Hike #1180; Schenectady County Forest to Plotterkill Preserve

Hike #1180; Schenectady County Forest to Plotterkill Preserve

12/2/18 Schenectady County Forest to Plotterkill with Jillane Becker

This next hike would be a point to point Jillane and I took on the weekend of our tenth anniversary together.

Schenectady County Forest sign

In the past, we had had many nice weekends together where we spent one day exploring something, or shopping, eating, or whatever she wanted to do, and another day just doing one of my long hikes.
We decided to go away to the Catskills for a weekend, and Jillane found a great house in Schoharie County on Air B&B we rented.
We explored Howe Caverns, and nearby Secret Caverns, and went out to a taco place for some food. The route we would hike the next day would depend on the weather, and it was looking not so bad.

Nice foot cleaner to also get rid of invasives

I was thinking of a few different things we could do on some rail trails and the Erie Canalway Trail, where we had left off in the past, but when I saw there wasn’t all that much snow to worry about, I went for a section of the Long Path, which would be just south of the section we had done backpacking a few years back at the Plotterkill Preserve.
Well, this turned out to be a little messy. Things looked good up at higher elevation where we were staying, but when we got down to lower elevation, it was super foggy and there was a couple of inches of snow on the ground.
Jillane suggested we should just go to the canal. We didn’t start until after noon, and so it was late anyway. I didn’t want to drive any further, but in retrospect I probably should have. Still, we got a long stretch of the Long Path out of the way, which I am happy about.
We drove to the Schenectady County Forest parking lot, along the Long Path route where it follows Lakes Road in the extreme northern Catskills, heading toward the Mohawk River.

Long Path on Lake Road

The trail requires some road walking in the area, so even where it was bad, at least that would be easier when we got to it.
We reached the parking lot and I checked out the kiosk, then we moved on along Lakes Road.
There is a loop trail in the county forest, but the Long Path does not enter it. It just passes through along the road. We started following the road to the east, and after a little bit, it entered the woods to the left into Featherstonhaugh State Forest, which is pronounced “Fenshaw” sort of.

Long Path turning off the road

Immediately into the woods, the trail was very wet. These woods are still pretty high elevation, but they drain off in a weird way. To make matters worse, the somewhat beat down trail acted as sort of a lake of water for the melting off snow. It was far wetter than it would be normally, which would make it tougher.
Still, we pushed on through along the foot path. It was rough, but we got to where the trail came back out to and crossed Lake Road again. The trail followed a woods road for a bit, but then turned off on another foot path section. They were really pretty woods, just too wet.

The Long Path

A yellow blazed series of cross country ski trails joined and left the Long Path blazes throughout the section. A few little foot bridges took us across streams.
We got to where one stream was flowing pretty heavily into a giant wetland. The water just didn’t know where to go. The area, while still higher elevation, is pretty even and so water doesn’t move anywhere. To make matters worse, we came upon evidence of beaver activity. They had cut through some rather monstrous trees. I was surprised to see their mark only on a couple of trees.

The Long Path

Even after leaving the beaver inundation, there was still a good amount of water around. It did get better for a bit, as we headed down and over a couple of much larger moving streams. There were long sections of puncheon that took the trail over them.
There was one impressive foot bridge over the main tributary through the forest, and then the trail went back closer to Lake Road again, and ran parallel to it on an old woods road.
We continued on this for a bit, until eventually there was another woods road that came in from the left. There, the Long Path turned off and started following the road for a bit.

Long Path; Featherstonhaugh State Forest

It wasn’t busy, so I didn’t mind it too much. We continued for a bit until the trail turned hard left and back into the woods again. This section was pretty wet again, until we got to the steeper slopes down toward Featherstonhaugh Lake.

Long Path

The area here was once the estate of George William Featherstonhaugh, an Englishman who came to America and found great success. He is considered by some to be the father of the American steam railroad, as he was behind the creation of the Albany and Schenectady Railroad. The first locomotive on that line moved in 1831, less than two years after the Stourbridge Lion ran on the Delaware and Hudson. The latter was the first operation of a self propelled vehicle in north America, so things moved along rather quickly. The Albany and Schenectady area ended up becoming a sort of focal point of US pioneer railroads.

Long Path

Featherstonhaugh was appointed the first National Geologist, and also was commissioned in the capacity of agriculture by the federal government.
While his reputation in history draws a picture of success, he was also found to be a difficult man to work for, and may have played a significant hand in the undermining of the Cherokee nation further west. He was sent to explore the Louisiana Territory for valuable minerals, and he attended Cherokee national council where he played a hand in the removal of bilingual Englishmen who he feared may side too much with the Cherokees.

