[EngineCo.2]

Young A.K. and I decided to do yet another section of the Wapack trail today. I figured , what's a little rain? Our goal today was to start where we left off at Temple Rd. and continue on to Rt. 124 @ Wapack Rd. National Weather Service said it all.... crappy out, expected to get crappier throughout the day. Started out late as usual, noonish. The trail started out w/ a .7 mile paved road walk. The trail then went straight into the woods @ the intersection of Temple + Nashua Rds. The " trail" turned out to be a Class 6 road, which means at one time it was a major thruway in the horse-n-buggy days. This was evident by the nice , straight stone walls on either side of the trail. Did I mention the rain ? Holy crap, did it rain. I had to admit though , it was tons more fun than staying home and wasting away the weekend in front of the tube! This was the first REAL test for Young A.K. and my new rain gear. We managed to stay fairly dry despite the 17" of rain we got in 4 hours! Did I mention the rain? The trail itself was very easy to negotiate. The only real problem being an area of the trail that a very ambitious beaver was determined to make his own. The yellow triangles didn't help us here as they would have led us through 4 ft. of water. A short detour led us around the waterhole on a stone pathway through the brook. This pathway would be under 6" of water when we returned this way. Before long we had reached civilization, cabins, dirt roads, and traffic sounds. Coming out of the treeline, we found ourselves on a skislope of some type. Would this be the Windblown ? I assumed that it was. Right after this was a pretty major road. 124? We did another hail mary highway crossing(seeing a pattern here?) and came on a sign saying "no skiiers allowed". Who the heck would ski across a highway like that? Am I missing something here? New extreme sport , maybe? We hiked for another mile or so and turned around. I mentioned to the kid how it looked like it was letting up so, naturally it started pouring ... again. On the way back we decided to make a sidetrip up to Kidder Mtn. It added about a mile or so to the day but what the heck else were we gonna do ? This is a strange little summit. We couldn't see more than a couple hundred ft., but this place looked like it had sustained a forest fire, or something. There were a few big trees, but alot of them were dead and there's alot of young undergrowth. Maybe I'm wrong, but it didn't look right for some reason. The trip back was uneventful with the exception of the beaver booby trap. It was on the crossing back that I decided to take a page out of my kids playbook and slip bigtime on the brook crossing! :uhg: As I lay there regaining the feelings from the neck down, I swear I could hear that damn beaver laughing at me.( Or maybe it was my kid.) We finally made it out, and we were starting to get wet through our gear, it did rain today. The Jeep a welcome sight again. Really easy trail, 7 miles or so, 4-4.5 hours(not sure how long I was out cold in the brook) This is a pretty good hike if it's rainy out and you've got a couple hours to kill. I'd be willing to do this hike again only next time I'll have a brand new waterproof beaverskin rainhat! Only 8.8 more miles to Mt. Watatic!
Yours, high-n-dry, Ed