One Last Snowshoe Hike (I Hope!)

When Evelyn Greene called Sunday morning to invite me on a snowshoe hike,  my first impulse was NO!   I don't want anything more to do with snow.  But then it sunk in that this was EVELYN asking, and I never turn down an opportunity to hike with her, since she knows all the very best places to hike in the Adirondacks.  And oh, it was such a splendid blue-sky day, perfect for a walk in the woods.  Even a woods with shin-deep snow still thick on the ground.  So I dug my snowshoes back out of storage and headed north to explore a forest I had never visited before, a Land Conservancy tract near Wevertown, with a trail that follows Mill Creek to where it joins the Hudson River.

Evelyn Greene is a long-time student of how frazil ice collects on the banks of the Hudson River, and this particular trail would take us to a site along the river that she hadn't yet been able to observe this year.  Since the trail is not marked, we wandered quite a ways off, but with the sounds of the rushing creek to guide us, we knew we would end up where the creek itself did, where it joined the river.  And so we did.

Although the Hudson's rushing water was free of ice at this point,  Evelyn could see the deposits of frazil remaining along the bank, confirming her expectations about how far upstream this particular kind of frothy ice had collected.


After resting a while at this beautiful sun-warmed spot,  we walked the nearby railroad tracks in search of the trail we had missed coming down.  We found it soon enough, and set off to return to our car.

Our return trek took us much closer along Mill Creek, granting us splendid views of its rushing waters curving through the forest and tumbling over a small waterfall.  And even though I'm really weary of walking in snowy woods, I had to admit, it sure was beautiful.