Walking the Line

Yesterday afternoon I took a walk in the woods at The Gulf, a most definitely "unique" area near Cannon Corners in northernmost Clinton County.



After parking off a back road off a back road (that's not a typo), there's a 2.6 mile meander through woods and wetlands dotted with some rather unusual rock formations--almost like the earth heaves just below the surface from time to time.  In spots, the trail is over bare sandstone bedrock.

And then you get to The Gulf: a chasm formed when the last ice age melted off some 12,000 years ago.  It's 3/4 of a mile wide, 2 miles long, with a maximum depth of 1,000 feet.

And what makes The Gulf even more"unique"...is that it cuts straight across the U.S./Canada border.  (I did say this was northernmost Clinton County!)  The red DEC markers stop just as you get in sight of Border Monument #688, and you can easily see Monument #687 at the top of the wall on the other side of the chasm.  (You can see #687 in the upper right of the photo above, too.)

I didn't run into anybody else while hiking, but I still felt like someone certainly must be watching me standing there at the international border, so I walked back just a bit along the trail before stopping a moment to eat my lunch.

There's a waterfall which flows down the side of the The Gulf.  Since I found myself at the top of it, and the chasm was so steep and deep, it was hard to get much perspective on it--or take a good picture.  But then I noticed this:

And I couldn't resist.  Using that rope to climb down may not be the smartest thing I've ever done...but it was a fun little challenge, and it got me halfway down the chasm so I could get a look at the falls (which are a whole lot higher than this photo would lead you to believe).

Not a bad way to spend part of a late fall day.