Quadricentennial
Challenge
Catskills Live! Trails & Wilderness Association issues a
challenge to all — venture forth and seek all 15
Quadricentennial Challenge geocaches. Go to many great places
throughout Ulster County — visit the shores of the Hudson,
feel the cool air in an historic cement mine, enjoy our small
parks, ride on our rail trails, summit two Catskill peaks, and
savor the breath-taking view from Gertrude's Nose in Minnewaska
State Park Preserve. Bask in our county's treasures with family and
friends, exercise your body, and build lasting memories. Over 100
specially minted commemorative Quadricentennial geocoins were
released from 15 Challenge geocaches set up in 2009 in celebration
of the 400th anniversary of the exploration of New York State by
Henry Hudson. Congratulations to Joe The Mailman, the first person
to complete all 15 caches! Funding for the Challenge was provided
by Ulster County and the Hudson River Valley
Greenway.
D & H Canal Heritage
Corridor
The Hurley Rail Trail Park is part of the longer D & H Canal
Heritage Corridor. This geocache is on a 3.1 mile segment of rail
trail used by the public for walking, jogging, bike riding, and
cross country skiing. With much of its length wooded, it provides a
safe and peaceful setting for outdoor exercise.
Beavers and
Wetlands
With the recognition of New York State's vast resources stemming
from Henry Hudson's 1609 voyage, beaver trapping followed to supply
the market with warm coats and fashionable men's top hats. The
demand for beaver fur was so great, they were nearly hunted to
extinction. With attention diverted by the gold rush, beavers
recovered. It's easy to see beavers and their lodges in the
elongate wetland along The Rail Trail Park. The wetland is teaming
with turtles, great blue herons, song birds, wetland plant species
and much more. It is the beavers that have helped form and expand
the wetland by building dams along a very low gradient section of a
small stream. Beavers are considered a keystone species because
their activities create important habitat for themselves, reptiles,
amphibians, fish, and waterfowl. At first glance, the beavers we
see today seem as if they have always been here, but this is not
the case.
Has this picture been the same over the last 14,000 years since
the last glacier left the Catskill Mountain area? When did beavers
colonize our area? Until the publication of this geocache
description, the only ice age mammal that evidence had proven lived
here was the elephant-like mastodont. Like Henry Hudson's voyage
into the unknown, let our rail trail venture serve as a stepping
stone — mentally bridging between today's beavers and those
of the Pleistocene epoch.
The treasure we seek along our mental trail takes us some 13 miles
to the north-northwest near Willow, where we find wetlands like
those along The Hurley Rail Trail Park. Here, stream erosion has
exposed a high bank with beaver-chewed logs sticking out of it.
Above these logs there are about six feet of flat-lying fine
sediment layers. Below the beaver-chewed logs, there is a thick
deposit of stream-rounded pebbles with little sediment. Something
most unusual caused a marked change from an active, aggressively
flowing, stream environment that left behind the pebble deposit to
a large swampy environment with the slow accumulation of fine
sediments. The answer lies in the beaver-chewed logs. Radiocarbon
dating of one of the logs has revealed an age of just slightly over
10,000 years. Thus, just as in the wetland setting now seen along
the rail trail, beavers in the nearby Willow area 10,000 years ago
must have manipulated their environment by damming up a low
gradient stream reach.
While both giant and modern beavers did coexist during the last
part of the ice age, it is possible that the beavers that chewed
the logs were not the beavers we see today. They may have been
giant beavers, measuring 6 to 8 feet in length and weighing up to
500 pounds (see skeleton photo: Canadian Museum of Nature).
A modern beaver weighs about 65 pounds. With the exception of their
tails being narrower, their hind legs being somewhat shorter, and
their broad ridged incisors reaching up to 6 inches in length,
giant beavers were in most ways physically similar to the beavers
of today.
They were the
largest known rodent in North America during the last ice age, the
size of a modern black bear. They became extinct around 9,000 years
ago. As you pass the wetland along the rail trail, envision
bear-sized beavers swimming — occasionally glancing upward at
a bellowing mastodont drinking nearby.
The Cache
Access to the cache is along the rail trail. The cache is a
2-liter cylindrical poly bottle hidden close to the rail trail.
Nearby, there is a low bedrock cliff comprised of the Esopus shale
that whispers of deposition in a deep ocean environment with
limited life. The cache is filled with kid-friendly items and,
initially, three NYS Quadricentennial Challenge geocoins designed
to travel throughout the world. (Permission for placement of this
cache was granted jointly by Gary Bellows, Supervisor of the Town
of Hurley, and Brooke Pickering Cole, Supervisor of the Town of
Marbletown.)
Parking
Parking is available in two locations. One is in a lot off Route
209 and the other is in a small parking area off Marcott Road, both
south of Kingston, New York. The Route 209 parking lot is 1.2 miles
north of the cache, while the Marcott Road parking area is 2.0
miles south of the cache.
Care should be taken when proceeding northward along the rail
trail from the Marcott Road parking area because it passes
alongside the elongate wetland described above where geocachers
risk encountering giant beavers and mastodonts!