Uncovering secrets of Carry Falls Reservoir

An after-work adventure on Radio Island, on the Raquette River in Colton

By Betsy Kepes

When Nicole got home from work the kayak was on my car, ready for a quick getaway. We wanted to show Nicole’s 3-year-old daughter, Sylvie, the Carry Falls Reservoir. It is the largest of the seven lakes created by dams built in the 1950’s along the Raquette River in the town of Colton. 

Paul Jamieson, in his book “Adirondack Canoe Waters,” remembered a nighttime journey along the old Hollywood Road (now underwater) when the dams were under construction. “Over a vast floodplain formerly known as the Great Bog, not a tree was left standing, but myriads of stumps burned like the campfires of a large Iroquois war party on some stern mission against the Hurons of Canada.” 

Seventy-five years later, the Carry Falls Reservoir covers the Great Bog and when the water is low sandy beaches surround the lake. Our destination was Radio Island, a peninsula before the dams, where Dr. Ward Priest, a member of the Hollywood Club and a physics professor at St. Lawrence University, set up an antenna in the early 20th century. 

After we launched, Sylvie sat quietly in the middle of the kayak, leaning over to drag her fingers in the water. Nicole and I struggled with a wind that pulled us to port, but we managed to track a line to Radio Island as small waves tossed our boat.

As I had hoped, Sylvie loved being on the island. We took off our sandals and walked barefoot in the sand along the shore. I pointed out some tracks and Sylvie thought they might be from a bear.  “Those are tracks from a bird,” I said. Sylvie thought they were from a big bird, and I agreed. Later we saw large piles of Canada Goose poop so we could verify our hunch.

When we reached a steep slope, I realized we should have carried our sandals with us. Sylvie insisted on climbing through the rocks to reach a large boulder, and then further up to a grassy spot with a campfire ring. She would have climbed barefoot up to the small forest that tops the island, but I vetoed that. 

On our way back to the kayak we discovered a butterfly net. Sylvie put it on her head, the long handle pointing forward, like the horn of a unicorn. “It’s to keep away Bad Guys,” she said. 

We sat in the sand to have a snack and Sylvie couldn’t resist throwing a bit of sand into the air. We had to remind her that we didn’t want to eat sandwiches with sand in them. After she tossed two more handfuls of sand, we reminded her again, in less pleasant voices. 

Before we got back in the kayak, we had enough time to build a sandcastle, complete with a ring of stones adorning its parapet. Our journey back to the boat launch was easier than the way out and as we came close to the shore the sun disappeared behind the woods. Our adventure was only a couple of hours long, but on Radio Island we’d felt far from home, like castaways or pirates on a deserted isle.