Bearpen 14 Dec 2014

[Nasrettin Hoca]

I'd watched the weather map carefully during the "snow event" last week and was sure the Sterling Forest had been included. But I go there before light yesterday and could see, whatever they had gotten, only patches remained. With the skis in the car, I made a break for Bearpen, getting there kinda late. But it was nice looking for Trailheads in daylight for a change.

I've got a 2wd Minivan, the access road was a non starter, there was a deadend down the hill, but nearby and I parked there. The snow got sticky at one point, and I hadn't been on XC skis in years. My plan, was to do a little XC on the access road, then go back and get my 3 pin "telemark" skis.

But the XCs did fine so I stayed with them. Next time, I will skin up. All that said, getting on snow like this, at this point in the season, was nice.



Parking Lot

[mike]

Bearpen is notorious for getting more rime then the rest of the catskills. Looks like the trees were beautiful.

[Nasrettin Hoca]

I messed up yesterday. I hadn't written down the directions for the Heisinger RD TH and wound up on something else that had the blue NYC water signs. I saw the Heisinger sign on the way out.

Ran into some ruins in the woods. Looked like it might have been a water mill and some other buidlings. Anyone know about this? Nice stonework and old.

Also, I came to a road up higher. I think it was lower than ski run road. I went both directions but it went significantly down, in both directions.

[mtnclimber]

No clue. Bearpen used to be a ski center. maybe something attached to that. Or, maybe older.

[Nasrettin Hoca]

Here's some of it. Surely it predates that tree.



Then there was this on the stream. Could've been a mill. One of the sections, had some stairs. Can't imagine the old guys building something this close to a stream for any other reason.

[mike]

Definitely old. I would say that the second image is for a mill of some type. Not part of the bearpen ski area.