Long Path

It was the start of what became known as the “Trail of Tears”.
The weird spelling versus pronunciation is somewhat commonplace in the old aristocratic English world. Many names kept their old Norman-era spellings with different pronunciations.
There was a side trail that led down to Featherstonhaugh Lake. I took it and tried to get a view, but it was still insanely foggy. The high was in the low forties, and the snow was melting off to create it, certainly.

Long Path

I headed back up to the Long Path, waited for Jillane, and we headed to the main parking lot above the lake, on a dirt road called Judith Lane. We passed a couple of houses on that, and then emerged onto Lake Road. We turned left on this and then turned right on Route 159, Mariaville Road.
This was a really crappy road walk section. The road was far too busy for it to be an enjoyable road walk, but that was the way to go. We had to go maybe three miles to Pattersonville-Rynex Corners Road. There, the trail turned abruptly right and crossed the Plotter Kill.

Stream

We had crossed it once before on Mariaville Road where it was smaller just before that.
Just after the bridge, we turned right on the dirt Gifford Road.
While we were walking the road, two guys in a truck went by and first talked to Jillane behind me, saying we couldn’t go through without proper protective equipment because they were working back there. I could hear what they were saying, and then they came to me and said the same thing. I told them I knew, and that we were just turning on the trail. I don’t think they were aware there was even a trail there.

Featherstonhaugh SF Long Path bridge

The Long Path turned to the right down hill on a long abandoned municipal road, probably more of older Gifford Road.

Featherstonhaugh State Forest

Once at the bottom, we came to where the road used to cross over the Plotter Kill. The stream was flowing like crazy, and there were cascades along it quite often. We had already passed above one further up on Gifford Road. The one at the former bridge site was just below a point where there used to be mills on the stream.
The trail turned to the left along the Plotter Kill heading down stream. It turned away for a bit, hit a bit of a wider trail, and then continued to the east. We passed by a hunter sitting on a chair or something passing through. He seemed surprised to see us.

Wetland in Featherstonhaugh State Forest

We had seen one hunter earlier, near the beginning of the hike. This hunter told us one more guy was up ahead, but the Long Path turned us to the right away from this main trail anyway.

Beaver inundation

It must have been an awful day to be out. We saw almost no wildlife all day.

Long Path in Featherstonhaugh

We followed along the edge of the creek, and there was a pit where there was once a small house, known as a “Spinny’s House”, which was informal for “Spinster”. We continued ahead, and the Long Path took us up a steep slope right to the trail we had just come down from. It was not an easy route. We continued along this for a while, until there was a side trail going off to the main parking lot for the preserve. I thought to continue on, and considered what we had coming up.
The trail leads down to the northern entrance to the Plotter Kill Preserve, and the west slope is pretty easy.

Long Path crossing

The only problem was that we would have to cross the side creek above Rynex Falls.

Long Path in Featherstonhaugh SF

This enormous waterfall would be nearly impossible to survive a fall from, and we’d have to cross it upstream from the actual trail site.

If we braved the distance to that, we’d almost be obligated to continue that way, and with the high water, we could end up on a bad predicament. When I realized that, we turned back to the exit to the place. At this point, we had connected with where we were the last time we were up there anyway.
I recognized the foot bridges we were using to get across, but with the snow it wasn’t all that easy yet. We got to the top of the hill, turned left, and then turned right to get out to the parking lot to take a break.

Long Path in Featherstonhaugh

I hate giving up on doing the distance I’d set out to do, and so I was going to do fifteen miles at this point no matter what. I scaled a bit and found that if we followed Mariaville Road back to the west to where we had turned off on the Plotter Kill, headed up hill from Rynex Corners, and then turned right on Upper Gregg Road, we could get to Lower Gregg Road by walking a closed middle section down to where we had entered the preserve a few years ago. That would be the distance I wanted to do.

Wet Long Path

We started heading up hill on the highway. That part sucked. I really didn’t want to do that, or any big road for that matter, but trails at this point were kind of out of the question. We could have walked the other way and we’d have been on the same back road we followed back down to the Erie Canal the previous time, but I didn’t want to retrace any steps. Gregg Road looked like it’s be cool, but it was shown as not going through. It would be a gamble to try to do it, but I figured it would be fine.

