Decided to check out a couple of Turner Mountain's multi summited peaks in the hills of Rensselaer County early this afternoon. 1660 foot Turner Mountain is part of the Cowee Forest, which was bought by the Conservation Fund back in 2017 before eventually being passed over to the New York State DEC. I caught this nice glimpse of two of Turner Mountain's peaks(true summit left) from a nearby back road on my way. Cool and windy conditions marked my first hike of this winter season.
The start of the hike is from an unmarked ATV trail off of Garfield Nassau Road, with sporadic pink flagging along the way.(Elevation to start was 1065 feet).
The ATV trail is nice and easy to follow, with just a gradual climb at first. Sitting just a few yards away, is a small but pretty drainage, which runs down the slopes of the mountain.
Several other woods roads/ ATV trails break off from the main trail, so I simply bushwhacked my way up to the top of 1660 foot Turner Mountain, where the remnants of an old beacon tower remain.
The summit was pretty open, and screened views could be found in nearly all directions. I wandered around the north slopes of the peak, catching some decent glimpses north towards the forested peaks of the Rensselaer Plateau.
Circling back over to the east slopes of the summit, I picked up another good woods road which dropped me down into the saddle between the two peaks.
The woods road turned sharply north down in the saddle, so I opted once again to bushwhack through fairly open woods, heading east. Just below the east summit ridge, I plopped right into a pretty wetland area.
A short climb up from the wetland brought me to the top of the east ridge, where the slopes drop directly off to the south. Very nice screened views can be enjoyed along this stretch.
To the south Taplin Pond can be seen through the bare winter woods.
Unfortunately public land ends abruptly atop the ridge, so I followed the yellow state blazes north towards the east summit. The ridge walk north was quite pleasant, but much more of a true bushwhack with a lot less woods roads to follow. This vernal pond was frozen over, marking one of the only wintry signs I saw today.
The east summit sits at 1625 feet, just slightly lower than the true summit, which can easily be seen from here less than a half mile away.
This would be turn around point for the day, but instead of following the state land line back south atop the ridge, I decided to drop down the west slopes of the peak, with fleeting sunlight illuminating Turner's true summit in front of me.
Eventually meandered my way back to a good woods road, which I descended back down to the original ATV trail and my waiting car.
A fun little adventure in a new, undeveloped public area. Hiked about 3.2 miles RT(with lots of wandering) and gained nearly 900 feet along the way.
Map below with Red P=Parking Blue X's=Summits Black circle=Rough area of south facing ledges
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