Christman Sanctuary, 7/2/2008

The Christman Sanctuary is a place I had been to before when Ryan was living in Albany in 2006-2007. I had come down from VT during the summer and he had printed out a bunch of places from localhikes.com for me to check out… this one sounded great! I only remember the bugs were pretty bad, so this time we were prepared… Here is a little summary from localhikes (if you click on it, you will be directed to the actual site)…

Summary: Christman Sanctuary is a nature preserve that protects part of the Bozen Kill creek. Along the creek there are a series of small waterfalls and cascades.

We hiked through the small field of white & pink clovers- nothing like walking through fields of wildflowers! We immediately went down to the stream- ditched the trail and just walked up through the water.

Right away, we were at one of the sets of cascades.

There were many small falls as we hiked up the river- the rock definitely was carved out in many places that made a lot of waterfalls.

Mocha was very happy with this- the water wasn’t too deep, so she was able to splash around and get herself cooled off without going too deep. (You can see her running around behind me in this picture here)

The third set of cascades had a deeper pool. Mocha was able to fetch a stick a little- and we were able to explore.

There were a TON of crayfish in this river… EVERYWHERE! They were huge, too. I was seriously afraid they were going to nip my toes.

Ryan did go in at the third cascades… his face in this pic tells you how the water felt:

It actually wasn’t that bad… Once you were in, the water was quite refreshing. We did amble down the river a ways more and came to the BIG waterfall. It’s approximately 30 feet (or so the guide says). The water at the base was pretty inviting- Ryan went in and swam first, I was apprehensive because of all the crayfish (I know, I sound like a ninny, but there were a TON of them.

There was also a lean-to at the base,
but there were signs around that said camping and fires weren’t allowed.
It seemed like a pretty cool place to camp, too bad it’s banned…lame! We did see others at this point of our journey- two guys and a lady showed up- the guys went swimming (which gave me more courage because they had bare feet!), while the lady took pictures. I ended up going in and swimming around at this point. Then they left and we headed out. We hiked back down the river, and ran into another foursome just heading up to the falls. On our way down, we passed an orange trail that went to the opposite side of the river. We took that loop around- it was great, except the bugs were really bad so we couldn’t slow down to enjoy anything. We hiked up up and up, until the loop finally came back around to the top of the big falls! It was pretty cool. We then followed it down the steep edge of the ravine until we got back to our original crossing site. We decided this would also be a great place to come snowshoeing! The only issues we really had were the bugs (which only bothered us on the orange trail) and the fact that now there is a (new) sign that says no pets. We obviously brought Mocha in with us anyways (too hot for her to wait in the car), but I don’t know what the penalties would be if we were caught with her there. It’s not like she’s a nuisance anyways!

Okay, off to pack for our fourth of July trip to Vermont! I’m sure I’ll have many fun tales about that when I return! Hope everyone has a fun and safe holiday weekend!!