NY Trail Conditions

[jamarshall]

Not sure if this is the right place for this, but does anyone know what the April Northeaster is doing to the trail through New York? I plan to be out and about on it in a week or so and was just wondering.

Thanks.

[Yahtzee]

Well, as I sit here in my apt. in NYC where it has been raining all day and at this moment is raining its hardest, I would say the conditions will be crappy. Seriously, I plan on catching the bus to Bear Mt. on Thurs. and hiking to Pawling. The weekend weather is shaping up to nice spring weather, mid-50's and sunny. I imagine the trail will be muddy. When and where are you starting?

BTW, anyone up for a hike from Bear Mt. to Pawling this weekend. Can always meet Frid. at the Friary.

[moondoggy]

Whew....I just hope those on the trail are safe and ok....
It's been rough here in good ole DE today. Some estimates are 3.75" of rain...and it's still raining. The winds have started now...looking for winds to 50mph tomorrow....

[Yahtzee]

about trail conditions, but if not, I'll head out and see how it goes. We were at 4.5 inches in Central Park 3 hours ago and it has been a deluge since then. The crawl on the tv said 6-7 in. when all is said and done tonite.

On top of that we have nice springtime rains all week. Also, any blowdowns that may result from high winds.

Still, the weather around here has been brutal and I need to get out, so mud be damned.

[gsingjane]

We are leaving shortly for a section in NY and NJ (although we will not intersect as we're starting near Bear and heading south). I would rather not experiment with the conditions as they are (especially since our last section, in November in CT, was also wet and miserable) but child care and other constraints dictate we must go today or not at all. And "not at all" isn't an option!

We did most of the hike you're talking about last spring vacation, except in the opposite direction, and loved it, especially Graymoor. Hope you catch some good weather... and think of us over the next few days!

Jane in CT

[Yahtzee]

Tis supposed to be windy today so watch the blowdowns.

Happy trails.

[rafe]

Major wind and rain in the Boston burbs this AM. FWIW.

[Old Grouse]

I'm sure right now you'd find a lot of extremely high water in streams, new and intermittent streams in various places, and flooding in low areas. Later you'll no doubt find quite a bit of erosion along some of the steeper sections. Probably not too many blow-downs as I don't think the wind was as severe as predicted. I'm gauging this from conditions in my area 40 miles south of Kent. Some more rain still to come this morning.

[Hiker's mom]

Ghost and Toothpick ended up sitting out the storm in the last shelter in NY before entering CT. Their question now is, is the CT section of trail flooded, or can they resume their hike? If not, how soon before they can reasonably push into CT.?

[gsingjane]

We were very disappointed to cancel this year, but the reports of flooding and high winds and continued rain during the week were just too daunting to take on. I guess it turned out that "not at all" WAS an option!

Yesterday for the very first time ever, when we were out running, we had to take off our shoes and socks and wade. Every low-lying area was entirely flooded out. Now granted we live on the coast and at least part of this was exacerbated by the high tide, but we also got much less rain than they did in Westchester. Parts of the Bronx River Parkway and the Hutch were flooded, at least as of yesterday.

I will let someone closer to the trail answer the question about CT conditions... my guess would be, any spot at lower elevations is now a swamp.

Jane in CT

[rafe]

Lots of flooding here in the boston burbs. There's a huge lawn off the Mitre facility near where I live -- folks play football and softball there in the summer. The whole thing is a shallow lake right now, as are sections of the roads that go by it.

[Tin Man]

I live near the trail in CT and while I have not been out there to take a look, I can tell you the local roads have a lot of debris from rain water running down and over the roads. I imagine the trail got hit pretty hard in places.

[Quoddy]

I was trying out my new Conduit on a short trek with my dog this morning along the base of Mount Greylock and the AT in Massachusetts, it was a very wet situation. The trails are streams and the streams are raging rivers.

[Tin Man]

I have hiked the trail when it was literally underwater. I have hiked in, around and through washouts. I have dealt with fallen trees, bees nests, hot weather, cold weather, wind, rain, hail, lightning, snow, ice and, egads, the occasional cell phone user and dog walker. I have dealt with so many conditions, I cannot name them all. So, I am wondering what the heck can be bad about trail conditions anyway. Two foot drive beats 2-wheeling or 4-wheeling any day. Reminds me of my youth - I drank, I fell down, I got up ... no problem. And I am still in my youth.

