Hike #844; Stormville to Fahnestock

Hike #844; Appalachian Trail; Stormville to Fahnestock

4/19/15 Appalachian Trail; Stormville to Dennytown/Fahnestock State Park with Jennifer Berndt, Erika Daniels, Ed DiSalvo, Terri Allen, Tamara Sapilak, Cory Janusz, and Cassie ?.

Part of the group above Canopus Lake

Our next hike would be another point to point heading north on the Appalachian Trail from where we'd last left off in the Fall. I needed to change things up a bit because we're doing so many bay side NJ Perimeter trips and not branching out in other directions as much. I'd set the arbitrary deadline of November to complete that series, but I really want to make the other hikes something even more different in contrast.

I'd been wanting to push toward the Connecticut border to do some hikes there on their "Blue Blazed Trail System", a huge system that goes almost all the way across the state to all sorts of interesting places. They make direct connections to the AT, and so I wanted to get to that point. Counting this one, there were only three more hikes remaining on the Appalachian Trail to reach the Connecticut border, and most of them are pretty much linear sections where there aren't a lot of loops I would want to do otherwise. It's unusual for me to host a hike only on the AT because so many other people do it, but this section is one you just don't see posted by other groups, and because there are less loops it would be more secluded.

I was rather surprised not to have a larger group. When I post something so familar, like the AT, I tend to get tons of participants. I suppose it was just too far northeast for most.

We met at the Dennytown Road parking area for Fahnestock State Park where we'd begin the last AT hike in the area, then shuttled to the north, to Stormville portion of the AT. We were able to park on Stormville Mountain Road where there was limited parking, and began the hike to the south. There was a nice view down Stormville Mountain Road, and even better when the trail crossed Interstate 84 just beyond. The Catskill Mountains towered in the distance, and it's nice to think that I've been on top of so many of those peaks already. In fact, Ed was wearing his Catskill 3,500 Club tee shirt for this one. The trail turned right on old Stormville Mountain Road to the right (probably was a through route before 84 was built) and then turned left into the woods, making a gradual climb.

Giant White Oak on the AT near Stormville

This hike was one of the worst ever to get started on. When I went to navigate to the beginning, my GPS was all over the place regarding where we were. I was trying to figure it out, but it kept saying we were on a different road than we were, sometimes much further to the south. I ended up driving much to far out of the way, and we probably took an hour and a half to get to the start point. On a good note, we ended up following some lovely back roads and seeing places we'll probably want to go back to visit once the memory of frustration has dissipated.

I had worn a white and black Tuxedo I had purchased at Family Thrift on this one, because I figured this would be the hike where I wouldn't get it too dirty, but we'd be guaranteed to see a lot of people thus making it funnier.

Giant White Oak on the AT

We passed a lovely, giant White Oak on a slight descent section. It's uncommon to find very huge trees along the AT because it's mostly in second and third growth forests where timber harvesting had occurred a couple of times, and even then saplings were cut to make charcoal for furnaces. This one was quite impressive.

The trail made it's way along a bit of a shelf above a meadow, and there were more fantastic views of the Catskills, known as the "Great Wall of Mongaup" seen from a distance over the Hudson Valley. The Hudson River was not visible at this point however. The trail made it's way over this section and then down hill to cross some tributaries. There were a lot of ups and downs on this hike, making it much more of a workout than I'd anticipated it would be. It was getting pretty hot wearing that Tux.

View of the Catskills on Stormville Mountain

Despite the excess warmth, I insisted on leaving the Tuxedo on because I thought it was funny. There were also a lot of dead leaves all over the trail. With all the snow cover, they didn't really get as much a chance to deteriorate, having been insulated under that blanket for so long.

This section of the AT was different in many ways than others I had walked; the one standout thing I recognized was in addition to the centuries old stone rows that once bordered miles of pastures seen in sections to the south, the trail itself had been delineated with more piled stones in many places. I suppose it was more necessary in this area because the overbrowse by deer was much greater. Most of these woods we were walking through had absolutely no understory, which means the deer run rampant. We didn't see many on this trip though.

AT stone delineation

We crossed Rt 52 and continued to the west.

There were ups and downs on the Stormville Mountain section, but it wasn't too bad just yet. I'd work up a sweat going up, but cool off on the way down as it had not reached the maximum heat for the day yet. We headed on to Hosner Mountain Road, and two young girls were refilling their water at a creek crossing. They saw me go by in the Tuxedo and looked entertained and perplexed. A lot of the people we passed on this hike asked if there had been a wedding. It's a typical question I'm asked when I hike in suits and such.

View on the way up Hosner Mountain

After crossing the road we began to climb on stone steps up Hosner Mountain. There was a nice view of farm land to the south at a bend on the way up. It was a good climb to the top, but not too crazy. The trail didn't really reach the top, but rather remained lower where there were constant good seasonal views to the north. On the way up, we passed the blue blazed Hosner Mountain Side Trail. This trail was formerly the AT route, but apparently had no views on it. A laminated sign on the tree with the triple blazed said that the trail was closed in 2010. It didn't really look like an interesting route anyway.

