Wednesday, March 25, 2009

2 Mile Walk Along the Canajoharie Gorge
Wednesday, March 25, 2009

I first read about some of the interesting features on Canajoharie Gorge on a website featuring segments of a book-in-progress called Mohawk: Discovering the Valley of the Crystals by M. Paul Keesler, a writer and outdoorsman who spent nearly 50 years of his life promoting the treasures of New York's wild places. The site is currently out of service, and I learned today that Keesler died back in 2005 after a battle with cancer. Fortunately, his last book has recently been published by his family and distributed by North Country Books (and of course I immediately ordered a copy!) In his writings Keesler talked about exploring portions of the gorge, including the Boiling Pot, a huge pothole in the lower gorge, and Canajoharie Falls, further upstream. Ann and I visited the falls back in July 2006, but the film with my photos was subsequently ruined... and we never managed to find the route to the pothole (because I foolishly left the directions at home.) A year and a half ago I used Russell Dunn's Mohawk Region Waterfall Guide to find the lower gorge, but my visit was shortened a bit by the fact that it started pouring just as I arrived. Since today turned out to be fairly pleasant (a bit cloudy, but that's no big deal) and I was looking to take it easy, I decided to stop by on my way back to Albany.

Not as much water in the gorge as I expected, but still enough to create some very nice waterfalls and fill the Boiling Pot to the brim. One nice things about visiting in the middle of the day in March - no people! I walked all the way up to the old dam (you're not supposed to go past the dam, because the side of the gorge are unstable and falling rocks are more than a bit dangerous... while I was by the dam, a fist-sized rock came crashing down the side of the gorge a ways downstream, and while I was walking the nature trail above the upper gorge I heard several loud crashes where rocks fell down in.) All in all, it's a pretty cool spot.

From there I headed to the parking lot for the upper gorge, a couple of miles away, and walked the nature trail along the edge of the gorge under evergreens and through stands of white birch and hardwoods. Not much of a view down into the gorge, but when there was it was spectacular, with steep wooded hillsides and lots of small waterfalls and riffles. I was surprised to see quite a bit of snow on the hillsides opposite where I was. Near a tall white water tower (at least, I assume that's what it is) the path goes steeply down to a large viewing platform with a fantastic view of the main waterfall, which is 45 feet high but seems much smaller because of how high the sides of the gorge are. On the hike back to the car, I was surprised to see a butterfly... don't know how he's been surviving the cold nights.

From there I made one last trip to Prospect Hill Cemetary, in hopes of seeing Cemetary Falls on the west side of the gorge... unfortunately, someone had parked an SUV at the entrance to the access road, and I didn't have time to walk down in, so that will have to wait for another visit.

Legs felt decent walking, so I think I'll skip riding today and make this a true rest day. But tomorrow I run!

JMH
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