2024-05-29: Blenheim Hill

Blenheim Hill, elevation 2140'. Blenheim town highpoint; Schoharie County town highpoints 7/16. 1.91 mi, 208' gain, 51m round-trip.

I've been working through town highpoints over the past year, completing the 14 towns of Greene County last June and the 13 municipalities of Albany County in January. The next logical step, it seemed, was the 16 towns of the neighboring Schoharie County. I completed a few of these in 2023, but this summer, I decided to dedicate myself more to the task.

The town of Blenheim is home to Blenheim Hill State Forest, which contains the eponymous Blenheim Hill. Rather confusingly, this is not the highest point in the town. That honor belongs to a nearby peak, Blenheim Mountain, which is located on private land. On a warm afternoon in late May, I decided to tackle this first town highpoint of the summer.

The closest road to Blenheim Mountain is called Woodland Drive, located to the west in the town of Jefferson. This is part of a private community, and inaccessible to non-residents. The next nearest road, Ethel Woods Road to the east, dead-ends at a farmhouse and continues as a posted trail, although it shows up on most maps as a thru road.

This left Blenheim Hill Road to the south as my only option. Satellite maps show a dirt trail that goes nearly all the way to the summit, but this trail was posted, so I opted to bushwhack up through unposted woods just to the west, a decision I would soon come to regret.

Open, fern-floored forest on the way up Blenheim Mountain.

Satellite images indicated that the area around the summit had been recently logged, but that didn't prepare me for the rest of the climb. After a decieving stretch of easy, open woods, I stumbled into a seemingly endless sea of partially-logged woods. Waist-high pricker bushes disguized a labyrinth of ankle-twisting branches below, all in a space just open enough to keep me sweating.

Don't be tricked by the pleasant view; this section was frustratingly difficult.

As if this wasn't enough, the ground beneath my feet soon turned to swamp. With the high prickers and ferns, it was impossible to tell if my next step would land on dirt, wood, or mud. The swamp also added swarms of horseflies to my list of grievances. Still, I was able to avoid the wettest areas, and soon made it to the drier, clearer summit area.

Brush and rocky terrain near the summit of Blenheim Mountain.

This summit area was a little unusual, alternating between open, brush-filled clearings, overgrown logging trails, and some of the densest forest I had ever bushwhacked in the state. An exact highpoint was difficult to find visually, so I proceeded to the coordinates for the highest USGS contour and called it good, still fighting horseflies all the way.

At the top of Blenheim, the mountain and the town.

As I struggled to navigate even this area, I eventually ran into a more well-used 4x4 trail. While there was no evidence of recent use, this trail had no shrubs growing through it, and eventually, it widened into the dirt road I had seen on satellite maps. Unwilling to brave the swamp again, I decided to take the risk and hike out via the road.

The far end of the dirt track, vaguely near the summit.

This road does cross the swamp again, and in the damp spring months, the swamp had partially flooded the road. While I've spent a good deal of times in swamps and bogs, this particular one stunk like nothing I've ever smelled before, and I found myself once again jogging down the trail to get away from it. It seems that, east of the trail, the swamp turns into a more manageable pond.

The swamp, as seen from the dirt road.

Some satellite maps showed a possible house or cabin near the end of the dirt road, so I hopped back into the woods once I was certain that I was clear of the swamp and pricker bushes. I jogged back to the car through open woods again, exiting the forest at roughly the same spot where I had entered.

Tall spruce trees west of the trail.

In hindsight, I probably shouldn't have picked a private bushwhack as my first hike of the season. Blenheim put up much more of a fight than I expected for a fairly short hike up a fairly insignificant peak. Still, the mountain, and with it another town highpoint, were mine by the end of the day.