By the time we reached the old wooden Cedar Bridge that crosses Mossy Brook, we had stepped over and around at least a dozen of these Day-Glo-orange, red-dotted newts. “Watch out for the red eft!” said Rich in alarm, quickly directing my feet away from a tiny bright-orange salamander. The red eft, a tiny bright-orange salamander native of New York State. After he chatted with the ranger at the Spring Farm entrance, the three of us headed up the to the recently constructed Cedar Drive Bridge that crosses Mountain Rest Road and leads hikers, bikers, runners and the like to Carriage Drive. It was Rich Gottlieb - owner of Rock and Snow, an outdoor rock climbing and sporting goods store in downtown New Paltz - who suggested Rock Rift and accompanied me, along with his wife Teri, on this journey just past the gateway to the Mountain House. As I’m not an avid or even occasional map-reader, I rely on those I know to enlighten me to some of the richness tucked away in our communal backyard. How many times have I run or walked along the Cedar Ridge carriage trail without ever realizing that just out of sight, underneath some glacially created outcrops, lies a rock maze filled with gushing water, dark twists, cool moss-soaked boulders and ladders built of light?Īlthough the Mohonk Preserve and Mountain House are famous for the Lemon Squeeze - a steeply pitched, tight rock scramble that lies above the sky-lake and just under the Sky Top Tower – a lesser-known cousin, Rock Rift, rests just a few short miles away without any of the labyrinth-loving crowds. Sometimes the treasures that we seek or the experiences that we crave are so close that we brush past them in our haste to get somewhere else.
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