Dan's Papers - July 4, 2008 - Take a Hike with Ken Kindler

The trailhead is located between Swamp Road and Stephen Hand's Path. If you look north from the parking area you can see where Edward's Hole Road intersects with Route 114. Edward's Hole Road links Swamp Road with Sag Harbor Turnpike, heading north. This road leads across Swamp Road to the trails of Barcelona Neck. From here you can walk the Paumanok Path (PP) in either direction, and you can follow the 6.5-mile Northwest Path (NWP) to Cedar Point. The end of our journey into East Hampton's Northwest is at the southern end of Three Mile Harbor across the street from the Cathy Lester Preserve on a wide grassy shoulder at the Soak Hides Road and Springy Banks Road intersection.

A warning to the wise; in order to avoid picking up ticks, wear light colored pants tucked into socks, and treat clothes with a product containing permethrin. Do not walk on trails that are not wide or cut back and allow some distance between your pants and the brush or high grass. Trails through beech and white pine forests are safer, because these trees block sunlight and nutrients from the competing plants below.

Recent storms with heavy wind gusts have caused many trees to fall across the trails. Report them to your local trails group. An excellent source for contact information is Hike-LI.org, or if you need help locating those downed trees, ask about the great maps that are available from the hiking groups.

When I am hiking or writing my articles, I search widely for information, however most of what I know about Long Island's trails comes from Mike Bottini's Trail Guide to the South Fork, Lee McAllister's book Hiking Long Island, and the wonderful maps created by Larry Paul and Charles Whalen. Without the hard work of these four people, few of us would be walking the trails.

We start our walk after looking at the trail map kiosk. East Hampton Trails Preservation Society sells a version of this map that you can carry with you.

A short path from the new trailhead intersects a wider path now marked with the yellow triangles of the NWP and the white rectangles of the PP. The two trails run north almost 5 miles together, before the PP turns east and then south and the NWP continues its journey north to Cedar Point.

The convention for turn blazes on the PP is modified in East Hampton. The turn blazes are not two separate vertical rectangles (the top one offset in the direction the trail takes), but rather one vertical rectangle, contiguous with a second horizontal rectangle at its top, extending in the direction of the turn.

We begin our journey walking through a common pitch pine oak mix with a brush layer of blueberry. At first, the trail tread is comfortable to walk, however we soon find ourselves traversing a knob and kettle terrain. The now old ATV damage is still obvious wherever the trail traverses a hill. A brisk 15-minute walk through the woods will take the hiker across Two Holes of Water Road. It is easy to see where the trail continues because there is a deep cut into the berm along the road. Follow the ridge looking down on Chatfield's Hole, a peanut shaped kettlehole pond.

After passing Chatfield's Hole, the PP intersects with Foster's Path on the left, marked with orange (or red) rectangular blazes. It begins by Chatfield's Hole, immediately north of where the PP crosses Two Holes of Water Road. It heads northeast while the PP heads in a northwest direction. The north end of this 9-mile loop, formed where these two great paths meet again, is at Northwest Road, just south of Alewife Brook Road.