2024-01-08: Watervliet Town Highpoint

'Lansing Point', elevation 230' Watervliet highpoint, Albany County municipal highpoints 13/13.

I was working my way through town highpoints over interterm, and on a sunny Monday afternoon, I planned to finish up the final four highpoints in Albany County. After a successful 'ascent' of the Green Island highpoint, I had only one more to go, the town of Watervliet.

Watervliet is a small town on the western shore of the Hudson River, and driving through I found it wasn't exactly the nicest area of Albany County. The area is very built up with a lot of mixed-use buildings, and the whole town is built into the side of a steep hill. The highest point on that hill inside the town limits is at its western border, just under power lines behind the Highland Club Apartments, several hundred feet southwest of the USGS LANSING benchmark.

Much like in Green Island, the parking lots in these apartments technically aren't for visitors, but I was only here for a few minutes, so I figured it wouldn't be a big deal; I was barely parking anyway. I drove right up to the highest parking lot at the north end of the apartments, right near the power lines. After waiting for awhile for an older couple next to me to get out of their car, I finally was able to wade through the snow to the town line.

The power lines at the highpoint.

The town line isn't marked, but I knew from extensive analysis of maps that it ran right under the powerline at the highpoint, so I hiked to the base of one of the trestles at an inconspicuous summit along the invisible western border. The power lines provided more of a view than I had expected, and I could see hills in Saratoga County to the north.

Looking west across the town line to hillier terrain in neighboring Colonie.

The view north along the power lines from the highpoint.

On my drive out of the apartments, a bunch of State Troopers swarmed the area, evidently involved in some sort of operation there. Once I was back on the main road, I could really celebrate my accomplishment. Town highpointing isn't a prestigious or popular ambitions, but to the extent of my knowledge, I'm the first and only person to have intentionally reached the highest point of all 13 municipalities in Albany County, in addition to my previous first of the 14 towns in Greene County. Little lists like these may seem insignificant, but if nothing else they give me a burst of accomplishment to keep going on larger, more serious goals.