Hike #983; Ossining to Annsville

Hike #983; Ossining to Annsville

11/7/16 Ossining to Annsville NY with Serious Sean Dougherty, James Quinn, Jennifer Berndt, Timothy Kovich, Brad Anesi, Julia Vogelsang, Jack Lowry, Sarah Jones, Jim “Uncle Soup” Campbell, and Robert Gearhardt.

It was time once again for our annual holiday costume hike. It was surprising that attendance as so much lower than it had been in previous years, but still a really great hike. It ended up being about a mile and a half longer than anticipated, and a bit tiring, but quite beautiful.
I’ve made it a tradition to try to do the Halloween time hike in the Hudson Valley. There are a lot of ties to the area associated with spookiness, Autumn, etc. Apples and apple cider, beautiful foliage, it’s all very good in the Hudson Valley, and it’s not likely I’ll ever run out of hikes there.

Briarcliff Peekskill Trailway Map

Long on my “to do” list has been the Briarcliff-Peekskill Trailway.
The 12 mile trail connects point to point, and has several connecting trails and scenery, as well as a very unique history.
Like the Staten Island Greenbelt, which we also did a series of hikes on, the Briarcliff-Peekskill Trailway was intended to be a highway route.
The land was purchased in 1929 by the Briarcliff-Peekskill Parkway Commission for the use as a highway. The highway was built as far as Ossining area, but then completed only a bit further to the north. Today, some of the route is Rt 9A. When the route became sort of defunct, it sat until 1977 when it was re-designated as a trailway.
We had hiked a short bit of the trailway on a costume hike a few years back, and then did the rest of that hike on Old Croton Aqueduct. I have been wanting to return ever since to finish the entire route.
I planned out something that would use the main trail as the body of the hike, with a couple miles at the start from Ossining to get to the trail, and a couple at the end to include the Annsville Greenway. I came up with a good start point that would put us on the Hudson at sunset, at the north end of Annsville Greenway, by the Annsville Circle in Hudson Highlands State Park.
I would like to start by saying the people I hike with are absolutely awesome. I’ve been having a rough time, and whenever things are looking bad for me, there is always someone there, without my asking for it, to make life a little bit easier for me.
This time, Rob offered to drive to the hike. He said he knew how for I was driving for work, now a full three hours of driving per day, and that I’d had enough of that, and he would drive to the hike start.
This could not have come at a better time, because the heavy work that I’d been doing during the course of the week had caused me to pull a muscle that may very well be a hernia (It is not appendicitus, because it’s on the wrong side, and it’s consistent with where that pain would be). I’d had the pain since doing tree work, and it had been getting worse. I’d been trying to ignore it, but the night before I could barely sleep. I kept rolling over, the pain would subside, and then come back shortly. I knew trying to drive was going to be extremely painful, as even being a passenger was.

The Hudson in Ossining

I must admit that it was slightly embarrassing for me, because my co-worker Luis had told me if I continued to work the way I was, that I was going to end up with a hernia. I didn’t want to admit to it (perhaps a bit of pride there), and continued. I figured it would just go away. I’ve never been one to have pain that I can’t get through, and I avoid going to the doctors like crazy.
I continued pressing on the thing throughout the day, and the pain actually did go away, but in the morning, I wondered how I would get through the day. Rob’s generous offer to drive was a bigger help than he probably realizes.

Ossining!

After meeting at the parking area at Annsville Circle, we shuttled with as few cars as possible south to the Ossining train station. I probably should have tried to park further up near town to eliminate some road walking, but it ended up being alright, and we got some entertainment out of it.
Jack and Sarah met us at the station, and we started walking up I think Secor Road.
The road was steep and there was some road work going on near the top. As we walked up the hill, a parks department truck went by us. It was a large truck with a dump body I believe it was, the driver was smoking.
We realized pretty quickly that he was smoking marijuana, and the smell was overpowering!
I was already laughing a good amount at just these facts, when all of a sudden he crashed into a three foot high concrete wall with a giant slamming sound!

Philipsburg Manor property of Frederick Philipse purchased 1683

We laughed for a bit about this one. The guy had to back up and move off of the wall in order to continue on. He knocked a good portion of it off with his crash!
We soon entered the main town section. Ossining is one of those old Hudson towns that date back to the late 1600s. It was purchased by Frederick Philipse in 1685 from the Sinc Sinck Indians, a tract stretching from the Croton River south to the Bronx at Spuyten Duyvil Creek.
The town had some history signs around with information all about the community. It’s part of a program of a sort of park and museum in the streets citing the significance of past and present structures.
We crossed over the route of the Old Croton Aqueduct, which brought drinking water to NY City starting in 1842, then continued up the street, and continued along Rt 133. We stopped at a little establishment and got some wine, and then at another where I got some iced tea as I recall. We made another stop at a grocery store and Dunkin Donuts, and checked out other spots as we went. Someone asked if we were going to go into every store on the way.
We made a side trip up Belleview Avenue for Brad, because his grandparents used to live up there, and he’d not been back to see the place in a couple of decades. It was up hill, but no one complained about doing the side trip for him. When he identified the house and took a few photos, we headed along more back streets and back to 133 below.
We must have looked like a bunch of nuts. People were all driving by looking at us; I was wearing my three piece pinstriped suit and top hat, Serious Sean had his Cat in the Hat costume, James was dressed in a Jesus outfit with a weird curved staff, Jack had a weird black mask, Sarah was wearing a boa, and Uncle Soup a big pumpkin shirt.
We took 133 east to a left turn on Campwoods Road to get to the 9A overpass, the actually built portion of the Briarcliff Peekskill Trailway. Here, the road changes names to Ryder Road.

Start of Briarcliff Peekskill Trailway

If we didn’t know there was a trail there, we would not have seen a trail there. There was no parking, no sign, no blazes, nothing.
All there was was a driveway heading to the north, parallel with the highway. Even I was getting a bit worried about it actually being there. We had nothing to go by.
We started walking the driveway for a bit, and I watched to the woods to the left, between it and the highway. Soon, I spotted a cut log, where there was no business a cut log would have other than if it were a trail. I cut down from the driveway and to the log, and could see the somewhat vague treadway, and other cut slash that sort of delineated the trail.

Briarcliff Peekskill Trailway

It was just simple footpath at first, but then I started noticing the theme of a very old road.
The route was not always a roadway, but on many occasions there was a sort of stone laid right of way, wide enough for a single traffic lane, which the trail had used.
It sometimes overcame more elevation than would have been good for a modern highway, but I wonder if any of this stuff could be some actual construction work from the 1920s for the road route.
We continued to the north through more woods when the highway turned away to the west. It was really nice, never really far from development, but really gave the sense of seclusion.

We had some nice talks about crazy people we’ve had to deal with, about work, health, and all sorts of stuff. It’s always so nice to have good engaging conversations with intelligent people from all walks of life. Even in differences of opinions, we’ve been very lucky within the group to have among the most respectful and tolerant people I’ve ever met.
We crossed Lane and Croton Dam Road heading north, and passed through a lovely woods over sections of board walks. Eventually we came to the first side trail to the right, part of the Teatown Lake Reservation.

Soup reading about Scooping the Poop

The trail continued on to Teatown Lake itself after crossing Springtown Road. The trail blazes also changed and became a bit easier to follow. We had been following only a few blazes before, dark green diamonds that had not been touched up in a very long time. In many cases there were no good turn blazes. When we got into the Teatown Lake Reservation, the trail was still marked with green diamonds, but they were plastic markers hammered to the trees, and almost all turns had double blazes so we could tell where we were going. It could still use a little improvement, but it was much better than what we’d been following.

In the woods

A very nice boardwalk trail turned off to the right. We had visited that on the previous trip I’d done up to Teatown Lake. This next section of Briarcliff-Peekskill north to the Croton Dam was the only portion I had been on before.
We continued north along the edge of the lake, and we passed by the first other hikers of the entire trip. The linear sections had no one, but these areas with loops had quite a lot. We turned away from the lake, went up hill and crossed a power line, and had several other trails join here and there. One of them was the Teatown-Kitchewan Trail, which connects to the North County Trailway, the old Putnam railroad bed, which I want to do both of.

Teatown Lake

The purple blazed Teatown Kitchewan Trail was co aligned with the Briarcliff Peekskill for a while, I think to the Bunn Road area. We continued to the north from there, and all of the green plastic blazes stopped.
At one point, we lost the trail. There were unmarked side trails which are obviously used, but not the right way. I had done this exact same thing the last time I was on this section of trail, and fortunately we caught it early enough and were able to turn back.
Eventually, after skirting some private land, we came out to Croton Lake Road. The trail crosses and continues from there along Croton Dam Road. There was a house on the right of Croton Dam Road, and a guy stood in the yard of it staring at us like we were insane.
Soon, we reached the Croton Dam itself.

Brad at the dam

The “New Croton Dam”, alson known as the Cornell Dam, was started in 1892 and completed in 1906 to replace the original Croton Dam completed about 1842 some four miles to the east, now under the water of the present reservoir. The impressive fully masonry structure is 297 feet high from the river level and an amazing site to see.
Brad’s Great Grandfather, Baldassare Anesi was one of the more skilled stone masons who came to do work on the major dam project!

Safety starts with YO

We took a nice break at the base of the dam, which meant we had to climb down one side and back the other. It was somewhat steep on the south side coming down, and we crossed the original Old Croton Aqueduct route, but on the other side we climbed up a more insane thing. There is an old road and now trail route that leads up to the dam, which some of the group used, but I followed Serious Sean up the crazy way.
We walked back out onto the dam to see the awesome views from the top both of the reservoir and the valley below. It took a little bit for everyone to catch up to this point because it was likely the most difficult part of the entire hike.

Steps at New Croton Dam

Historic images show that at one time, there was a set of stairs that took visitors up the north side to view the New Croton Dam, exactly where Sean and I had climbed up, but there was literally nothing to be seen of those this time, not even any footings that I saw.
It was sort of unclear which way Briarcliff Peekskill Trailway officially goes, across the dam or down below, but I wanted to take everyone below it anyway. One can’t fully appreciate the size of the thing unless below it looking up.
Looking at the dam, we could see that someone had lost a canoe over the edge. Hopefully there were no occupants when it went over, because they’d likely not have survived.

The original dam up stream from this point was a dwarf in comparison to this one. It was only fifty feet high and held only a small fraction of the water.
We enjoyed the view from the top for a bit, and we acted silly pretending to worship James.

The old Croton Dam

We made our way from the dam to the north for a bit on the road. I didn’t know where the trail was supposed to cut away, but then spotted the turn blaze to the right, heading up hill. It was steeper than any of the other actual sections of the trail, and I think was co aligned with another trail again.

Construction of the New Croton Dam

Brad and Julia were a bit behind because they stopped to take more photos, so Rob and I waited for them to come into sight so they could see where the trail turned off. This trail is easy to lose and miss blazes for certain. We followed the section out to Rt 129, and some of the group was a bit lost looking in the woods for the route.

Jamesus on the dam

I found turn blazes pointing us to the right on Rt 129, so we started walking the road for a bit. We watched closely to the left for where it might turn into the woods, but saw nothing. I didn’t think of it at the time, but the trail is described in the Walkable Westchester book, but I forgot to bring it.
We were all looking at our google maps, and there was a green swath to the north that read “Briarcliff Peekskill Trailway”, so we knew we needed to get there, but couldn’t quite figure out how. We turned left on Mt. Airy Road, unsure if it was right, and soon came upon some blue blazes on poles. It seemed to be sort of going the right way, and we came to the intersection with Colobough Pond Road.

View on the trail near Colobough Pond

The blue blazed trail cut into the woods from the corner, and I looked up the road a bit to see if Briarcliff Peekskill was further up, but saw nothing. Since this trail was sort of going the way we needed to go, we just followed it. It led us back to Colobough Pond Road, and then turned left to follow the road.
It turns out that we were going the right way all along, there are just no remaining green blazes. On the road section, blue blazes turned to the right into other lands, but we opted to keep on the road, which still had blue blazes. The road was kind of busy, and people came by pretty fast, and had to stop pretty quickly when they saw us.

James giving life?

We passed a ridiculous Halloween decoration with legs sticking out of the ground, and then soon after came to where the trail went into the woods to the left, closer to Colobough Pond itself. There were only the blue blazes, but it was still going the correct direction, so we followed it.
After not too long on the trail, we started seeing the faded old dark green blazes again, and I felt better knowing that we were on the right track, though I was uncertain whether we were all along until I got home and was able to check the guide. The trail remained rather closely parallel with Colobough Pond Road, usually just below.

Big Tree

After reaching the end of the lowlands around Colobough Pond, the trail seemed to pick up another old woods road. We were still closely parallel with the drivable Colobough Pond Road, and gained some elevation skirting a hillside.

Jamesus Take the Wheel

After the ascent, the trail descended again to Colobough Pond Road and turned left to follow it for a good while.
The road wasn’t too busy, but each driver seemed pretty surprised to see hikers back there.
Eventually, the trail turned to the right into the woods along some nice stone rows. There were a couple of Adirondack style benches a ways into the woods in the middle of nowhere spot. We regrouped for a little bit, then continued on the trail heading to the north. We were now closer to some houses, and we could hear something that sounded like a jack hammer going off. There was some new construction to the right, and the trail apparently followed a narrow right of way.

Rest time

We crossed over Furnace Dock Road and continued to the north. The trail was not very well used through this area either.
The highlight of this part of the trail was a very long boardwalk over the Furnace Brook made of treks, the composite material made to look like wood.
Treks are not supposed to warp or rot, but this bridge was pretty badly warped because so much of it had come apart. The main problem I could see with the construction of it was that they didn’t use decking screws. It was mostly put together using nails, which have pulled out or were knocked out at some point. Where braces were missing, the railings were swayed.

Trek built boardwalk

We soon came out to Watch Hill Road. There was an access road into a shooting range area, at the south side of Blue Mountain Reservation. There were no blazes on the access road, and none could be seen in the woods.
I decided to take a chance and wander into the woods where it looked like there was a little bench. It was just parallel with the road, but to the left of it in the woods. We followed the dark green blazes for a bit, which took us down hill and across a really crappy old bridge that our feet went right through when we tried to cross it. As we walked a guy up the hill hollered down to us and asked what we were doing. I showed him where we were going, and he said “Ahh, you must be following an old trail, no one ever walks that!”
We went up into the parking lot for the shooting range, and he pointed at a trail to the far end of the lot and said we wanted to go in there, it was a much easier route, and it got us the same place. He gave me a map, which denoted this section as Sitting Duck Trail. I went into their office and picked up copies of many Westchester County Parks.
We thanked him for the directions and headed on our way on the humorously named Sitting Duck section (next to the shooting range).

Top of Spitzenberg

The trail got a bit steeper, but was still pretty much a woods road. We followed it on a switch back route that took us around the rocky top of Spitzenberg Mountain. A side trail to the left led the short distance further to the top that the main Briarcliff Peekskill Trail did not take. Of course, we had to go up and check it out.
There was a cool old stone building near the very top, no longer with a roof or anything, but still quite interesting. Tim and I got to the top first and headed beyond the building to the uppermost rock, which gave us a great view of the Hudson River.

View of the Hudson from Spitzenberg Mountain

The trail to the top was partially stone laid, which means it’s been a popular spot for quite a long time. We took a little break when everyone got up there, and made plans on how we would get through the rest of the park.

Brad's new cooler for making the next batch of "Brad Baller"

Serious Sean had done this section before, and so he sort of took the lead from there. We were looking at two different ways to go out. Apparently, the Briarcliff Peekskill Trailway ends at the main parking lot for Blue Mountain Reservation, but I wanted to get out at the top, north end, Depew Park. The trail route wasn’t well marked, only occasional dark green blazes, so it didn’t matter anyway.
I think the trail follows the Blue Mountain Summit Trail to the west for a bit after a while. We did the first part of this, but then continued straight on another trail interestingly named “Ned’s Left Lung”.
Brad found a ice chest cooler up there he liked, so he carried it for the rest of the hike so that he could take it home to brew beer in.

James with the Stigmata

James fell down somewhere along the way and cut his hand. While wearing the Jesus suit, it looked like he had the stigmata.
We turned left on the Boundary Trail when we got toward the north end of the park. There were many little side trails that were quite narrow, used by Mountain Bikers. They were all on the map, with interesting names as well. We didn’t have the time to be following these circuitous routes before dark, though I’d have loved to stay on the perimeter. We had to take the quickest way out. From the Boundary Trail, we made a right turn on something else, but it ended up going the wrong way, back to the east a bit. I opted instead to do a bushwhack for a bit, to hit another trail. I think we turned off of that one as well, and then eventually hit the trail that would take us directly into Depew Park.

Tim in a log on Boundary Trail

Somehow, two parts of the group came out of the woods at two different places. The others were at the pond further to the right of us, named Lake Mitchell.
Once we were all together, Sean realized he had a previous engagement in NY City, and decided to jog ahead to try to make it. It was only two miles it said on the maps to the cars from this point. It did seem like longer than that to me at this point, but maybe it was because we’d been hiking for so long. We went by the pond and then exited Depew Park on Bay Street. We turned right, along Union Avenue, then left onto Requa Street.

Lake Mitchell at Depew Park

We turned left and right on a couple of other ones, I forget which ones honestly, and headed down toward the edge of the Hudson. The group ahead of me got a bit too far and walked toward the waterfront. There is no way through to the north, to Annsville Greenway from there, and I called them back to follow me onto Water Street, heading to the north a bit. The sun was already starting to set, and I wanted to do the best I could to try to get to a point for some good photos before it was gone.
The buildings were all interesting at the Peekskill Station, either historic or with some sort of character. There was one high on a bluff above the river, and others below that were over a century old.

Sun setting on the Hudson at Peekskill

Rob and I were up front, and we noticed an old steam engine of sorts, and I commented that if I took a photo of it and uploaded it, our friend Mike Piersa might know what it was and identify it. Of course, he commented on it before the next morning.

Along Annsville Greenway

The building also had some old bicycles. The next buildings we came to had some very well done murals on the sides of them of what seem to be employees or owners family members. There was also a sign saying that a place was guarded with “Bad Ass Crocodiles” or something.
We came to a gate, which was open, but also had a walking gate through it, the start of the Annsville Greenway. It was a frontage road below a vertical rock face along the Hudson, separated from the river by the Metro North railroad tracks. We headed north through there, with more good views of the Hudson until we got to an open park area with a nice dock, at the confluence of the Hudson and the Annsville Creek.

Annsville Creek and Hudson confluence

We walked out onto the dock with it’s great views. The railroad crossed the outlet of Annsville Creek on a long causeway. The sky was a navy blue with bright orange where the sun had just disappeared, and Dunderberg Mountain, in Harriman/Bear Mountain State Parks was standing tall among all of the others in view.
We made our way from here onto a paved path that led up to the highway above, to get us across Annsville Creek to the circle. There was a path that remained along Annsville Creek, but we needed to get up to the bridge. We headed out to the road, then crossed on the pedestrian lane on the highway bridge with even more great views.

Moon and sunset on the Hudson

The trail kind of ended at the other side of the bridge, or actually was no longer cut along the road, but we got back into the Hudson Highlands State Park land at the paddling outfitter via another path very soon. We all walked down to a beautiful dock overlooking the Hudson and Dunderberg Mountain from there.

Rob at the sunset

We could see the two round buildings that housed the reactor of the Nuclear Power Plant to the south, and all of the lights of Peekskill and down to Indian Point. We did a little bit more mileage than I’d anticipated, but by far not my worst under-estimate, and we still got done for sunset as I’d planned.
We were a bit short on vehicles at the north end, but we did have enough. To make things simpler, I offered to ride in the bed of Tim’s pickup truck, which was cold but kind of fun. We had dinner at a pretty good diner down in Ossining to finish out the day. We talked about some of the stuff we have coming up, and places we’d like to visit. Long Island Greenbelt, the west side of Staten Island, Camp Smith Trail in the Hudson Highlands, all look fantastic.
Most all of the pain I’d had in my side earlier in the morning had disappeared, and I felt really good from having such a fun and stimulating day that closed with so much more to look forward to.