AT on Hosner Mountain

Ed got way ahead of us on the hill. The AT route was a well built trail right at the edge of the slope. I was very glad I'd chosen this time of year to do this section because most any other time there would either be too much ice or no views because they'd be obscured by trees. The year round overlooks are still great, but seem more expansive this time of year. We had more great views of the Catskills, Taconics Parkway, and the Fishkill Plains below. The overlooks on Hosner were among the best on the entire hike.

View from Hosner Mountain

The AT descended to Rockledge Road and turned left on it, then right onto Miller Hill Road underneath the Taconic Parkway. I sang some Frank Sinatra stuff under the underpass because I had just seen an album cover of his where he was wearing the exact same style tuxedo I was wearing.

The trail immediately turned left after the underpass down stairs and over a tributary that went under the parkway. I thought to go and walk through it, but we had a long way to go and already had a late start. There was the ruins of a dam on the creek below us to the right, and we continued to descend and crossed Hortontown Road. Beyond, we crossed a nice long section of puncheon and came to the RPH Shelter.

RPH Shelter

I always like to visit all of the AT shelters along the way. RPH sounded particularly interesting to me. It was a concrete block construction. It turns out that it was once a house that sat along the AT, and that ATC purchased it and turned it into a shelter. Upon inspection, there used to be more to the house on the south facing side, but it must have been moved. The inside had bunks and such. The site must get overrun in season. They website shows quite a mob in front! RPH stands for Ralph's Peak Hikers. They apparently have lots of trail work events. We took a nice little break here and signed the trail register.

From here, we continued on the AT along puncheons and across a foot bridge, then began the climb of Shenandoah Mountain. Corey had said he was originally planned to visit the more famous Shenandoah down south, so it was ironic that we'd be on this mountain for a good amount of the hike ahead.

The trail took us up hill and past some nice little views to the north, and to the east of Hosner Mountain.

Another shelter on Shenandoah Mountain

We passed a side trail that led to a "tenting area" and I saw a building, so we opted to check it out. It turned out to be yet another shelter. The building was closed at this time, but had a garage door. It was locked up but there was water available (which needed treatment) and a canopy for through hikers to sleep under. There was also an elevated barrel apparently for showers in season. That was really cool to see. If I were backpacking through here it'd  have been great to have a shower. Being up in the air where it was, it would be sun heated, which actually works very well.

We continued the climb with more stone steps to a high point on Shenandoah Mountain. There were good views to the west and southwest at this point.

There were a few girls sitting at the top of the rocks in this section who seemed entertained at our presence. We crossed Long Hill Road and reached a power line where we took a side trip to see the nice view to the south.

Ed and Terri had gotten pretty far ahead of us by this point. They didn't take the side trail to the second shelter/tenting area, nor did they do the power line section, so we didn't see them for the rest of the hike.

We continued down hill from this point, and stopped to see a nice little brown butterfly. It landed on me a couple of times. From here, the trail followed one of the most pleasant sections of the entire hike: a woods road sided by old stone rows. Along this section was the foundation ruin of a former home site.

The woods road section seemed to end when we got to our next regular side trail (Hosner Mountain was short, and others were just spurs for shelters).

View of Canopus Lake

We entered Clarence Fahnestock State Park, but we were parked all the way at the other end of it. The side trail was a snow shoe route marked with giant blue plastic things. I am not at all a fan of the blazing of other trails in Fahnestock from what I've seen. These were just so huge it looked ridicules.

We made our way over the western end of what must have been the end of Shenandoah Mountain, and came to a lovely view of Canopus Lake. I think there used to be iron mines down where the lake is now. The trail weaved over to the right and continued parallel with the lake on the ridge or slope for quite a long time.

I had run out of water on Shenandoah Mountain. I bought a large bottle before reaching the start point, but it was surprisingly not enough. The terrain was much rougher and I'd sweat out most of it. Jen and Erika were also both out of water. I tried to push onward and deal without it till the end, but my thirst was too great. We were passing several springs that fed on down to Canopus Lake, and when I saw a good looking one, I decided to just drink from it. If I got Giardia from this, I could care for that later, right now I needed water. I'd been drinking from untreated springs my entire life without a problem, so I figured I'd be okay here too. My biggest concerns were that I had recently taken prednisone, and my immune system might be compromised (so far no problem though). Jen decided to refill her water bottle at the next one, right after I drank from that one too. I drank so much water from two springs that I figured I actually might have a problem from it.

