Beautiful snowshoeing with some nice views. This is near Elizabethtown NY.
These trails are a system of various trails (30 of them) open to hikers, horses, bicyclists, and even small recreational vehicles. The trail network is part of a local initiative to give the community and visitors a place for recreation. The land was donated to Elizabethtown by the Holst Family back in the 1980s. Many of the trails developed seem to get very light used making the narrower trails seem more like herd paths, but are indeed marked. The terrain is a mix of hilly and flat routes with some following old woods roads leading through passes between adjoining small mounds.
As always carry out trash and stay off wet areas to avoid trail erosion. Marker...
I had hiked this for the first time with Cindy and Jim, eventually going back and hiking with my son.
From the beginning, the hike is along an old jeep road through conifers and eventually hardwoods once you get down near the marsh. The trail is overgrown to the width of a foot trail. The trail used to continue straight, where what is now underwater, even in the dead of winter I wouldn't recommend going across the frozen marsh. The three of us did, and one of us broke through, which brought the hike to an end that day.
The trail has been rerouted to the left to the side of the marsh eventually crosses along the bottom. Going left you will cross over a couple of small brook crossings the trail continues straight through it for about...
My son and I hiked Seymour yesterday getting a late start we signed in at 8:18. We easily bare booted to the first large brook crossing where we put on our microspikes due to ice-covered rocks. From there we left them on to the summit just to save time. We reached the summit at 1:50 pm, took pics, and snacked then headed out at 2 pm. There was a serious amount of ice flow in the steep section along with the slide, so much that we stopped ahead of it and used our crampons going down that section, then switched back to microspikes for the rest of the way out, there was never a need for snowshoes. There was only one other hiker we saw all day.
We signed out at 6:18 pm.
A group of us planned this hike one year for a New Year's Eve hike. I don't think any of us made the true summit. I realized this when I hiked this as I went a lot further than we did that night.
It's a mostly moderate, 1.2-mile hike to the first summit. It begins at a moderate grade as it passes under a power line, then there's a continuous climb over switchbacks for 0.8 miles, where the Beede Farm Trail comes in on the left. Going straight and work your way up a few steep steps to the first open rock. This first lookout is not the summit — that's a bit farther along the ridge. Past the summit, a lesser-used trail descends to Beede Road in Keene Valley.
2.4 miles round trip
770 feet of elevation gain
This was another nice outing. There are various trails, we took Lewis Clearing Bay trail, and went to Snake Den overlook. These trails were moderate grade and easy to follow.
Essex, NY
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