Friday, December 29, 2006
Ann and I wanted to go hiking somewhere different, so we headed over to Rensselaerville to visit the Edmund Niles Huyck Preserve. I first heard about the Huyck Preserve from one of the ARE runners. The nature preserve there includes approximately 2000 acres of land, including about 10 miles of trails along Ten Mile Creek, Myosotis Lake, and Lincoln Pond. We were particularly interested in seeing Rensselaerville Falls, a 100 foot waterfall a short ways into the preserve.
Rensselaerville was once a major mill town; apparently at one point Ten Mile Creek was called Ten Mill Creek because of the many mills along its banks. Unfortunately in the late 1800’s the mills began to fail due to a variety of circumstances, including the depletion of trees in the area and the increase in use of railroads and the Erie Canal as the major means of transporting goods, which left Rensselaerville (which is basically out in the middle of nowhere!) behind. Now it’s a fairly typical small town in the country, and the ruins of the old mills and sluiceways can be found along the creek.
We followed the directions from Trails with Tales (Russell Dunn & Barbara Delaney, 2006 – also the source of the brief historical info above!) to Rensselaerville – about a 45 minute drive from Albany and parked in the small Huyck Preserve parking lot. A fairly sunny day, but definitely on the cold side – I ended up wishing I’d brought gloves and a scarf! A short hike took us to a bridge across the creek at the bottom of the falls, which were quite scenic – the water drops about 20 or 30 feet at the top, and then goes down a series of smaller cascades the rest of the way to the bottom. From there we followed the trail uphill past the ruins of an old mill and then out to Myosotis Lake, a man-made lake (probably dammed to provide a consistent source of water for the mills.) A very nice walk through the woods, a pretty lake, and a cool stone-and-earth dam. After that we made our way back to the top of the falls, where there was another footbridge over the creek. Then we headed back down the hill and after a brief trip across the road to take a look downstream (not all that interesting, unfortunately) we hopped back in the car for the trip back to Albany.
The preserve is very nice and would probably be a fun place to run – but the 45 minute drive means I’m not likely to go there very often! If I go that far I’d be more likely to head over to Massachusetts to hit some of the trails in the Berkshires.
