The total number of AT miles in NY and NJ is 160.6.

Linda’s Total AT Mileage: 126.8 miles

Sona’s Total AT Mileage: 104.1 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.

Deckertown Turnpike to High Point State Park Headquarters. With Sona and Denise and her dog Dora. Started about 10:30 and finished about 3:30.

Started about 10:15 and finished at 5:20. With Sona. From Rt 565 up Pochuck Mountain, through Walkill River National Wildlife Reserve and then patches of woods and farm fields along the state line to Goldsmith Lane.

High Point State Park HQ north to Goldsmith Lane. With Sona. Started at 11:15 and finished at 5:45. I don’t know what our problem was but we couldn’t find the trail crossing at Unionville Rd. so we went with plan B and parked on Goldsmith Lane but we couldn’t find the trail there either. It appeared on the trial map to be north of the locked gate so we weren’t too worried – took a GPS point at the car and headed off to High Point to start the walk.   We parked at the big AT hikers parking lot off of Rt 23 just south of the park office. We stopped briefly at the office to look around at brochures, use the facilities, etc. and then headed off. Walking through the woods of High Point we go around a bend in the trail and suddenly see this….

Quite a surprise. This is the High Point monument. There was a wooded observation deck built along the trail a little distance from the monument so we decided it was a good place for lunch as there were benches and a cool view. We were joined by another hiker from Connecticutt who had a British accent. He and Sona exchanged stories. He told us of hiking many of the big peaks in the Adirondacks and Sona shared her favorites. He was day hiking on a loop hike.

After lunch we hiked on and soon departed the woods for sequences of farm fields and abandoned fields. One place was an abandoned orchard with apple trees loaded with fruit – we helped ourselves to “organic” apples for an afternoon snack. Not too bad.

Some beautiful fields with purplue loosestrife (a non-native invasive plant) in bloom along with the native ironweed, golden rod, boneset.

A few months ago I had bought some rubber tips for my hiking poles. During the last hike one kept coming off and I finally lost it. During this hike I lost the other tip but later found one on the trail which I am now using, so maybe the hiker who lost it will find my lost one from last trip!

It was during this hike that Sona diagnosed me with OCDR (obsessive compusive data recording) for insisting on taking a photo and GPS point of ladybugs for the Lost Ladybug project. (http://www.lostladybug.org)

With Sona. Started at Long Hill Rd. (just south of Shenandoah Mountain) and went south by Canopus Lake, across Rt. 301 and down to Dennytown Rd. We tried to start out driving to the trailhead earlier today but still only managed to get on the trail by about 10:45. The weather was beautiful with a little bit of overcast in the morning. We had a sprinkle of rain mid-afternoon that didn’t even manage to wet the ground and then the sun came back out.

At the start of the hike, ran into thru-hiker “Dead Man Walking”. (A thru-hiker is someone who is attempting to hike the entire AT in one shot end-to-end.) Hikers are given, or sometimes chose, trail names that they use along the trail. Sona and I guessed that this guy was given his name by his fellow hikers because he was smoking cigarettes.

About half a mile into the hike on a overlook, there was an American flag painted on the rocks to commemorate Sept 11. Unfortunately there was a fire-ring here too with lots of trash, beer cans, etc. We tried to pick up as best we could using a plastic garbage bag we had picked up along the trail earlier.

We saw 2 snakes today, heard a few wood peewees and towhees (those are birds whose call sounds like their name so they’re pretty easy to remember), and saw a few chipmunks.

One interesting feature of today’s hike was a long section of level trail which had been built up of stones. It was made for a mine railroad. A lot of work to build that.

We also saw a large patch of cardinal flower in bloom in a “damp” stream near the trail.

Most of the streams we crossed were bone dry but this one still had damp soil. We  saw lots of evidence of the recent weeks of extremely hot weather in dead leaves, crisped up leaves, shriveled up fruits, dried out streams, etc.

We planned on a dip in Canopus lake near Rt 301 but by the time we got there, neither of us felt hot enough to take the time for it.

We finished at about 6:00.  At Dennytown Rd., we ran into a group of 3 guys who were thru-hiking but slack-packing for a few days. (Slack-packing means they were able to leave most of their gear somewhere and just carry very light backpacks for a while.) Unfortunately we didn’t get their trail names.

With Sona, Denise and Denise’s dog, Dora.

This was Denise’s first hike so we chose a short section to do. We started at Warwick Turnpike on the boundary of Waywayanda State Park and headed north to the NY/NJ state line. Actual hike miles were greater since at the end of the hike we had to take the State Line trail down to the car a little over a mile.

