Mount Taurus Hike - New Path!

I took the train up to Cold Spring and walked up to Nelsonville to a new (for me) trailhead.  I think I may even prefer this approach; it provided a change of scenery and a sidewalk the entire way rather than road walking. Very civilized.  Especially as it gave me time to enjoy a cappuccino from the bright, cheerful and friendly Go-Go Pops establishment en route.

My original plan was to take Nelsonville to Notch to Breakneck, and I'd left open whether I would cross over to Beacon or return to Cold Spring.  Let's just say things did not go exactly according to plan.

Initially, the plan was working just fine, thank you very much.

The vehicle is nearly picked clean.

As I walked, I listened to a series of lectures on Ancient Greece from the Modern Scholar series, which was interesting in between car wrecks and other scenic points of the Nelsonville Trail.

JK Rowling's website confirms she earned a French and Classics degree from Exeter, and based on the lecture series, it would seem that the name "Draco Malfoy" is not only drawn from the French (mal foy looks like Olde French for bad faith) but also from Classics.  That is, in 620 BC, a Greek named Draco wrote down the laws (yay!) but chose death as the penalty for most violations (boo!).  According to Plutarch, when asked why he had fixed the punishment of death for most offences, [Draco] answered that he considered these lesser crimes to deserve it, and he had no greater punishment for more important ones. So there you have it, the genesis of the word "draconian" - and the much-despised Malfoy.

I think this is where I heard the lecture about Draco.

There were many downed trees on the Nelsonville path, but the light and the landscape were very pretty.

When I tried to turn on to the Notch Trail, however, something was wrong.  I just couldn't put my finger on it, but things didn't look like I expected them to based on the map.  So I forged ahead, and things started to look oddly familiar.  Of course, I decided that was because I was so familiar with all the trails in the area.

Not because I had no idea whatsoever where I was.  Nope, not at all.  In the mean time, I continued on, confident that I was on the correct trail.  The white trail.

Raptor's wing tip catches the glint of sun

This view -- and the viewpoint on the rock
marked * NYC -- looked very familiar.

As did this pool, though I'd approached it
mostly from the other direction before.

So it seemed like I was recognizing point after point on the trail, but was somehow going in a different direction than usual.  The afternoon wore on, and I started to get a little nervous that maybe it was a little late to be pushing on to Beacon after all (which I thought I was doing when I turned right on to the yellow trail).  

But it wasn't until I reached the oh-so-familiar and utterly unmistakable junction with the Brook Trail that I was finally forced to admit that I was way, way, way off base.  In some ways, this was good, because it meant that I could easily get back to Cold Spring before dark.  

I followed all the way to the tail end of the Cornish Trail which more or less tracks 9D on the way back to the trailhead.

The bare trees looked like cilia on the
hills on the other side of the Hudson River.

A few trees on our side clung to their leaves.

I liked this part of the Cornish Trail a lot - and it was new to me.  Of course in some ways, this misadventure was an incredibly embarrassing reflection on my map reading skillz.  I had taken the Washburn Trail up and over Mount Taurus.  Which was not part of the plan.  But that's not important right now.  What's important is that there were stepping logs to help you get across the mud puddles:

These trees fell into the form of a giant jack!

Golden glow on the Cornish Trail in the last rays of the afternoon.

An arch cut through fallen trees.

The vines give this a Southern Gothic feel.

A tangle of roots.

The red sign says: "Emergency Road - Do Not Block"

I set off along 9D back to the train station.

Canada geese by a pond.

Turkey vulture at rest?

Cool mailbox!

All in all, I liked this route - especially Nelsonville and the Cornish Trail.  Good times.