Cattaraugus County High Point Trip Report

Date: July 17, 2001
Author: Bill Schuler

In August of 1999 I climbed what I thought was the high point of Cattaraugus County, NY only to find when I got home from New York State, last year, that I had been mistaken and had climbed the wrong peak. So, being in the area this July, I had a chance to make amends.

It was hot and muggy as we negotiated the dirt tracks and pushed through a raspberry patch, past the house-sized rocks and to the witness post and BM. We got showered on when we were on the way down, which cooled it off a bit but made the route muddy and slick.

When I got back to the car there was a gentleman there wondering what the car was doing on his property (the parking area mentioned in the write-up). We had a nice discussion on county highpointing and he said that he had been up there many times with his sons and grandsons and that his father was the one that put the BM there for the USGS. He also said that as many times as he had been up, he still has a hard time finding it and that I must be pretty good to get there at all. He also said that the local name is Clare Hill and that name has been used for at least 40 years.

A couple of corrections/changes: The road off NY 16 past the river is called West Riverside Drive at the east end and River Road at the junction of County 60. At the locked gate at the end of Richards Road, if you go straight ahead past the gate for a third of a mile, a dirt track comes down from the right. This is the upper road mentioned in the trip write-up. This was my downhill route and worked fine.