Heldeburg Escarpment and Tory Cave

We explored John Boyd Thacher State Park the day before yesterday. The Park provides a spectacular view of the Heldeberg Escarpment and looks into the Hudson-Mohawk Valley and the Adirondack and Green Mountains.

I hiked the Indian Ladder Trail down to the bottom. The trail dates back to about 1570 when the trail was used by the Mohawk Iroquois Indians. Although the trail is only one half mile long, it descends about 60 ft and passes under Minelot Falls. At this time of year, the falls is but a shower – in the early spring it no doubt rushes down. There is a cave (called Tory Cave) carved out under the escarpment which is largely made of limestone. It is said that one Jacob Salsbury hid here in 1777 during the Burgoyne Invasion.

The image here is a panorama of the bottom of the escarpment. You can judge the size of this feature of Indian Ladder Trail by looking at the person standing at the entrance to Tory Cave! I used 11 separate photographs to create this panorama. The original file is 1.2 GB (yes, this is gigabytes) in size. The image was taken with the Tamron 17-55mm lens set at 17mm and the individual photos were stitched together in Photoshop.