The trail provides at the most unexpected times
Long Path Section 15 (reroute): Vernooy Falls parking lot to Rough Cut Brewing
This is the ninth installment of a series on section hiking the Long Path. The adventure begins here, and you can read the previous installment here.
Getting to the trailhead for Vernooy Falls required some persuasion.
We were up in the Catskills for the Fourth of July weekend with friends, and instead of playing lawn games or reading on the porch, we had been mostly cooped up inside avoiding the wildfire smoke that had drifted down from Canada and blanketed the mountains in a poisonous, stinky haze.
By the time the winds had picked up and the air began to clear, there was plenty of interest in stretching legs outside. Only E and I had a very specific plan we needed to carry out. (Ok, wanted, but wanted so bad it felt like a need.) We needed to do the long road walk between Rough Cut Brewing and Vernooy Falls trailhead that we had skipped for several reasons on our section hike that spring. Oh, and I wanted to run it, because I didn’t see the point in savoring nine miles of road walking. And I wanted to prove I could. Also, walking would take too long.
I also wanted our friend J to join for this section of the LP! I’ve so enjoyed hiking parts of the Long Path with close friends, and I wanted J to be one of them. The only problem is we were down to just one car: his.
I proposed driving to the trailhead and splitting up: E, J, and I would run to the brewery (a little over nine miles) and our two friends would hike out to Vernooy Falls and then drive to the brewery to meet us. (I had imagined maybe hiking to Vernooy Falls for a quick swim before running to the brewery, but that would add too many unnecessary miles and it was rejected by everyone else as impractical. Also, it wasn’t great swimming weather.) J just had to agree to hand over the keys to someone whose driving he had never—until that afternoon—seen. But once he did that, we were all set.
There is nothing like running on a smooth paved road with hardly any traffic and two much more experienced runners on either side of you making you feel strong and fleet just for keeping up. It helped that they were trotting, and we were going downhill. But I felt amazing. The air was clearer, the day not too hot, the humidity wasn’t oppressive—it just made my skin feel ever so slightly tacky, like a post-it note losing its stick. Life was good!
We hadn’t brought water bottles or snacks. It was just 9.7 miles! Downhill, mostly!! We would be fine.
As far as running routes go, this was primo: rolling hills and fields punctuated by streams and stands of trees. It wasn’t until we popped out on a busy road and I checked my phone that I realized that where I thought we were supposed to “continue straight” on the road, we were actually meant to “turn off” onto an even smaller back road, while the road we had been on curved to the left. Instead, we have curved left, following the road.
We very briefly debated what to do but ultimately turned back to retrace our steps because I wanted to do the “official” reroute, and because the road we had just come to was a two-lane highway with lots of speedy traffic and virtually no shoulder, so wouldn’t be a particularly safe or enjoyable place to run. This only added 3 miles. But, I was starting to get thirsty. Our brilliant idea to go light and fast (without water bottles) wasn’t looking so brilliant now!
But the trail provides at the most unexpected times. Shortly after we got back on the right road, we saw a roadside spring with a pipe sticking out of the earth and a giant drain. A woman had just pulled over and was gathering up her jugs to fill, but she let us drink from the spring first, great, giant gulps.
This improved our outlook immensely. Refreshed, hydrated, we jogged on, although my pace slipped little by little. It was hot, I was tiring. It was mostly downhill from there, literally and figuratively.
After 10 miles I told the guys to keep going—I had to take a walk break. At the next busy intersection, I spotted them coming out of a gas station and E had a giant, cold, sweet Gatorade for me. It was good.
The last mile or two to the brewery was all uphill and on a busy road and pretty miserable. After the slow trudge up I collapsed on the bench next to E. Our friends were there, cheerfully eating fries. I was shaky, out of it, blinking back tears, completely drained. I went up to the counter to get a beer and drank it like it was the elixir of life.
But, with that run, we checked off the last section of Long Path between New York City. We had walked from New York City to Phoenicia!
200 miles down, 155 to go.
Reading list
(Scroll down for suggestions on how to “hike it yourself.”)
“All water sources in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza cross one or another border. Sewage spilling into the sea in Gaza flows up the coast to the intake of desalination plants in Israel. Water pumped for Israeli settlements dries out the wells in Palestinian villages. It makes no sense to try to manage the water separately, and it is inhuman to deny it to an entire group of people. If ever there was a rationale to promote equal political rights and opportunity for everybody in this territory, it is water.” At times of immediate, violent crisis it can feel…insufficient to work on climate or environmental stories, or anything else, but I was glad to be able to commission and edit this article on the water crisis in Gaza, which was dire before October 7 and is now desperate. [Reem Abu Shomar and Mark Zeitoun in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists]
Workers are accusing REI of violating U.S. labor laws at stores in New York, California, Chicago and Boston, among others. This is a huge bummer because I like REI! I’ve spent a lot of money there over the past few years. REI, WTF?? [Daniel Wiessner for Reuters]
Pinch of Dirt reader Ashira Morris wrote a lovely story about the coontie plant, an ancient cycad in Florida that is deadly toxic but, when prepared correctly, can be processed into a sweet, almost vanilla-like flour. Industrialization and habitat destruction means cultivation of coontie for food has gone the way of the dodo, but recently, as it made a resurgence as a landscaping plant, so too has the atala hairstreak butterfly that depends upon it. [The Islandia Journal]
In England, “fairy” bridges have sprung up to replace a bridge taken down without warning by the National Trust, severing a crucial link between the local community and a salt marsh popular with birdwatchers and other wildlife enthusiasts. [Jenny Gross for the New York Times]
Hike it yourself (from NYC)
This so far has been our biggest cheat of the “hike the Long Path by public transportation” so far. We were caught off guard by the reroute through Minnewaska in the spring, and skipped this long road walk to stay on schedule without putting in a 20+ mile day that we hadn’t prepared for. (Our original plan had still called for an 18-mile day, but that was already at the far edge of the mileage we wanted to do.) And we knew we might have this opportunity to run the skipped miles later in the summer using a car.
But my recommendation would be to do this section as part of a longer hike, from Wurtsboro to Phoenicia. It’s a big section, around 70 miles, but there aren’t super convenient ways to make it shorter, except by taking a bus to New Paltz and then a cab to Kerhonkson, which neatly cuts the section in half. Kerhonson to Phoenicia is an even more manageable 30+ miles. You could camp at Vernooy Falls on night one, Deer Shanty Brook on night two, and get a bus back from Phoenicia (or stay at the campground or bed and breakfast in town) on night three. (It’s possible to break this up even further by staying at a shelter near Table Mountain and at primitive campsites between Slide and Cornell instead of Deer Shanty Brook.)