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Two
detailed hikes below
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with Great Views Hudson Highlands Hiking Introduction |
Osborn Preserve
Hudson Highlands State ParkLocation: Garrison
Distance: 7 miles; 3 to 5 hours
Owner: State of New York
MAPOsborn Preserve, when combined with Castle Rock Unique Natural Area and National Park Service land along the Appalachian Trail, totals 1,500 acres. Trails also link these properties to Manitoga Preserve. Osborn Preserve was donated by the Osborn family to New York State in 1974. It lies in the heart of the Hudson Highlands, rich in colonial and Revolutionary War history, and a joy to explore. In 1778, Dr. Dwight, a chaplain of a Connecticut regiment stationed at West Point, described the view from Sugarloaf Mountain as: "majestic, solemn, wild, and melancholy."
ACCESS There is no developed parking area for the Osborn Preserve, but you can find a spot for your car at the intersection of US 9 and NY 403 near Graymoor. There's some space along the road, a vacant lot, a gas station, and some vacant stores. Pick what seems best. As part of Hudson Highlands State Park, Osborn Preserve is under the jurisdiction of the Taconic region of the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation. For information, call Fahnestock State Park office, (845) 225-7207 or the regional office in Staatsburg, (845) 889-4100.
TRAIL Find the vertical white rectangle blaze of the Appalachian Trail (AT) on the, west side of the highway intersection. The trail heads across a wet meadow atop wood planks. At the woods, keep on the AT, an old carriage road that soon leads into mountain laurel, oak, and sassafras. The trail follows up a brook valley. Brilliant yellow tulip tree leaves shine against the blue sky of autumn. The AT turns left to climb the valley wall. We keep straight.
The brook widens into a small swampy area, what early Dutch colonists called a vly. A brook was called a kil. This vly is the kil's headwaters, where the water table first surfaces. The trail climbs to a high point, and then starts-ever so slightly-downhill. On the opposite side of the path is another vly, and from it runs another kil, but in the opposite direction from the last. You have just crossed a watershed line, or divide, the ridge that separates two different drainage basins. These two brooks, their headwaters mere meters apart, flow in opposite directions. Each ravine funnels all its water into the brook that drains it.
The water from both these brooks eventually drains into the Hudson, placing them within the Hudson River watershed. Most of Putnam and Dutchess counties are within the Hudson River watershed. A small portion to the east lies within the Housatonic watershed. The continental divide of the Rocky Mountains separates the United States into Atlantic and Pacific ocean watersheds. There is a mountain in Glacier National Park, Montana, called Triple Divide. From this peak water flows into three watersheds: the Atlantic, the Pacific, and Hudson's Bay. When one considers development decisions for the Hudson River, it is not enough to look only at the river. One must include the entire Hudson River watershed: 14,000 square miles. It is the entire drainage basin that makes up the Hudson, not just the water body itself.
Enter a hemlock woods. Watch carefully for a trail on the right. This is a one-way side trip that ascends a hill and affords a view on a clear day of the Hudson south to the Empire State Building and the World Trade Towers. See them, the skyscrapers, behind the hills? Mere little needles.
Return to the trail at the base of the hill. Continue, bearing left at the four-way intersection, left again at the three-way intersection, and then left at the next junction. Royal fern grows lushly in a vly. Continue straight past striped maples.
The trail heads downhill alongside a brook. The brook tumbles down a steep incline, while the trail follows at a gentler grade above tall retaining walls. At a tight curve sits an old gazebo of cedar, the twin of the one at Castle Rock, right down to its bark-beetle carvings. At the bottom of the ravine, find the thin path that steeply climbs Sugarloaf Mountain. The first view from the top is of Bull Hill, Breakneck, Little Stony Point, Newburgh, Storm King, Crows Nest, the Shawangunks, Constitution Island, West Point, and the sharp bend of the Hudson River called World's End. The plan was for this sharp bend to slow down British war ships so that they couldn't break the second Great Chain, a chain of huge iron links on a floating boom of logs, which stretched from Constitution Island to West Point from 1778 to the end of the Revolutionary War. Trapped, the ships could then be destroyed by cannon. The chain was never put to the test, unlike the first Great Chain at Anthony's Nose. After their defeat at Saratoga, the British did not try the Highlands again.
The footpath continues along the narrow arete-like crest. If looked at from the south by someone coming upriver in a boat, Sugarloaf is a perfect pyramid, just like an old-fashioned loaf of sugar, a suycker broodt, hung by a string in the center of Dutch tables. It was on Sugarloaf that one of the many Hudson River Revolutionary War cannon redoubts were kept. General Israel Putnam's men evidently became bored when the British stayed away. One day they rolled a boulder off the top of Sugarloaf and with glee watched it crash down the mountain, crushing huge trees. They claimed it landed in the river, and they named it for their general, who, it is said, jumped on top of it and proclaimed it rightful American territory.
As a ledge comes in sight, on your left you'll see — could it be? — cactus. It is prickly pear cactus (Opuntia humifusa), with showy yellow flowers, maroon fruits, and protective spines. The only cactus found in the East occurs along the Hudson River on warm, exposed rocky and sandy sites. Normally, prickly pear is a coastal plain plant, where it grows in dry sunny habitats. The Hudson River, as an extension of the ocean, mediates the local climate. As a trough, the river allows warm air to funnel inland. This allows coastal and southern species access to the Highlands, not only prickly pear cactus but also fence lizard and Carolina wren.
The ledge. The view. The Hudson spread wide below. There's Anthony's Nose, Bear Mountain, and Bear Mountain Bridge spanning the chasm between.
As you return along the ridge, note the privet bushes and the arrowwood. These and others seem to be signs that the top of Sugarloaf was once an open field. Indeed, early writings state that the Beverly Robinson house at the north foot of Sugarloaf was visible from the summit. Beverly was the manor house for a 60,000-acre Tory estate that was confiscated and used as a busy rebel headquarters by Washington, Lafayette, Hamilton, and Benedict Arnold. That house saw a lot of history. Arnold lived here, and it was in this house that he was to meet and to have breakfast with General Washington. Instead, upon receiving news that British Major John Andre had been captured carrying the plans for West Point in his boot, Arnold fled and defected to the British.
As you walk further, note how the cooler, moister northwest riverfacing slope is all grown in hemlock, while the warmer southeast inland-facing slope is all deciduous. Like a line down the mountain side, the annual mean microclimate changes, and likewise does the climax vegetation.
At the base of Sugarloaf, return up the ravine and turn right at the intersection. Climb until the junction with the AT just beyond, watch on your right for a blue side trail that leads to White Rock and another view from Anthony's Nose clear to the Shawangunks. There's Sugarloaf, a shorter mountain than the one on which we stand. Now you can really see its sugar-loaf cone shape.
Backtrack and take the AT downhill, turn right at the carriage road, and retrace to your car.
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