a truck trail) had about an inch of packed snow and ice from snowmobiles, but the crampons from our snowshoes helped us to travel down the road fairly quickly. When we got to the actual DeBar Mountain Trail itself, we found it to be fairly well packed down from snowshoers and skiers. The trail initialy starts out level, and then slowly begins to climb to a height of land. After crossing over a ridge and descending slightly, you reach the DeBar Lean-to. Never have I seen a lean-to with that much graffiti. It doesn’t look like it gets a lot of overnight visitors, but I bet a lot of day hikers from the campground pass by it in the summer.
After the lean-to, there is only one way to describe the trail: steep. It crosses a small valley and begins to go straight up DeBar Mountain itself. Sections were covered in ice. Crampons would have been nice, but we got by with our MSR Snowshoes. We also saw bear tracks near the summit, so they are awake and moving about.
The summit has a nice view of the Santa Clara tract and the northern Adirondacks. We were able to pick out St. Regis and Azure Mountains in the distance. A lot of what was in sight was forested lands with very little evidence of human habitation anywhere.
Overall, the hike took 5 hours, a little bit longer than we expected. In the summer, it should take less time without the added hike in to the trailhead, as well as the ice on the steep section near the summit. It’s a nice hike to a decently sized mountain in the northern Adirondacks.
