Caledonia County Highpoint Trip Report

Signal Mtn

Date: August 11, 2008
Authors: Don Desrosiers and Roy Wallen

From the Butterfield Mountain summit (see report for Orange County), we headed east. When we finally hit the stream between Butterfield and Signal we stopped to read the previous trip reports. After careful consideration, primarily based on the words of Papa Bear and half the Hanson Brothers, we hit the dirt road again and walked to the crest, just past the second stream crossing.

From there it was a pretty straight north magnetic bearing up the ridge, following streams, mud flows, moose trails, and other sylvan byways, eventually following an old, quite overgrown woods road to the northwest of the 2759 spot elevation. From there, we continued on this old road to the small table just south of Signal (between 2759 point and Burnt). In the rain and fog we were pretty sure we had reached the top but were eventually persuaded of the error of our ways because of the lack of a register.

We kept walking uphill, eventually reaching what we knew to be the top. There was a register with many famous names therein. Never found the BM, but we did not look hard.

On the way back, we kept a fairly constant magnetic south bearing which may have been optimistic since the down seemed to be harder than the up. At one point we ended up in some fairly steep cliffs. Not pleasant, although they did serve to get us out of altitude quickly. We ended up coming out of the woods about 50 feet from where we went in.

Roy noted, upon taking off his boots, that his feet resembled prunes. Don took the reasonable route and threw away his socks rather than having to get an EPA permit in order to wash them. The free shower at Rickers Pond State Park campground was welcome.