3. Climb It No More
North Sandy Pond and the much smaller South Sandy Pond are separated from Lake Ontario by a hill of sand that was – and may still be – more than 100 feet high along much of North Sandy Pond's west shore. However, there was only one spot where the white sand really stood out on the pond side of the hill where vegetation camouflaged most of the dunes because trees and plants were sheltered from the wind and water that played havoc on the side that faced the lake.

That bright spot of sand near the southern end of North Sandy Pond was a beacon that summoned us to the beach. It stood tallest in the late 1940s when it wore a crown of vegetation, including poison oak, though that didn't discourage us from climbing the hill and charging down the other side to the water. Why most of this particular hill was free of vegetation wasn't a question that interested us. Obviously, it should have.

We often went to the main beach by boat, even after it gained popularity as Sandy Island Beach. We noticed changes, but didn't realize the implications. For one thing, the poison oak disappeared. Sandy spaces between plants were wider. We thought that was a good sign. We were wrong, of course.
We saw little of Sandy Pond from the early 1960s to the early '70s. When we returned, that sand hill was more visible than ever from our cottage. There was little vegetation left.

And the hill seemed smaller, though to first-time visitors, Laura and Jeff Major, it was Sand Mountain. At the top is a photo taken from our boat as we approached the hill in 1975. Notice the pier-like structure at the base of the hill, which was new that year. Laura and Jeff are shown (below) at the bottom of the hill in 1974.

Someone had plowed the sand at the base of the hill, creating a shelf, perhaps in an effort to prevent the hill from disappearing directly into the pond. On my first trip to the sandhill in the late 1940s, the hill rose directly from the pond's edge.

By the 1980s the hill was in serious trouble. All vegetation was gone and the wind off Lake Ontario slowly destroyed the hill, shoving tons of sand into the water. New York State stepped in to repair and re-seed the hill, but it is much smaller today, though undoubtedly in better shape than it has been since the 1950s when Sandy Island Beach was born and the hordes invaded.