Last Saturday we took a drive up north. It was unseasonably warm in Albany, and my birthday is approaching so I wanted to do something fun. Besides, for aeons I have lived here and ignored something significant that has been calling me. From up north.
The drive took us through the Adirondacks and up into higher elevations where the snow was still everywhere, and where Albany with its 70F temperatures seemed a world away. I had dressed for warmth, and keenly felt the freeze. We pressed on.
About two hours after leaving home we were close to our destination, but the final leg took us along what must have been an old logging or mining road. Eleven-plus miles through an ancient pine forest on a very poor road full of blind turns, icy surfaces and near-zero visibility fog. It was hair-raising in the daylight and would have been a nightmare at night. Would the trip be worth it after completing this trial? We would soon find out…
That’s Lake Champlain, taken from a (literally) frozen beach in the town of Port Henry. The lake was massive and quiet and still. The air was cold and the water colder. It was too early in the season for boats, and too early in the day for fishermen. Aside from a few gulls, there wasn’t much life around.
We came here to see a monster.
Lake Champlain is world-famous for its resident: Champ, the lake monster. Second only to Nessie (of Loch Ness) with regards to fame, the first verifiable sighting of Champ was almost exactly 200 years ago (1819) though legends of a monster in this lake date back further still. Over the years there have been hundreds of sightings and even a few photographs, most notable the ‘Sansi’ photograph of 1977 (or was it 1981?). He’s America’s own monster, famous throughout the world.
I’ve known about Champ forever. I should be ashamed it had taken me so many years to come up and see him.
The town of Port Henry, on the southwest shore of the lake, adopted Champ as it’s official mascot in 1981. For a time America went Champ-mad, and there were more than one conferences debating his origin (and existence). Champ souvenirs were a-plenty, and both Vermont and New York (the lake is the border) signed bills protecting Champ as an endangered species. Even today – as you can see above – there is evidence of Champ in tiny Port Henry, including on the Chamber of Commerce sign.
That’s an impressively large sign posted just on the side of the main road into Port Henry. It lists every Champ sighting up until 1990, when apparently they stopped updating it. We drove past this sign on our way to cross the Lake Champlain bridge into Vermont, continuing our hunt for Champ souvenirs.
We found a cute gift shop in Vermont (called ‘Champs’) but it was closed so we headed back. Had we the motivation we could have continued all the way to Burlington where they built a Champ statue some years back and (apparently) there’s a few other monuments to him. Even though they can see New York across the lake, to them I’m sure Champ lives in Vermont.
It was easy, as I stood on the lake shore and looked out, to imagine something deep under that still, cold surface. Lake Champlaign is a massive lake – over 250 km in length and 250 meters deep at it’s deepest. It is (much!) longer, wider and deeper than Loch Ness, and if Nessie can survive there?
As I turned to leave, with Kristin watching me from afar, I heard a splash and a roar some distance away very close to the shore. I quickly turned, and had time enough to snap only a single photo before whatever it was disappeared below the surface. I still can hardly believe what I saw, but as they say, the camera doesn’t lie:
