Bald mountain, NY

I forgot to mention this hike we took on the 29th, so this might put things a bit uncontiguous, if that’s a word, which I doubt.
Anyway, when we were in Old Forge, NY which is the place we saw the fat squirrel and the deer, we went for  a walk up Bald Mountain. A local hiking spot and generally nice place.  The hiking trail up there, like many of the few we’ve encountered over here is proper! There are no rammed car parks, no groups of ramblers disgorging from sensible cars adorned with national trust stickers, no arsing about trying to follow the right of way across a farmer’s field and none of the attendant fences, styles and gates.

This path led us over piles of rock, over tree roots with just small blue blazes for guide the way. For example:
When we got to the top of the mile long trail there was a fire observation tower. The mountain is about 2000 feet so it’s a good place for observers of yesteryear to watch for forest fires. This tower was reopened in 2005 after years of dereliction since its original construction in the 1920s. There was a board with information in the car park. Steff said that we’d be able to climb it but I had scoffed at this thinking that the powers-that-be were more like those in the UK and would disallow anything so interesting. I was wrong.
We got up to the top and were allowed to climb the tower, which was very cool. it’s about 100 feet tall, i guess and as a 40mph odd gale blew in, I felt a little unsettled and I ducked out of the wind like a little girl. This is the tower:

Cool! And windy







Here’s Steff at the top looking over the map table thing they helpfully left up there. Nice view.



It looks like someone took a pot-shot at the tower with, I guess, a rifle. Here’s a little video of my forensic analysis and strong detective skills:

Here’s a shot of the top of the mountain with Steff strolling along it.
This is an HDR photo. I will explain that more in a later post.

 

And this is a picture of squirrel on a tree stump back at the campsite. It’s not really relevant to the above, but I like it.