Denise and Dora

Dora leads the way

About lunch time we came to a rustic wooded bridge crossing a beautiful bubbling brook so we decided to sit there and eat. We had entertainment provided by 30-40 damselflies of a couple of different species dancing around the brook and us like little faeries. One even landed on my face (which Sona captured on video). There were also many frogs hanging out in alcoves in the earthen banks of the brook like little hobbit houses.

Blue flag Iris in bloom

We had just started down the State Line trail we we lost the trail and had to spend a few minutes looking around for it. While doing this, my hiking pole slipped on a rock and I went down on my knee bruising it pretty badly. Sona and I followed our SOLO wilderness first aid training and after rest, ice (cold water), compression, and elevation – I was able to get down the trail to the car.

Started at County Road 565 to NJ Route 94. Today’s hike was different from all of our previous hikes because it was mostly out in the open through a swampy area. There were very long stretches of boardwalk. Thank you to the designers who had the intelligence to wind this boardwalk in natural curves through the swamp rather than cutting it in a straight lines.

Section of Pochuck Swamp boardwalk

This was a short walk so we relaxed and enjoyed ourselves by the banks of Pochuck creek sitting in the shade of a large tree to have lunch. I think we sat there for about an hour! There was a major suspension bridge built apparently just for hikers over this creek. It was strange seemingly out in the middle of nowhere.

Bridge over Pochuck Creek

Sona enjoys the view and a sip of water

At the end of the hike the trail passed through a couple of very idyllic cow pastures with wildflowers in bloom and grasses swaying in the breeze. There were also a couple of styles to cross to get over a railroad tressel and rock wall.

Linda crosses her "first ever" style

It was a beautiful day.

With Sona. We got started hiking about 11 am it was a beautiful day, sunny and warm, finished about 4:30. From Rt. 94 we hiked up Waywayanda Mountain in Waywayanda State Park and followed the AT east to Warwick Turnpike. The hike up the mountain took over an hour, and we stopped at a nice lookout spot almost at the top to eat lunch (and rest .  We saw many different wildflowers in bloom all along the hike today.

The major sighting today were two snakes. The first one we saw was about 20 minutes into the walk at the western foot of the mountain. It was a rattlesnake moving across the trail.

Female Timber Rattlesnake

Then not too much further along the trail we saw a black snake moving across the trail in the same direction as the rattlesnake was heading. We think it was either aBlack Rat Snake or a Black Racer (although not moving too fast if it was a racer).

We also found this gem…

Morrel mushroom

Here are just some of the wildflowers we saw:

Wood Anemone (Anemone quinquefolia)

Perfoliate-leaf Bellwort (Uvularia perfoliata)

Wild Bleeding Heart (Dicentra eximia)

Trout Lily (Erythronium americanum)

We also saw many different species of violet. Several different blues, a white, and a yellow.

Also the first time I encountered mountain elder (Sambucus racemosa) – a relative of elderberry but definitely growing in a different habitat.

End of a nice day hiking. We got ice cream again (this is starting to become a tradition!)

Me with a nice patch of golden alexanders in bloom near a creek

]]> http://lindasnature.wordpress.com/2010/05/01/hike-9/feed/ 0 lindasnature IMG_5277 IMG_5291 IMG_5273 IMG_5312 IMG_5323 IMG_5365 IMG_5328 IMG_5344 IMG_5357 IMG_5377 http://lindasnature.wordpress.com/2010/03/17/hike-8/ http://lindasnature.wordpress.com/2010/03/17/hike-8/#comments Thu, 18 Mar 2010 01:11:02 +0000 lindasnature http://lindasnature.wordpress.com/?p=137 ]]> March 17, 2010 New York Section 8 from 0.5 to 5.0 South to North and New York Section 7 from 0.0 to 3.7 [AT: 8.2 miles]

With Sona. St. Patrick’s Day but neither of us wore green! Still winter but the temperature was warm and we had sun! In fact it was so warm that we began to worry that we didn’t bring enough water. From the beginning of the hike through to the end we had to worry about blow-downs on the trail. Most people think of blow-downs as trees that had blown across the trail and you had to climb over the trunks, but these were mostly medium size branches and small tree tops with all the branching little twigs – impossible to climb over. You pretty much had to either move it off the trail or go off-trail and walk around it. We did our share of trail work today.

About half way through the walk we came up to a pond where the wood frogs were really singing up a chorus. As we got closer, they gradually stopped. We could see several floating in the water with their back legs splayed out. Funny you don’t think of frogs floating that way.

We had had quite a few rain storms and high winds (hence the blow-downs). The rain made things quite wet along the trail. We had several places where there trail as more like a “Stream-trail” picking our way along rocks emerging from the wet. Here’s a couple of places we just decided to go off trail – I think you can see why…

Flooded trail

One of the big blow-downs

After the hike we went for ice cream in Cold Spring.