Green Hill: The High Peak of Chester
Green Hill is not a High Peak, but it felt like one following that first big storm in March that dropped about ten inches at the border of Warren and Essex counties in Pottersville.
Dan Smith, Bill Walker and I were breaking trail on snowshoes, which made the 1,500 feet we had to fight gravity more challenging than usual. AllTrails calls this a 4.2-mile hike, but Bill's app measured it at 5.07 miles, because of a modified starting point and some off-trail deviations along the way. The hike took us five hours, but that included numerous stops for capturing on video of Dan's remarkable story of developing the trail and clearing the summit to make possible this view:
Creating the View
The Chester Challenge was Fred Monroe's idea, but Dan implemented it, making possible its launch in the summer of 2015. He and his wife, Beth, and their three children were the first to complete it. Since then, the Challenge has consistently counted more than 500 finishers every year, a number that spiked sharply during the pandemic.
On Green Hill’s summit, Dan describes what it took to create the panoramic views to be savored north toward the High Peaks and south toward Loon Lake.
Given its prominence in the center of Chestertown, Dan always has regarded Panther Mountain as the potential jewel in the Challenge’s crown. He hopes someday to add it, if and when the land’s owners grant public access. In the meantime, he’s spending most of his time on Green and its companion, Catamount, where a key scene in Escape from Dannemora was filmed.
“Originally there was just a peek-a-boo view to the south, but I saw potential from the topographical maps to develop a trail that included at the summit a Mohawk line of trees to block the wind and effectively get an almost 360-degree view from both sides,” he says.
Dan also has made dozens of trips in an ATV to haul in gravel to smooth out the trail, employing a technique he learned as a volunteer building trails at Mount Hoevenberg.
All of this is possible because Green Hill and Catamount are on private land -- a 1,000-acre parcel that's been in the same family for eight generations since it was awarded to a valiant combatant in the Revolutionary War as compensation for his service. Also on this land is the Natural Stone Bridge and Caves, an important attraction for visitors to Pottersville that Greg Beckler, the land’s owner, sees opportunities to further develop.
Snowshoeing’s Potential
Greg and Dan knew each other at North Warren High School. That's how far they go back. His father was president of what would become the North Warren School District.
Greg earned a degree in biology at SUNY Plattsburgh, then went on to earn a Ph.D. in molecular cellular development at Ohio State. After working for 20 years in biotech, he came home to run the caves, which had descended through the generations by members of the family of his mother, Janet (Heldt) Beckler, alongside her husband Ed Beckler.
At first he did biotech in the winter and ran the caves in the summer. "That was like having two full-time jobs, and so I decided to turn my entire focus to the caves and that's when we really started growing."
At Catamount’s outlook, you can take a load off on this seat from a discontinued Gore Mountain chairlift.
Around 2010, Greg decided it was time to explore the potential of snowshoeing as way to bring visitors in winter. About four miles of logging trails already criss-crossed the property, and they decided to build more. Then Fred Monroe had the idea of launching the Chester Challenge and things just coalesced. Dan has been improving the trails on Green and Catamount since 2015.
Greg recalls that Dan said to him, "I just love doing trails. May I just explore your property and work with you in developing it?"
"It turned into a great partnership, with Dan scouting the property and coming back to me with ideas about what we could do," Greg says. "He has really developed the Green Hill Trail."
Greg has closed his winter operation and now looks forward to welcoming visitors to the trails when they sufficiently dry in the spring, probably around mid-May.
When you go, you'll be handed a detailed laminated map of the trails which you'll find handy to have, given the number and variety of trails that await you.
"If these hikes are going to be self-guided, we have to make the experience pretty fool-proof," Greg says. He has gone so far as to put reflective markers out on the trail so that, should anyone find themselves still in the woods after nightfall they can easily find their way out.
"It's actually easier to get lost in summer than in winter," he says.
While Green Hill is a challenge that only about 50 hikers will make in the winter, neighboring Catamount is enjoyed by hundreds. It's a short half-hour trek at most. When you reach the outlook, you'll see that Greg has hung between two trees a seat from a discontinued Gore Mountain chairlift.
For Greg and Dee, Green Hill and Catamount have achieved iconic status in the family as a gathering place in the great outdoors.
"One of the first hiking trips I ever did with my wife was with 30 SUNY Plattsburgh friends to the summit of Green with sleeping bags and a few six-packs," he says."I also brought my dad up here on a beautiful October day when he was in his eighties, and he just loved it. The colors were perfect."
Carmelina Albanese contributed to this story.
More to See
Dan Forbush (right) and Bill Walker teamed up with Warren County's GIS Department in 2021 to explore new forms of storytelling to support heritage tourism in the First Wilderness Heritage Corridor. The assignment syncs nicely with their love of the Adirondacks. Smartacus Spatial Storytellers is the student-driven creative agency they're developing to power story-telling collaborations not merely on web platforms like this one, but spatially as well in STQRY and ArcGIS StoryMaps.
