2023-12-26: Coeymans Town Highpoint

Coeymans town highpoint, elevation 1291'. Solo bushwhack ascent from Dunbar Hollow Road. 0.46 mi, 32' gain, 9m RT. Albany county municipal highpoints 3/13.

I was home from college for the winter, and wintry weather combined with an aching bank account meant that I wouldn't be taking many major hikes this year. Most county highpoints and unclimbed listed mountains were pretty far away, and many had trailheads inaccessible without snow tires, which weren't worth the investment for the four-ish weeks I'd be home.

Last summer, I had finished climbing the highest points of all 14 towns in Greene County, a simple and insignificant list. To the extent of my knowledge, I was the first to accomplish this, as town highpointing isn't really a thing (outside of Connecticut, that is, for some very complicated reasons). I had spent much of the semester scouring topographic maps to determine the highest points in other nearby towns, and I had a comprehensive list of several counties' worth by now.

The nearest town to me that I hadn't yet highpointed was Coeymans, in Albany County to the northeast of home. The highest point in Coeymans is located just near its northwestern border and the tripoint with the neighboring towns of Westerlo and New Scotland. While USGS maps show this within a 1260' contour line, ArcGIS data gives an elevation over 1290' right at the Westerlo town line, northwest of a communications tower. Once I had recovered from both a bad cold and Christmas, I headed out on a foggy morning to try to bag this minor point.

Topographic and satellite imagery of my route. Overlay courtesy of CalTopo.

I parked at the intersection of Dunbar Hollow and Clarksville South roads, north of the highpoint in the town of New Scotland. The intersection on the more built-up Clarksville South Road (N-S in the map) was blocked off, but on the more rural Dunbar Hollow (E-W), there was a space where I could park. I had anticipated a pretty straightforward approach, but I found that the woods immediately southwest of the intersection were all swampy. I walked up and down the road in search of drier ground. This would normally have been pretty suspicious as there are several houses here, but thick fog helped to keep me covered as I slipped into the woods to the west.

An old track through the foggy forest.

Even at this spot, some areas were a little swampy, and I had to root-hop to stay on mostly dry (or damp) ground. I kept my phone out for much of this short bushwhack, mainly to make sure I didn't accidentally wander across the unmarked town border, so that the point I bagged was actually in Coeymans. There was some pretty clear elevation gain on the route I took, nothing steep but I definitely felt that I was higher than the road. Given the wide area in the 1260' contour, I had to optically determine which spot was the highpoint, which was difficult in the fog. I settled on an area near the edge of the communications complex amidst some younger pine trees.

The spot I chose for the highpoint in a fairly flat area. The bright area to the left is the edge of the clearing for the tower.

Getting back to the car was significantly more straightforward, as it didn't matter which side of the town line I was on, and I checked out a few old trails on the way back. I normally wouldn't hike in weather like this, but a week of inactivity was getting to me, so instead of heading home, I drove farther north towards another town whose highpoint I hoped to reach: Bethlehem.