Exploring the Long Valley Trail

Wadhams trail is long on views of New York’s Champlain Valley landmarks

By Tim Rowland

For a park with so many spectacular vistas, there are few trails that offer long stretches of hiking where you can watch the landscape unfold in the distance as you stroll along. Fortunately, for those who like the long view, there is Long Valley, part of the portfolio of Champlain Area Trails that along much of its length provides those wide open spaces and broad skies that stand as a nice contrast to, as Bill Bryson had it, a walk in the woods.

Even better, Long Valley doesn’t mean sacrificing those big overlooks we all love, and if you play your cards right you can finagle three of them out of a ~5 mile hike.

There are multiple spots from which to access Long Valley Trail, but on the first day of November we chose the Field and Forest Trail trailhead a half-mile north of Wadhams on the Lewis-Wadhams Road. You’ll see a CATS trail sign on the right, with the Boquet River across the road on your left.

Anytime you see whitecaps on the Boquet you know the wind is pretty strong, which on this day was another reason for hiking through meadows where the chance of having a tree limb fall on your dome are greatly reduced.

But not entirely, as about half of our hike on this day would be under the canopy, owing to a couple of side trips on adjacent trails. One of them being the Field and Forest trail itself, which began with a moderate climb through a hemlock forest along a brook with, for the moment, no water in it.

The trail levels off fairly soon and then at 0.25 miles intersects with the southern terminus of the Long Valley Trail. Turning left, we continued through the attractive woods, with some interesting cairns here and there, like little gnomes watching our progress. I’d either forgotten or never knew that Long Valley has a panorama, which we reached a 1/10th of a mile past the intersection. From a mossy overlook, you get a nice view of the evergreen forest and Coon Mountain not far to the east.

From there, the trail switchbacks down off the high ground, and at about 0.80 miles reaches its namesake valley. From here, the trail follows Crooked Brook as it winds through the grassland and shrubbery that particularly in the spring is a noisy red-wing blackbird habitat.

Continuing to the north, you’ll pass beneath the trail’s signature feature, an ancient shagbark hickory, the ground covered in husks and shells of the sweet nuts that the squirrels have beaten you to.

At 1.25 miles, Long Valley arrives at an imposing cliff and intersects with Joe’s Trail, honoring Joe Rinella, a prince of a person whom I had the privilege of working with on CATS trail crews before we lost him at too young an age. It’s appropriate then that the finest overlook on this route is atop a bluff (reached after a moderate but rather short climb) looking out over rolling farmland to the west and the Jay and Hurricane wildernesses in the distance.

We turned around at the overlook and retraced our route, but having some extra time we continued on past the Long Trail/Field and Forest junction and continued to the Wadhams Overlook Trail, which dips and climbs to, true to its  word, an overlook of the hamlet of Wadhams.

One complication of this 0.75-mile add-on is that you will come to an electric fence holding in a herd of horses. Having stock animals myself, I suspect I am one of the few hikers who can say, “What, there’s an electric fence in our path? Why yes, I have a fence tester right here in my pack.” 

Luckily you will not have to check to see if the fence is hot because there is an insulated handle that allows you to go through a sort of makeshift gate. Just MAKE SURE you close the gate behind you.

As hiked, this route was just shy of five miles, with a 500-foot elevation gain. That elevation gain is spread among maybe a half-dozen moderately steep pitches, none lasting more than a few hundred feet. One seasonal note, the Field and Forest Trail is closed a mile from the road for deer season, so don’t plan on any through hikes involving F&F at this time of year.

Interestingly, along with the ubiquitous chipmunks and squirrels we saw a couple of whitetail on the Long Valley Trail. Who knew deer could read?