1.7 Miles of Walking to View the Mohawk River Flooding
4 Mile Run on the Mohawk Hudson Bike Path
Monday, August 29, 2011
I went back and forth between running at Thacher Park (where the waterfalls should be running quite strong!) and Vischer Ferry Nature Preserve (which I've avoided most of the summer because the biting insects are brutal.) Since I ran at Thacher less than a month ago, Vischer Ferry won out...
I really should have known better, since I'd been receiving e-mail alerts about flooding along the Hudson and Mohawk Rivers all day, and various bridges were closed at different times (including the Twin Bridges on the Northway!) But not really thinking, I blithely headed north to Vischer Ferry...
....except I had to get off the Northway at exit 7 when it turned into a parking lot... only to find route 9 just slightly better. Finally got north of the Mohawk River (50 minutes after I left the house - usually Vischer Ferry takes me half an hour, tops!) only to find all the roads down by the Nature Preserve closed due to flooding. I tried the parking area at the former bridge & ferry crossing - closed. Did manage to get to the overlook at the power plant, and found myself looking at one heck of an angry river blasting over the Vischer Ferry dam. Given that the path from the overlook vanished into the water, I suspect major parts of the Nature Preserve are submerged, and I wouldn't have been able to run there even if I had managed to get near it.
Headed back across the river to check it out from the other side - figured I'd run the bike path from the Lions Park to the old landfill and check things out along the way. Riiight. I managed to get to the parking area where the bike path crosses Forts Ferry Rd and walked down the path to take some pictures. That was the closest I got to the river for a while, because all the other roads were closed down. I finally made my way to Blatnick Park at the top of the old landfill, right around the time the police showed up and put yellow tape across the entrance to the bike path.
From what I could see, the path wasn't flooded, and more than a few folks were ignoring the path being closed - so I geared up and ran the path down to Lock 7. Four trees down across the path along the way, but nothing too difficult to get around safely. The water was high (no surprise) but well back from the path. I didn't bother going further than Lock 7 or even over to the Lock, because there was a lot of activity there and at least a few police officers, and I didn't see much point in getting in trouble for being someplace they didn't want me to be. So I headed back to Blatnick Park, and continued up the path toward Knolls. Didn't go all that far - I really wasn't up for an extended run on pavement today, and it was getting late.
Looped around the pond at Blatnick Park on my way back to the car and was surprised to find a snoozing heron at the back of the pond - even more surprising, he didn't take off when I stopped to get some photos. The ever-present geese were enjoying the lawn nearby, and seemed less perturbed than usual by my presence. Perhaps they've gotten more used to people after a long summer of baseball games and so on.
So a somewhat disappointing afternoon and evening in terms to what little running I ended up doing (I spent more time driving than I did running) and because I couldn't get to most of the usual sites along the Mohawk River to get some photos of the floods - a real contrast to the June 2006 floods, where I rode my bike along most of the path (until I reached a downed tree with no way around or through it) and even drove down to Lock 7 to get photos. But so it goes...
UPDATED: Well, I suspect this explains why the local powers-that-be were so insistent on closing down the roads near the bike path, as well as all the heavy equipment I heard at Lock 7 - apparently the water was starting to wash out one of the banks at Lock 7 and there was concern that the dam would fail - one heck of a scary thought, given how much water was flowing through that area with the dam in place.
JMH
