Steuben County High Point Trip Report

Date: September 2, 2001
Author: Dan Case

two areas 1.5 miles apart on Call Hill (2,400+ feet - one with BM 2401)

When coming in from Wellsville on NY 417, Steuben County 61 is probably the first four-way intersection after the county line, signed as Slaght Road. (I wish I had the time right now to work out a way down from NY 17/I-86; perhaps getting off at NY 36 in Hornell and heading down to Jackson Hill first would work.) Turn left (north). After four miles or so of bumping up and down along the ridge line, you will reach Call Hill Road at a T intersection where 61, now Ridge Road in the Town of Hartsville, continues left (west) on pavement and Call Hill turns right onto dirt. This avoids the need to make the stiff climb up from NY 248. You'll reach the antennas to the south of the road, the first area, within a mile. The gravel road to the tall radio tower further back is much easier to see from this direction, and is open and not posted. Drive to the base of the tower where it widens to allow some parking and turning around. Walk east a hundred yards or so, past the guy wire anchor, to the edge of a mowed area that approximates the highest ground.

Go back to Call Hill and turn right. You can easily see the hill crest from here; however there are several undulations in the road you can't see that make the trip a little longer. Once at the crest (the area Gary Fallesen likes for the HP), you can park at the field road and walk 200 feet uphill, then into an unused (at least this summer) cornfield 20 feet to the highest ground. I could not find the BM, and in any event it doesn't sound like it's on the high spot.

one area at Flynn and Ridge roads (2,400+ ft)

Go back to 417 and follow Mike Schwartz's directions to the end of Ridge Road and the T intersection (I wouldn't say it looks like a T so much as where the gravel road makes a 90-degree turn west and a small grassy road goes off into the woods to the left. Park.

There wasn't that far to go into the woods. Next to an old rusted barbed wire fence I found a large mound, probably the leftovers from bulldozing the logging roads, one of which joins the gravel road a hundred feet west of the T, making the need to bushwhack unnecessary. I looked around a little further but did not see any other ground that was remotely higher.

Jackson Hill (2,400+ ft)

Getting here from Jasper is a long, difficult, though highly-scenic drive (there is absolutely no pavement up there, either). A shorter way up would be the way I got down - taking steep, unpaved Red Run Road west off NY 36 just north of South Canisteo. The summit is about a mile south of the (unsigned but obvious) junction with North Road, a sharp left turn along a seasonal limited-use road, just past a farm.

The area you're looking for is a small grassy field that looks like it's used primarily for grazing, running parallel to the road. I did not see any barbed wire but there is a rather cursory electric fence around it, with plenty of places a human can step over. I searched around but felt the highest ground was at or near the edge of the field, rather than in the woods.