Balsam Lake Mountain Wild Forest - New York State DEC
DIRECTIONS:
GPS Coordinates 42.07839, -74.65082
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| Mill Brook Road parking lot for Kelly Hollow. |
TRAIL MAP:
Catskills Trail Map 142 - NYNJ Trail Conference
Balsam Lake Mountain Wild Forest - New York State DEC
HIKE DISTANCE: 3.7 miles
THE HIKE:
This was my 4th hike of the day and I started much later than I would have liked to. It was 5:30 PM so my plan was to make it out by 7:30 PM at the latest. It's a fairly smooth and easy trail for the most part so fortunately I made it out on time because it is darned dark in those woods when the sun starts to set!
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| I most definitely signed the trail register, which I always do anyway, but being in there alone at almost dark, that was mandatory. |
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| The trail is a woods road that follows along the creek down below. You can hear the water but with foliage there is not much to see other than a waterfall or cascade if you step over to the edge and look down. It was too dark down in there for any of my pictures to turn out. |
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| A little bit of a glimpse at the creek down below. |
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| All water crossings have bridges. |
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| The Kelly Hollow Lean-to at ... |
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| ... Beaver Pond |
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| The trail loops completely around Beaver Pond over to the other side. |
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| Back at the creek, for a lollipop hike turn right on the short cut trail to loop back around to the parking lot but there is also an option to go left and make a little bit longer loop without repeating which is what we did. |
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| The views of the creek are a little better on this side. |
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| At a cemetery the trail turns right. |
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| It comes out at Mill Brook Road where we turned right to cross over the creek on the road. |
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| Just after crossing the creek there is a foot path on the right back into the woods. (Or you can road walk back but we were good on time so we went back into the woods.) |
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| It's only .3 miles back to the car. |
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| Made it back just in time. |
