Ashford Glen Preserve
Infamous question: Where do you find all these
places?
Cryptic answer: Serendipity!
Waiting for lunch one afternoon, I happened to grab one of the
free magazines that was in the waiting area. Most of it was stuff
that wasn’t really stuff I cared about, but one article caught my
attention. It spoke of an organization and mentioned some of its
inventory. With this, I was off to do a Google search!
The Ashford Glen Preserve, like many of the preserves that are
part of the Mohawk Hudson Land Conservancy, is on the smaller side,
coming in at 11.5 acres. The Glen contains a loosely marked trail
that terminates at a stream that runs through the area. Across the
stream, as far as I can tell, is property that is part of the
Latham Water District. There are some nice trails through there but
walk them at your own risk.
On my initial visit to this preserve, I did not expect too
much, seeing as it consisted of only 11.5 acres. Although the trail
is not marked too well, it is obvious enough to follow to its
terminus. For the keen observer, a trail can be seen that starts up
on the opposite side of the stream. I initially crossed the stream
to find a nice hiding spot for my container. When I crossed, I then
saw this trail and continued down its path, only to come across
more trails that diverged off of it. I picked a path and soon found
myself wandering through the woods that were very reminiscent of
the same woods that house “Pick Your Poison” and “Misery Loves
Company”. My single stage cache now looked much too small for this
expanded network of trails. Unfortunately I soon discovered that
the land was part of the Latham Water District and even though no
‘Posted’ signs could be seen; it just had to be off-limits to
caches. I filed the location in the back of my head while the
Holiday season took hold.
Months later I finally got back the to the glen to work on
the cache. I thought it best to just make it a single but even that
went out the window after I found some neat hiding spots. So, long
story short: this is now a multi-stage where the first part is a
film canister inside of a decon container that has no lid (this was
from a fix we did at ‘Pennies From Heaven’, a Stargeezer cache) and
an ammo can final.
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agree to the www.geocaching.com disclaimer. In addition, you all
must agree to hold the cache owner, www.geocaching.com, and the
land owners harmless from any and all causes for action. You and
all other members of your party must individually and collectively
determine your/their physical fitness and outdoors/hiking skill
levels, decide whether or not to visit the various cache locations,
and whether or not it is safe and prudent to do so under the
conditions that will be encountered. Cache seekers assume all risks
involved in seeking these cache locations.