LOCALadk Magazine

8 Fall 2014 LOCALadk Adirondack Adventures at Hear t Lake By Rhyann King This past school year the fourth grade classes at Momot Elementary School in Plattsburgh participated in ADK Mountain Club's Three Seasons of Heart Lake Adventure Program. September 2013 - Fall Adventure On our first trip to the Adirondacks back in September, my fourth grade class and I hiked Mount Jo. After we got 20 minutes in, we stopped to have a snack. We stopped where the "Sleeping Dog Rock" was. It looked just like its name. There was a head, body and a tail. As we were hiking our guide told us about the fact that when seasons change it can affect the plants. When it is fall all of the deciduous trees change colors. It was very interesting. When we got to the top it was time to eat lunch. But before I could eat, I had to look at the view. You could see Mount Marcy and a bunch of other mountains surrounding it. It looked like the forest was on fire because all the trees were changing. If you looked straight down, you could see why they call Heart Lake, Heart Lake. It really is shaped like a heart. When I was 2,876 feet in the air it felt different. To me it felt like I was a giant and everything else was tiny. As we were coming down the mountain we saw a birch tree. Our guide Thea told us that birch trees only grew after a forest fire, so there must have been a forest fire on Mount Jo. We saw many plants like ferns, trees, bushes and flowers. Some of the plants were labeled by the ADK Mountain Club and some of them weren't. There were wildflowers that were purple and orange. They were very pretty. March 2014 - Winter Adventure It was a sunny morning the second time we went to the Adirondacks. After we got on our snowshoes, we started going up the trail. We stopped and looked at animal tracks in the snow. There were rabbit tracks, fisher tracks, and squirrel tracks everywhere. They looked like faces. As we were snowshoeing, we came to a bridge. In front of the bridge there was a pile of pine cone crumbs that a squirrel was snacking on. Our guide Thea called it a "squirrel buffet." It looked as if someone had crushed the pine cone with the hammer. Under the bridge there were more fisher tracks. They looked like a fisher came here not too long ago. We stopped for a snack in the lean-to. The lean-to was pretty cool. The people who stayed in the lean-to carved their names in the walls; they made pictures in the walls too. Our group couldn't leave food crumbs because then the animals would eat the crumbs and that wouldn't be good for them. My group went to a hill covered in snow. We played a game; we had to make animals out of snow. They had to have three visible adaptations that would help them survive. My partner and I made a rabbit that had big ears to help it hear, a big nose for finding food and it had big feet to escape predators. On our way back to the bus I saw a beaver dam on the side of Heart Lake. It was big and it had many parts to it.

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