Long Pond |
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Directions: See Long Pond Map or Google Map |
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Description: Turn right out of The Nature Conservancy headquarters parking lot, and in one mile turn right (north) onto Stoney Hollow Road. You will be traveling through a lush, maturing dark forest with a closed canopy. In 0.3 miles, pull off to the right after a small stream flows under the road. There is a rough path on the right side of the road through mixed forest. This is typical breeding habitat for Black-throated Green Warbler, American Redstart, and Ovenbird. At 3 miles from the Stoney Hollow Road turnoff, pull into the SGL 318 parking lot on the right. Walk down the Commander John Butler Trail into a huge parcel of unbroken mixed woodland that surrounds the two "lost lakes." Most of the common Pocono woodland birds can be found in this tract. The walk to Lost Lakes is 1.2 miles along a grassy old jeep trail. At 0.3 miles, a hemlock forest hosts breeding Blackburnian and Magnolia warblers. At 0.6 miles is another conifer stand that attracts Pocono warbler species. You must cross three sets of barricades built by Pennsylvania Game Commission of old logs to discourage motor vehicles. At 0.9 miles where the trail forks, go to the right. Soon there will be another fork. Turning right will take you to a beautiful rhododendron thicket, perfect for breeding Canada Warbler and Northern Waterthrush. The left fork will take you to one of the Lost Lakes, a large beaver pond, which has wonderful Canadian type vegetation around the edges. The other Lost Lake is nearby, but there is no clear trail to it. Lost Lakes are pristine glacial lakes, of which few remain in Pennsylvania. Like other glacial lakes and bogs in the Poconos, Lost Lakes were formed when a huge block of ice broke off a glacier and compressed the earth. When the ice melted, the depression filled with water, forming a kettle hole lake. You are standing on what was the southernmost reach of the last glacier of the last ice age. The rock and earth you see was deposited as the glacier receded. |