Above Canopus Lake

When we got near the southwest end of the lake, we went down some nicely made stone steps and passed blue blazed Fahnestock Trail. It was obviously marked with spray paint, though they did still use international standard because there was a triple blaze. It looked like crap though. The trail descended and soon reached Cold Spring Turnpike. The trail turned left on that, then to the right to descend near the outflow of Canopus Lake: Canopus Creek.

The trail turned right to parallel the creek on the long abandoned and incomplete Sunk Mine Railroad. There was originally a railroad bed of narrow gauge that serviced the Sunk Mine in the southern portion of the park, which used horse drawn carts in one direction and gravity with a pry bar in the other. This section was graded but never used to service mines in the Canopus Lake area. The right of way was not perfectly flat, and probably didn't need to be for the ore cart use. The AT followed this right of way for a good long while with some views into the meadows of Canopus Creek below.

Abandoned rail bed the AT uses

The rail bed turned to the right and went through a cut, and the AT remained on it, then went over a fill made of rough stone over a low area. I was very impressed at how well constructed this little unused mine railroad was. I figure it might have had rails on it because moving the materials to build it would be far too difficult without the means to move it.

AT on the old railroad bed

After the fill section, we remained on the rail bed for a little bit longer until it turned off to the left. The right of way continued ahead, and there were sings on it reading "trail closed". It apparently went to a beaver meadow and gets pretty wet now days. We didn't have the time to explore this further. I thought it might lead to a mine, but can't be sure yet.

The AT descended after a quick ascent, and we passed an old iron mine ourselves, just below the trail to the left. Corey reached into it and found some sort of gold and black vest, fortunatey with no body attached. It smelled awful, so we left it there. It's a wonder how such a thing would end up in there. If someone did ever throw a body in, it's certainly be tough to find.

The AT got to be rather strange in the section ahead. It was obviously used, but less so than any of the other sections we'd done. We descended steeply and were soon close to the edge of the Canopus Creek. It was a wet valley, and there were really no puncheons which was very out of character for the AT. I felt like we were following some of the lesser known little trails we often do. For a time, I had thought that some rogue trail person moved the AT onto this route that they deemed superior. It seemed strange that they'd take it off of the more prominent ridge to the north, especially into an area with as much mud.

The blazes were also irregular. Rather than the typical 2x6 inch blazes, some of them were sloppier and obviously done with spray paint rather than a brush. The paint was thinner and had run a lot down the trees. The white didn't stand out nearly as much as anywhere on the rest of the hike. I hadn't been looking at maps and guides for this entire hike. I didn't care about it as much because I truly needed to relax, and it's nearly impossible to get lost off the AT. At this area I started looking at the Google maps, which shows the AT, to confirm we were in the right place.

Aside from the comparatively shoddy condition of the trail through this section, it was quite beautiful and relaxing to walk. I really enjoyed it. There was a young couple sitting near the creek cooking something below, who gawked at me continuously after greeting them going by.

Falls along the AT

The trail gained elevation and soon reached the outflow of a beaver meadow to our  north. There was a splendid little waterfall here where we took a little break. I watched a couple of Mallards try to swim up the creek with some difficulty, and we checked out the large beaver dam and meadow beyond. Corey spotted some graffiti on the cliffs across from it, and I later found out that was the location of one of the mines. We'll have to make a trip back.

Beaver dam and meadow

The trail took us up hill from here and across Sunken Mine Road. It then ascended over one more mountain section before the end. We were all getting a little tired at this point. When we reached the point of only about a mile remaining, Terri texted me that she and Ed had just reached the cars. They weren't nearly as far ahead as I'd thought they were. She said that Ed came up with 16.5 as final mileage.

Some of the shoddy AT blazing continued when we finally went to descend the mountain. There was a tough spot where blazes were to the right and left both, descending at different points. Both were colored lightly with spray paint and not easy to see. Fortunately we made our way down safely, though it was steep. I later asked Chris Ingui about doing work there, and his Jolly Rovers Trail Crew will have an upcoming project there. I can hardly doubt it must be on some of the latter sections we walked.

We made our way by a couple of other meadows on the way to Dennytown Road, with continued remarks about the diarrhea we will likely have later on from the water. The trail transitioned back to lower hills and lots of stone rows again. We crossed the outlet of another meadow and soon reached the Dennytown area where I checked out the stone ruins of the supposed chicken coop built by an amateur stone mason.

Coop ruins at Dennytown

We were all starving and needed more water too, so Corey looked up the nearest place we could find for food, and we headed out. It ended up being a pizza place with some sort of three course special I couldn't resist.

I was terribly tired after eating so much, but somehow I remained totally awake for my drive home.

All of the hype of my NJ Perimeter hikes has made me forget about all of the other interesting things coming up, and this one too was a milestone in that it was the farthest east I had ever connected my hikes. In two hikes I might reach the famous Housatonic River in Connecticut. I'm also now much closer to connecting to Massachusetts.

I can see down the road ahead, and without anticipating too much, I know it's going to be absolutely amazing.