Day 5.312: Keleher Preserve

We visited the Mohawk Hudson Land Conservancy's newest preserve today. It's called the Keleher Preserve after its former owner but it is a large area at the top of Wolf Hill near Clarksville.

We nearly turned back on arrival when we were greeted by the taped handwritten sign visible in the bottom right corner of this photo:

It reads, "Please be advised that from 11/17 to 12/16 it is deer hunting season.  For your safety please wear blaze orange and keep all pets on a leash. Thank you."

Great.  Opening day of deer season.  At least we'd left it until 11 am to get there and happened to have worn some fairly bright colours even if we were blaze-free.  We trusted that the hunters were either elsewhere or gone for the morning or capable of telling the difference between us and a six-point buck.

We decided to press on and no-one got shot.

Here are some pictures along the trail.  We walked about 2.25 miles I think including some steep sections.  There was both ice snow on the ground in areas where the sun hadn't got to it.

This is some of what we saw along the way:

Top left: these mossy mounds were dubbed "monkey heads" by someone.
Bottom left: this tree is just a survivor I guess.
Bottom right: the girls called this impressive ice-crystal arrangement near a stream "ice city"
Top right: ice city was all gone by the time we returned around lunchtime.

This is the view from the "small overlook".  Not the most impressive, but we worked hard to see it so appreciated it nonetheless.

It's a nice preserve - and a good fairly challenging hike for us - I imagine we'll be back to see it again as the seasons change.