LONG PATH REACHES 75 YEARS & 347 MILES

[fgoodwin 23]

LONG PATH REACHES 75 YEARS & 347 MILES

 

http://nynjtc.org/trailwalker/2006/ja-6-color.pdf

 

Seventy-five years ago, Vincent J. Schaefer, a 25-year-old cofounder and hike leader of the Mohawk Valley Hiking Club in upstate New York, had a big idea: an unblazed north-south walking route in New York linking downstate urban areas to the Adirondack High Peaks. In 1931, my Dad drew the route on topo maps, recalls his son Jim. His original idea was to start at Bear Mountain and include high lands that more or less paralleled the Hudson River. He included the Shawangunks, the Catskills, the Helderbergs, and the eastern Adirondacks to the top of Whiteface Mountain.

 

Schaefer brought his idea to other hike leaders, including Raymond Torrey, a cofounder of the New York/New Jersey Trail Conference. Torrey wrote a hiking column in the New York Post (The Long Brown Path) and in 1933 he began including descriptions of hikes along Schaefers route, which came to be called the Long Path.

 

An Ever Changing Route

 

The New York Walk Book describes the Long Path (LP) as a living trail system, one whose size and shape are ever changing.

 

Which is probably why its sometimes hard to get a handle on it.

 

To begin with, ever changing was a characteristic that appealed to Schaefer. Unlike the cleared and blazed paths of the Appalachian Trail and Long Trail in Vermont from which he took inspiration, Schaefer envisioned the Long Path as a three- to ten-mile wide corridor defined around a series of landmarks geologic, historic or culturally interesting sites he selected every few miles, says Jim. Hikers would navigate to the landmarks, which might be on private land as well as public, using topographic maps and compass. Schaefer would later write that he wanted hikers to enjoy the sense of uncertainty, exploration, and achievement that reaches its highest level when the individual is dependent on the use of compass, marked map, and woods knowledge to reach an objective.

 

Then, as today, the LP included wilderness wilderness paths, woods roads, and paved walks. It included urban, suburban, rural, and wild areas. It crossed public lands and private property. And it wasnt long before it was vulnerable to the forces that threaten it today: development, traffic, and loss of rights-of-way.

 

The economic boom that followed the end of World War II began to transform the New York landscape. Forests and farms became residential subdivisions; once quiet country lanes whizzed with traffic. Though the uncertainty of an unmarked trail appealed to Schaefers explorer sensibility, the biggest uncertainty in the years since World War II has been the very possibility of walking a long-distance route through New York backcountry or rural areas, blazed or unblazed.

 

Still, the idea has proved inspirational to a few dedicated individuals. In 1960 Robert Jessen of the Ramapo Ramblers and Michael Warren of New York City urged its revival and began to lay out a formal path. The concept of the trail had by this point evolved into a fully cleared and blazed footpath. Two flurries of trail-building occurred in the 1980s and 90s, first in the Catskills, and the second further north, in Schoharie and Albany counties, where the Long Path North Hiking Club was formed. Its members built and maintain more than 75 miles of the trail. In Saratoga County, there is active interest in linking with the trail and carrying it further north.

 

Additionally, a southern extension to the LP on the Shawangunk Ridgethe Shawangunk Ridge Trail (SRT)was built to connect with the AT at High Point State Park in New Jersey. The SRT offers an alternative route for the LP to one through Rockland and Orange Counties that includes extended road walks.

 

Adding Up the Miles

 

Today, the LP is recognized on maps for 347 miles, from Fort Lee in New Jersey to the village of Altamont, 15 miles west of Albany. It crosses the Palisades Interstate Park, Harriman/Bear Mountain and Schunemunk Mountain State Parks, the Shawangunk Ridge, and the Catskillsa complicated and enormous achievement. Jakob Franke, current chair of the Long Path South Committee for the Trail Conference, calculates that 230 miles of the recognized route are currently protected, 90 miles are on roads, and 27 miles run across privately owned land with owners permission. Its presence is sufficiently stable that it inspires end-toenders. Edward Walsh, a member of the LP South Committee who manages the end-toend awards program, notes that recognition of LP end-to-end hikes began in 1991, and that since then, 90 individuals have earned the LP end-to-end patch. Most have walked the trail as section hikes; the first to do it as a continuous hike was Mary Ann Nisely, who accomplished the feat in 1998. And David ONeill has run the length of the LP as a fundraiser for the Trail Conference in two consecutive years (see story above).

 

From Altamont north to Whiteface Mountain, the trail exists, depending on your point of view, either as an ambition a scheme on maps that needs to be transferred to the groundor complete as that unblazed corridor that links a series of landmarks identified by Schaefer.

 

During his final years, says Jim Schaefer, Dad drafted a Guide to the Long Path North, citing 84 landmarks, from Gilboa, in Schoharie County, across the Helderbergs, Rotterdam and Glenville Hills and through the eastern Adirondacks to Whiteface Mountain atop the Adirondacks. These landmarks, he notes, have become goals for 84 different hikes, much like the hikes he took the Mohawk Valley Hiking club on from 1929 to 1955 or later. He took our family to many of them.

 

Jim notes that many of these landmarks are on or near the course of the currently blazed LP trail from Gilboa to Thacher Park, and the LP-blazed road walk from Thacher Park to Edinburg Bridge in Saratoga County. Landmarks 43 to 84 are, he says, somewhat remote locations in the eastern Adirondacks. GPS locators have been recorded and will be included in a new edition of the Trail Conference Long Path Guide scheduled to be published in 2007. To reach them, hikers must rely on their backcountry navigating skills. They are bushwhacks in the old tradition in the Forest Preserve, says Jim Schaefer. No cut trails, but old logging roads, trails, game trails and such to get from one place to anotherclassic hiking in wilderness or almost wilderness conditions.

 

Taken all togetherthe LP south and north, wilderness bushwhack or paved roadJim Schaefer views the LP as one of the most varied and accessible trails in the country. There are blazed trails for hikers who like those. There are paved sections for people who like to rollerblade or who need handicapped accessible trails. The LP is the most ecologically and culturally sensitive hiking experience, he says. None other than the Long Path of New York touches all outdoor enthusiasts.

[theysawyoucomin' 10]

Fred,

 

Thank you for passing on this info. The Trail passes thru some great country.

 

The geology of Thatcher Park alone has been a great boon to science since it was first explored and mapped. For amatures like me that geologic marvel provides a "wicked great view" and was preserved in the 20's and 30's when conquest was the mindset.

 

Anybody that lives within an hour of Alabny should make it a point to take in the views and teach the lads about the Native folks that lived there. The cliffs even have a Tory cave where Tories hid out as raving bands of lunatic rebels searched for their heads.

 

Our Cub Pack rents a picnic spot there every year.

[bt01 10]

A good trail to hike.