Featherstonhaugh Lake obscured by fog

The traffic was crappy too. The road was still pretty busy, and we stayed on the far left side facing into traffic. Jillane put a light on every time a car barreled toward us. We eventually got to Rynex Corners and turned to the right. We had a brief break at the Plotter Kill crossing, and then headed gradually up hill on the less busy road. This part kind of sucked too, but I knew it’d be much nicer when we got to Gregg Road.
At the top of the hill, the road turned off to the right on a rather level route.

Featherstonhaugh Lake in fog

The only people who would use this road are the ones that lived down it, and the farther we went, the less likely we would be to see anyone. In fact, during the entire time we walked the road, we passed only two cars.
The road was mostly farm lands, but then slowly became more wooded as we continued on. There were a few houses here and there, but mostly quite quiet.
As we were nearing the end, I caught the silhouette of more buildings up ahead. I figured it was just barns, but I was only half right.

Long Path, Featherstonhaugh State Forest

It was an entire abandoned farmstead, including the old farm house standing solemnly in the fog. It was really kind of creepy looking out there. I was surprised Jillane didn’t want to go and try to have a closer look. It was pretty creepy out there on that dead end road though.
I’m not even sure if the road was paved or dirt all of the time. It didn’t feel like the rest of the pavement, and there were occasional potholes. It could have been dirt.
We got down to the last couple of houses, and then the second car started coming toward us.

Plotter Kill Preserve

I figured that they must have been coming up to talk to us, having seen us walking the long road for such a distance past the few houses.

Long Path follows Judith Lane

The car did not stop at us, but rather went into the very last driveway at the end of the road. What are the chances of that?
We continued past that last house to a driveway on the right that appears unused. There was a turn around area, and then a bunch of stuff piled up over the road to keep people from continuing down hill.
We stepped over the piles and continued on the road. Jillane noted a sign saying to keep out, and noting that we were on camera. I didn’t see the sign, and I wasn’t too terribly worried about it until we came out at the first house at the bottom.

Crap road walk section

If we could get by there, we were fine.
We continued down hill, and the road got much steeper. A small stream formed along the one side of the roadway, which was amazing to me that it hadn’t washed the thing out entirely. It was a bit icy, which made it slippery, but we were able to move along pretty well. There was a clearing and a woods road or something off to the left, and we cut harder to the right to continue down hill. The small stream continued parallel with us, and then moved off.

Old road the Long Path uses.

Soon, we could see the lights on the first part of Lower Gregg Road. This side had a small pile in the way to block it, but otherwise just a sort of A-frame thing blocking it. We took a break here for just a bit before moving on.
Once we were past the house, and the road was much clearer, we started looking at our phones for Uber rides back. We continued gradually down hill through woods, but with ambient light from houses much of the way.
Soon, the sound of a creek was heard loudly to our right. Just after that, we came to the parking area for the southern end of the Plotter Kill Preserve, where the Long Path comes out. This is where we would have come out had we continued.

Waterfall on Plotter Kill

Jillane and I already walked this section through the preserve before, and my plan was actually to follow the opposite side of the Plotter Kill down stream, but we ran out of daylight for that, and crossings are too hard.

Old municipal road

Not knowing what was coming up, I decided against any of that. I really did enjoy Gregg Road though, so it was alright.
I was having trouble installing the Uber app on my phone, but Jillane already had it. She just put it in on hers and used my card to get picked up. The driver that responded was only a couple of minutes away, so it was really an easy thing from ordering the ride to getting picked up. I think it was the second set of headlights we saw come toward us.

Falls on the Plotter Kill

It was a pretty easy ride back to Schenectady Forest Preserve, but from there it’d be a long ride home. I didn’t want to finish that late, but I was glad to have put in a full day. I really needed the exercise.

Old bridge site

It was a good bit of the Long Path to knock out while up there think. There’s still a lot more of it for me to do.

Long Path along the Plotterkill

Closer to home, I still have to do the entire “Heritage Trail” piece, which is a rail trail near Middletown.

Annoying steep bit

I’m also missing the approach to the Catskills, which is just a road walk, the east part of the Devil’s Path, and just about everything north from there to this point.

Long Path along Plotter Kill

It’ll be a commitment of several hikes, but I’ll get to it. There are so many long trails I am so close to finishing, but I just want to keep seeing more.

Long Path in Plotter Kill Preserve

I think next time though, I will make certain there is no snow on the ground before I attempt to do anything particularly difficult.

The old farm house

Other remaining sections of the Long Path rely rather heavily on road walks, including the stretch to the north of here into the Adirondacks.

Plotterkill Preserve

I don’t know when I’ll get to that, but hopefully one day as well.

HAM