Overmountain views impress
The Google Maps lady seemed peeved. We had devotedly followed her vocal commands on my wife’s phone toward the Overmountain Conservation Area near Ancramdale. A few miles from the trailhead, we decided we knew better than Google and picked our own route toward Overmountain as the Google lady repeatedly instructed us to turn around.
The Columbia Land Conservancy operates 10 public conservation areas and we, who thought we were smarter than Google, found ourselves at the Drowned Lands Preserve instead of Overmountain. The Google lady doesn’t have a face, but if she did, she would probably have smirked.
We turned off the “I told you so” feature as the Google lady got her revenge, sending us on an icy, rutted dirt road which woke our slumbering teenager to ask why we had gone this way. There were roadside signs from a Bigfoot researcher looking for people who had met Bigfoot or seen Bigfoot activity.
If Bigfoot is spending time at Overmountain, they picked a good place. Ten miles of trails lead north and south from the main parking lot on Catalano Road. Because much of Overmountain is grassland, the views are
instant. You know you’ve come to the right place before you even lace up your boots.
Our visit was between recent snowstorms on a clear, chilly day when the rolling hills were bare and tan. We first sampled the Kestrel Trail toward Kite Hill. Because much of the trail meanders through open grassland, we saw a smattering of red, blue and yellow jackets — hikers and their dogs exploring nearby Overmountain trails.
The best thing about Columbia County, my Haines Falls-dwelling mom says, is that you can see the Catskills from there.
This is never more evident than from the gazebo on Kite Hill. The Catskills form a panorama of peaks to the west, and the nearby Taconics form a wall of mountains to the east.
It was beautiful in winter. It would be beautiful filled with singing birds in spring, it would be beautiful with fall leaves and it would be a beautiful spot for a picnic lunch in summer.
We descended Kite
Hill and crossed over Catalano Road toward the southern trails. We climbed Gentian Hill, which offers views of the trails in the northern grasslands of Overmountain.
The Kite Hill-round Ball Trail took us from the grassland into the forest. The three of us climbed a small hill and descended to a stream that was making a journey of its own. The stream would find its way into the Harlem Valley below to join Webatuck Creek and on into Connecticut. It would eventually join the Tenmile and Housatonic Rivers before finally becoming part of something even bigger as it flowed into Long Island Sound.
The Round Ball Mountain section was the original Columbia Land Conservancy holding in what would itself become something bigger. The Round Ball section was merged with the land on the northern side of Catalano Road to eventually become the present Overmountain Conservation
Area.
We climbed the modest grades of the 1,318foot Round Ball Mountain through stands of hickory. My wife, Gillian, and our teenager rested on a well-placed bench with a screened view of the valley below while I explored the loop trail around the summit to the calls of chickadees.
Since longer hikes are better than short hikes, I took a roundabout way back to the stream, while Gillian and our teen took a more direct route. We cawed like crows to find each other at the boundary of forest and grassland.
Coming back into the open fields a second time, the sweeping views were again striking. I stood for a moment with a face full of sunshine, watching mother and child enjoy a moment of peace as they ambled through the tawny fields like a scene in an Andrew Wyeth painting. Overmountain had been hard to get to and was hard to leave.