I have just returned from a camping trip in Tahawus, an area that was once a mining town down at the southern end of the High Peak region...it is a rugged and beautiful part of the Adirondacks, which is saying something...
Even though spring is slow to come to this part of the world, it is slower still to come to Tahawus, and there was still a considerable amount of snow back in the woods where I camped...
There are apparently lots of bears in the area, but with proper precautions, I didn't see any during my weekend camping trip...
I fit all of my gear for the weekend: clothes, shelter, food, gear, booze, cigars, in this pack, and I walked in to my camping spot back behind the ghost town...back in the woods, not too far from some of the abandoned buildings that are set back in the forest...
I slept the weekend in my Hennessy Hammock, a camping hammock that provides me with an incredibly comfortable night's sleep...
Once I had set up camp, I explored the buildings around us, and all over the town...I found this hatch covering a tank by stepping on it, and feeling the lid give a little under my weight...it was hidden under the leaves, and could have been a nasty surprise, but I were careful...
One of the buildings had the remnants of cedar bark siding on it...something that makes sense, although it had never occurred to me...
I explored a dramatically collapsed building with a phenomenal fieldstone fireplace...This child's cart/toy outside one of the buildings reminded me of "The Godfather II"...This beautiful brick fireplace was in great shape, as was the rest of the house, except for the right half of the room...
Exploring the upstairs of one house was really neat, until I came on a gap in the floor that made me wonder at the overall stability of the building...
After exploring Tahawme pretty extensively, I headed over to the blast furnace, from 1850, which is almost 100 yards tall and constructed from massive stones. I was able to crawl inside, through a hole in the base, and get a view up through the center of the stack. There are also massive bellows still in place on the ground outside of the furnace, used to feed the flames...these gears would have made a wheel about 60 feet in diameter...
The next day I took a walk in the factory zone, which was beautiful and incredibly quiet...I frightened a huge group of white-tail deer. Shortly, I set up a range and did a bit of shooting for a while, until the rain started...
(to be continued….)
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