A Family Fun Fest at Cathedral Gorge
The Catskills Geologists; The Mountain Eagle; Oct. 2019.
Robert and Johanna Titus
Our grandchildren are getting older now and they live so far away. We don’t do as many things with them as in the past. It’s been a pleasure to watch them grow up, but we do miss past activities. One of those was going to the Fall Family Fun Fest at the Ashokan Center in the town of Olivebridge, adjacent to the Ashokan Reservoir. The Center is an outdoor education organization run by famed musicians Jay Unger and Molly Mason. You might remember them for the music they composed and played for several of Ken Burns’ programs on PBS. The Center has a 385-acre campus and schedules frequent residential and day programs about the natural sciences along with equally frequent music and dance camps, concerts and art exhibitions. We sometimes find ourselves down there even without grandchildren.
This year’s (2019) Fun Fest will be on Sunday, Oct. 20. Family fun is just exactly that: There will be food, crafts, apple cider making, pumpkin painting, face painting and of course music by Jay and Molly and friends. There will also be nature hikes and that is where the geology comes in. We have known Jay and Molly for years and they, long ago, encouraged us to explore Cathedral Gorge, the scenic centerpiece of the Ashokan Center. Cathedral Gorge is just as scenic as its name implies. It witnesses the flow of the Esopus Creek through a rock walled canyon for quite a downstream distance. And you even have to cross an old covered bridge to get there.
We were invited to come down there last summer and lead their team of outdoor educators through the gorge. They wanted to learn its geological history so they would be able to include that when they lead groups on their own. And that will include Family Fun Fest. You can go for a guided tour down the gorge at 11:00 or at 3:00.
We don’t want to spoil anything but let’s talk just a little about what you are going to see. You won’t go far before you are likely to notice that Cathedral Gorge is called a gorge for a good reason. Esopus Creek, right there, is indeed squeezed into a steep rock walled canyon. It’s so easy to dismiss such a thing as just being a pretty landscape. But our columns have, all along, been aimed at training your geological eyes. When we look at such a landscape, we also look into its past. We know a thing or two about Esopus Creek. That creek has had its moments in time–geologic time.
Once, perhaps about 14,000 years ago, there was a great ice age lake filing most of the Schoharie Creek Valley. The lake rose up so high that it began draining through Stony Clove and down Stony Clove Creek and on into the Esopus Creek. As the glaciers were melting, that flow accelerated to become a huge torrent. Pause on your tour of Cathedral Gorge and look upstream. Imagine how much water was cascading down this canyon at just that moment. It’s quite an image. Powerful flows must have nearly filled the canyon. And it provides us with an explanation of how Cathedral Gorge got to be there. It was eroded by this flow.
Contact the authors at randjtitus@prodigy.net. Join their facebook page “The Catskill Geologist.” Read their blogs at “thecatskillgeologist.com”