[cutman11]

I'm planning on doing the end of PA and first 40mi of NJ starting next weekend, I would think it would be dried up enough by then, no?...at least no flooding....please.....

[atraildreamer]

THe Northeaster was fun for all of us here in RI. We lost a sub! Some idiot left the ballast vents open during the storm!
Story follows:

Soviet-era submarine sinks in Providence

By Michelle R. Smith, Associated Press Writer | April 18, 2007

PROVIDENCE, R.I. --An old Soviet submarine now used as a floating museum sank and was completely submerged in the Providence River after being battered by a powerful nor'easter earlier this week.

All that could be seen of the Russian Sub Museum Wednesday was about two feet of its periscope, and workers said it could be months before it's open again.

"We got hit with a freak storm with astronomical high tides," ship's engineer Damon Ise said.
A tidal surge paired with direct and powerful easterly winds from the storm on Sunday and Monday pushed the sub up onto a shoal adjacent to where it's anchored along the western bank of the river, Ise said. Then water began seeping into the inoperable sub, which is not watertight.

The sub was listing to its left, or port, side Monday. Late Tuesday night, Ise said, the sub tipped further and sank.

Museum officials believe the sub is filled with water, though they don't think the instruments are damaged because they are water tight.
Ise said the sub, alternately designated as K-77 or Juliett 484, is the only submarine of its kind in the United States.

"For those of us who put a lot of time into this, it's heartbreaking," he said.
K-77, launched in 1965 as part of the Soviet Northern Fleet, is about 282 feet long and 31 feet wide, and was diesel powered. The Juliett class was initially planned as a nuclear missile platform for strikes against the United States and carried four nuclear cruise missiles. Later, it began tracking U.S. aircraft carriers.

The sub was used in the 1990s as a restaurant and vodka bar in Helsinki, Finland, and later as a set for the Harrison Ford movie "K-19: The Widowmaker" before being acquired by the USS Saratoga Foundation, a private, nonprofit group.

It opened as a museum in 2002 and has since had tens of thousands of visitors from all over the world. It's also a popular place for birthday parties and even hosted a wedding in 2005, volunteers at the museum said Wednesday.

Laurie Prete and her 14-year-old son Louis, of North Providence, have been volunteers at the museum for four years, and the two spent part of Wednesday in the sub's ticket office with other workers peering out the window at the empty space where the sub once floated.
Louis is a docent and leads tours of the sub, he said.

"He got so into history, World War II, everything, because of this sub," Laurie Prete said. "I feel like I lost a family member."
A salvage company was working on a plan to bring the sub off the river floor and pump out the water, Ise said. The sub is insured, and he said that should pay the tab for the work.

"I assume it's going to cost a huge amount of money," he said. "This is going to be a huge salvage operation."

It was too early to know how long it might take to raise the sub and clean it out, but Ise said it took workers three months to get it ready for visitors before the museum opened in 2002. This time around, they'll be contending with what he termed "a slime line" left by the water.


Still, workers were taking the news with a sense of humor Wednesday.
Ise was calling it the "Russian Sunken Sub Museum."
Riffing off the museum's motto of "Our museum can sink your museum," volunteer Ken Johnson came up with a new one: "Our museum can sink. Your museum?"
------
On the Net:
USS Saratoga Foundation: http://www.saratogamuseum.org/
Russian Sub Museum: http://www.juliett484.org/juliett/index.html
© Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

[jamarshall]

OK, I just got back from doing the NY section. Conditions were about what you would expect from way too much rain the week before, but the only place I couldn't hike was the swamp near the RR station. It was still underwater on April 21, so I did the posted road walk around it. There was quite a bit of mud the first few days, but things were drying out nicely by the end of the week.

Had a good time, now I'm figuring out where to go next year - maybe CT/MA or parts thereof. Need to work on pack weight, but that will give me something to do until the next section hike.

[wolf]

im doing this sect in sept-oct on my way to mass. is it nice hiking or rocky

[Tin Man]

I would say it is nice hiking, but then I live here and all I know is the trail from NY/CT border to Glencliff, NH. While New England can be described as rocky in general, the rocks on the trail are mostly flat and not the big sharp ones that eat boots like I have heard described in parts of PA.

[jamarshall]

Having done PA, I would say there are less of the little pointy rocks in NY. There are some interesting scrambles of great big rocks, but most of these were in the southern part. Loved Cat Rocks and the Eastern Pinnacles!

I've heard CT is beautiful, but that's next years hike (or maybe this fall's...)