June 27, 2011 New York Section 6 from 4.6 to 7.3 and New York Section 5 from 0.0 to 4.8 going South to North. [AT: 7.5 miles]
With Sona. Started at Long Hill Rd. (just south of Shenandoah Mountain) and went north to N.Y. 52. Lots of delays getting started today — only managed to get on the trail by noon. Luckily it was summer and we had lots of hours of daylight. The weather was beautiful but a little bit humid. Finished at 7:15.
The first couple of miles Sona and I mapped invasive plants along the trail as part of the NY-NJ Trail Conference Invasives Strike Force monitoring program. It slowed us down considerably and we finally decided to stop mapping and just hike when we reached Hortontown Rd. just before the Taconic Parkway.
On the whole the trail was mostly uninvaded, just scattered individuals all along the first 2 miles with a few bad spots, and hardly any the last part of the trail, after we stopped mapping. We saw some native plants that we hadn’t seen in the wild before such as red baneberry and heuchera. Also lots of blue cohosh in bud, many ferns including some maidenhair fern and interrupted fern.
Met a couple of through-hikers at RPH shelter who were asking us about the plants we were looking for.
lindasnature
