Halcott.... I could swear i read on Catskill Trail Conditions someone complaining that the southern branch of the loop i did was overgrown and difficult to follow. I must be wrong because i did the northern side of the loop up and found that to be the case. So it you want a good bushwhacking challenge, go up the spine like i did. The herd path is good for about 1/3 of a mile, then is disappears until your reach the ridge. It has been ages since I've done a bushwhack, so it was a good change of pace.
The next peaks I am going to do will start the bushwacks. First up, I'll be doing Bear Pen and Vly. These 2 are described as relatively easy as it starts off with woods road and then it's snowmobile tracks to Bear Pen and following the park border the opposite side to vly. I can come in to that ridge "trail" from the north or the south, and I believe I' will do it from the north as it allows me to get to Halcott easier. The only issue I'm having with map planning is that these are not trails so I'm relying on someone's All Trails GPS tracks for how to do these,
So, the weekend didn't go completely as planned.... The weather flipped on us (as far as forecast) so we did the joint hike on Saturday. We got to the trailhead just as it got filled up. The hike in to the col between Blackhead and Black Dome was a rather nice hike. We stopped on the way up at the spring to make sure our bladders were full as we weren't expecting water until on the way down. We then made it up to the col, turned right, and headed up Black Dome and Thomas Cole. Overall, not a bad climb....
So, this weekend looks like it is going to be pretty free for hiking. Saturday looks to be iffy weather in the form of light rain, and Sunday looks to be good weather. So, my plans are to do a few hikes this weekend to add to the 35er count. So, I'm going to start with some of the bushwack trails. First up will be Bearpen and Vly. These 2 are not really much of a bushwack from what I've read. Going in from the south, the herd path to Vly is following the state park border. Bearpen is turning the other way and following snowmobile trails.
Today, we did Balsam Mountain. It was another humid day, but the mountain was mostly leafed out and it was a rather shady trail up. Overall, it was a lovely hike and the trail was in pretty good shape. There were a couple muddy spots and a couple blow downs on the trail, but that's par for the course. The view of the day was about 1/2 mile before the top, and what a lovely view of the valley it was. Bugs thankfully were not that bad. A little bit of swarming on the way up, but once spray was re-applied at the overlook, it wasn't a problem on the way down.
Saturday May 14, Michael and I went up the Tremper Mountain Fire Tower. The day was very muggy, and that slowed me down some on the way up. Overall, it was a forest road the whole way up once you reached the register. Down low the trees were fully leafed out, but near the top you started to see the trees not fully out, which gave some lovely views to the neighboring mountains on the trail. As I said, it was an old forest road which meant that it was extremely rocky for most of the trail, and on top of that, it wasn't solid rock, there were a lot of them that shifted
Sunday, I went south and did a couple lovely fire towers. First up was a 2.5 hour drive to Balsam Lake via Beaverkill Rd. There are 2 ways up this mountain, so you can do it as a lollypop loop. The trail itself is in rather good shape, and apart from a couple spots of mud and a bit of water on one of the steeper parts, it was a dry trail. I went up the easy way, going straight when the trail to the tower breaks off to the left. This took me up a valley between Balsam Lake and Graham and Doubletop mountains (2 of the 35'ers that are on private land and curr
Today, I did Overlook Fire Tower making it the first of the Fire Tower Challenge. The entire hike is a forest road, so dirt and gravel. The 2.3 miles up is really not that difficult, but being the start of the season for me, I did take my time, still averaging closer to 2 mph on the way up than I expected. The leaves were not out yet, so the views through the trees into the heart of the Catskills and the peaks I will be hiking at some point, likely this summer. I got to the top about 3 and climbed the fire tower. The gate was open so you could climb, but the pl
So, there are a lot of hiking challenges in New York. the biggest ones are of course the 46ers and 3500 in the Adirondacks and Catskills respectively. Those 2 hit all the highest mountains in those regions. One that is often overlooked is the Fire Tower challenge though. Back before modern technology, it was common practice to build towers on top of mountains so that a ranger could look over the area and spot wild fires before they got out of control. Many of these towers have fallen to ruins and have disappeared to just memories and a few random bits of steel