2017-02-06 42 -78

Location

In the woods of Allegany State Park off the Rt 1 Park Road.

Plans

Going to get ready after lunch and head to Allegany. It's very close to 2016-05-20 and we will park in the same place. After the hash, I think we will walk back to the parking area and walk down France Brook Road rather than a trail. It's one of those un-maintained roads so shouldn't have any traffic, but still be open enough to walk.

Participants

Pedalpusher
Simon the dog
Myka the dog

Expedition

We got ready to go a bit before 13:00 and the drive down was pleasant. However, getting to Allegany, I got a bit of a shock. Driving down ASP1, I got to the Red House General Store across from the tent/RV camping area and saw that the Road was closed. It turns out they don't maintain this road in the winter and instead allow the snowmobiles to use it to traverse between the Red House and Quaker areas.

I pulled into the store parking lot and pulled out my phone to figure out how far away I was...but I didn't have a signal there. I was pretty sure I was closer on this side than trying to drive to the Quaker side and walking from there, so we started walking. I then realized that, duh, the GPS will tell me exactly how far away I am. We were 2.25 miles away and I figured I wanted to be back at the car by 17:00 at the latest, that gave us about an hour and a half to get to the hash; it was a few minutes past 14:00 when we arrived.

Since it was a Monday afternoon, there was almost no one in the park so we didn't have to worry about snowmobiles zipping by. We made it up to the hash area in about an hour, but it was a hard walk up the very large hill. Looking at the map, we parked at an elevation of 1,500 feet and walked up to 2,000 feet, and I was pushing the pace a bit since I wanted to make sure we had enough time to get there and back. Still walking on the road, I got the GPS reading down to around 400 feet before we had to start into the woods.

It was a bit of a slope that we had to walk down, but nothing too bad. However, as I got close, I began to have the same issues as 2016-05-20 again. I just couldn't get the reading down under 15 feet despite the GPS having multiple signals and an accuracy of 20-30 feet. Finally, and not quite as big a GPS dance as the other expedition, I finally got a close reading and my pictures. As we started back to the road, I watched Myka dragging her stick as the snow collected on it and realized that this was perfect snow to make a Snowman! There was plenty of snow and the mid-30 temps really softened everything up.

As I started rolling the snow, Simon bounded around thinking this was a new game. I had to yell at him a few times before he got the hint that pouncing and digging through the poor snowman's body was not the plan. Finally able to put the snowman together, I found a few sticks for arms and being under pines, I used the small pine twigs that were everywhere for hair. I found a small curved stick for a mouth and managed to get a few leaves to stick for eyes.

Getting back to the road, I figured we still had some time to walk so we continued up the road and got to the planned parking area before we had to turn around. In doing so, I saw the moon rising above the trees and got a few pictures before heading back down.

It was a tiring but fun adventure, and I discovered this is my 100th success when I got home to update my page! Further, it seems that this is also a Last Man Standing expedition as well.

Photos

This might be trouble...or just a longer walk than expected.
The dogs are having a blast.
Getting close to the hash, we head into the woods and into a natural depression in the land.
After some work, we made it.
Accuracy.
The dogs chewing on their sticks as they wait at the hash.
Stupid Grins at the hash.
Heading back to the road, the Snowman keeps watch over the hash for a day. It's supposed to be 50 F and raining tomorrow so I don't think he'll be around long.
Continuing our hike, we made it to our planned parking spot on the left and France Brook Rd going off on the right.
Before heading back down, I tried to get a picture of the moon on the camera-phone.