Why Valcour?

Valcour Island,

NoLL

Why do we like Valcor Island so much?  Fair question.   I'll post some pictures when I have a good WIFI link again.

Valcour Island is on the NY side of Lake Champlain, close to Plattsburg, NY.   It is roughly 2 miles wide by 3 miles long.  Except for a small lot on the western side, it is uninhabited and owned by the state.  I heard once that it was deeded to the state as a place to use as a boat anchorage.  The state manages it with a light hand.   It keeps the trails open and that's about it.  I met a chain gang working on the trails once, but other than that you won't see a state employee out here.

Most of the perimeter of the island is limestone palisades.  The cliffs range from zero to about 100 feet above the water line.  The interior is all covered with forests.  It is clear that the island was scraped bare during the last ice age.  There are only a few inches of soil on top of bedrock.

There once were farms on Valcour Island, but I think they covered only a small fraction of the island.   Farming couldn't have been very good because of the lack of soil.    Anyhow, most of the island is covered with what appears to be virgin forest.  If it isn't virgin, then it is mature forest.    Here in the Northeast USA virgin forest is almost nonexistent.  In 1776 80% of the land in the Northeast was farm fields, and only 20% forest and those forests were exploited for logging.    Today, 80% of the land is forest, but younger than 200 years.  

Most of the trees are slow growing junipers, ceaders, and pines.   The forest floor is almost devoid of undergrowth because little sunlight penetrates to the ground.   Navigation outside of the trails is difficult because of the excessive number of fallen trees.   For some reason, fallen trees decay and disappear very slowly here.  

Walking along Valcour's trails is a marvelously serene experience.  It makes one wonder at the beauty of nature.   I've done it many times and each time my imagination awakes with fantasies of living on Valcour full time.  I dream of making an energy independent haven here, using only what nature provides.

You can navigate much of the perimeter by scrambling over the limestone rocks.   That's great fun.  At numerous points, you can jump off the cliffs into the deep, clean water.   What fun.   Thanks to zebra mussels, the waters around Valcour are very clear.   In the bays, the water in summer is warmer than that in the surrounding lake so swimming is a pleasure.   

A few places the palisades give way to beaches.  Most of the beaches are covered with glacial moraine.  Small, rounded, polished stones abound with an amazing variety of colors and types.   One wonders from how far away these stones were carried here by the glaciers.

Valcour offers numerous bays, coves, and bights with good holding for boat anchorages.   On calm nights you can find boats anchored all the way around.  On windy nights, the boats crowd into those spots offering shelter from the wind and waves.   Our favorite is were we are today -- Sloop Cove.  In past Octobers, we have sat securely at anchor here several times when the wind blew more than 70 knots.   We listened to the sound of the wind howling in the tree tops.

My first trip to Valcour was in October, 1970-something.  I don't remember the exact year.   I had my son John with me.  We came in to Sloop Cove, backed the boat up to a ledge, and built a camp fire on the ledge.   (I had no dinghy on that boat).   We fell in love with it right away.    

For many years, while living in Schenectady, NY.  I saved a week of vacation each year to sail on Champlain and to visit Valcour Island. I did it in the first week of October.  That week the fall colors would be at their peak, the geese migration would be at its peak, and we would have almost the whole lake to ourselves.

In later years, when we lived in Vermont, we didn't own a boat.  Still we managed to hitch a ride out to Valcour Island in the first week of October and camp for a month.   We pretty much had the whole island to ourselves.  Sometimes it was Libby and me and our dog Pup.  Other times it was just me and Pup.   Pup absolutely hated water and boats and he greatly feared the trip out here, but once on the island he found paradise.  His greatest joy was acting as a scout dog when I hiked on the trails.

There's even a great mystery here on Valcour Island.  There is a memorial to the captain and the crew of the Canadian WWI warship Nomad.  Why would it be here on American soil?   I probably wrote about it in some past blog post.  For now, I'll leave it as a challenge to you.  Google Valcour and Nomad and see if you can discover the story.