Discussion: How

did you like this place? It was next on my list of potential O areas to evaluate. I expect a major drawback will be lack of parking but at least this area looked to be mostly wooded unlike a lot of the other preserve areas.

My opinion is that it might be usable in winter when the vegetation is down. The woods looked scrappy (similar to Hibernia). The parking lot could hold maybe a dozen cars.

I posted a photo of a quartz boulder near the yellow trail in my log, but this hiking blog post might give you a better sense of the woods (at least near the trails) in December.

The area is mostly mature forest (oak, beech, tulip poplar). There are areas of reasonably open woods but also significant areas with Hibernia-like undergrowth vegetation. There are rock features: boulders, rocky ground, stone walls, some cliffs in one area, and some boulder fields/clusters. Most of these features were in an area where building stone was quarried (interestingly called the Compass Quarry). We didn’t find any remnants of what you might typically expect of a quarry, but it seems that much of the rock in the area has been moved around by human activity. We probably only hiked through about a third of the preserve. As Janet said, the area would be much more pleasant when vegetation is down.

Janet I had come across that hiking blog a little while back. I agree the woods don't look all that great from the photos. I will probably still get up there at some point to take a look but it doesn't sound promising.