Apshawa Preserve - 1/23/10

[Daniela Wagstaff]

Hiked mostly all of the trails at Apshawa Preserve with only about 1/2 mile overlap for a total of 7.7 miles. This is a no hunting park. The online map is very good but differs slightly from the paper map, a huge supply of which were in the kiosk in the parking lot. The paper map is the more accurate one. The differences are the online map shows the white trail continuing north out of the preserve to a scenic overlook. I went ahead and hiked that through - it's no longer well marked but you can find the scenic overlook then backtrack to the preserve. The overlook is not all that spectacular so if you skip it you haven't missed much. (Overlooks on the green trail are much better.) The second difference is the online map does not show a connector trail from the southern part of Butler Reservoir on the red trail to the green trail but that does exist. It is merely turning right from the red trail to the green trail in the vicinity of the dam where the green trail starts. The trails are very well marked. Got confused a couple of times but it was more because I was having a hard time seeing the red and green markers with the sun in my eyes.

The hike offers a little bit of everything: Circles a reservoir and a pond, scenic overlooks and waterfalls. There seemed to be a lot up uphills and downhills. There is some traffic noise in some places. The worst noise the day I was there was the jack-hammering (or whatever they use) to break through the ice in the reservoir for ice fishing. But that did stop eventually. There is quite a bit of litter in places and some broken glass. Watch out on the far side of the pond (yellow trail) for boards with nails sticking out facing up. I turned over as many as I could find. It's a real shame to see the negatives because otherwise the area is quite nice.