Trip: Catskills 4000-footers

Dates: 10/30/15 – 11/1/15

Attended By: Nate Swain and TJ Johnston

Written By: Nate Swain

On Friday, October 30 TJ and I left Paul Smith’s at about 5:00p.m., and began the long drive south towards the Catskill Mountains. We only stopped once for food and a break, and we reached the trailhead parking lot for Slide Mountain at about 10:00p.m. We set up a tarp over the bed of my pickup truck to use as a tent, tying it around the frame. Just as we were about to call it a night, a truck drove into the lot. Several people embarked on the trail, starting at about 11:00p.m., carrying large packs and wearing head lamps. We slept in the back of the truck, which worked about as well as could be expected – the night was mediocre at best. I didn’t get a lot of sleep, and TJ got even less, but we stayed dry and relatively free of wind.

That morning, we woke up around 6:00a.m. to begin our day. We took our time getting ready, and as it was only about 25 degrees Fahrenheit when we woke up, we spent a little time sitting in the cab of the truck to warm up. We got onto the trail about 6:45. It was still dark at that point, and my head lamp was getting dim – I should have changed the batteries before the trip, but I didn’t realize they were so low. We made it about a half mile along the trail by the time it got light enough to see without the lamps, and soon after we hit a point in the trail where it joins an old road. From there, we continued on past the normal path, to a point where TJ had done some rock work on a bridge with the Adirondack Mountain Club trail crew a few years ago. We filled our water bottles there, took a quick break, and continued on.

By about 8:30 that morning, we were within a mile of the summit. The trails on these mountains are nothing like the Adirondacks – loose shale is the rule, and the going is slow on steeper parts. What’s weird is that the terrain is either vertical or completely flat. Short bursts of steep uphill are followed by long stretches of level ground. It just goes to show what happens when an entire mountain range results from a single plateau being carved out over millions of years.

We summited Slide Mountain at about 9:30a.m. When we got to the top, the group that had left in the middle of the night had a campfire burning. They had camped out on the summit, and were just waking up to make some breakfast. The views from the summit were pretty impressive. The terrain is completely different from anything I’ve seen before, and we were far enough south that several of the trees still had their multicolored fall foliage. We only spent a little time at the top, then headed back down. We took a different trail on the way down, and it was terrible in comparison with the one we had taken to get up. Loose chunks of shale littered the path, and both TJ and I nearly took several tumbles because of it.

We got back to the trailhead by 11:00, got on the road, and made it to the Hunter Mountain trailhead by about 11:40. We stopped briefly to eat some lunch, then got on our way. The trail’s stats were ominous – 2,200 feet vertical gain in 2.6 miles – insinuating that it would likely be a short, relatively steep ascent.  We were wrong. The first three quarters of a mile was completely flat, and the next half mile only increase in elevation slightly, maybe 500 feet, meaning we had 1,700 feet to gain in elevation over the course of just a mile and a third. When the grade did finally pick up, it was rough. It took us an hour and a half to travel just three quarters of a mile after that point, and in that time we climbed about 1,200 feet. When we finally hit the sign that said we were at the 3,500-foot elevation mark, we still had a little over a half mile left. At that point, the trail actually increased in grade.

We finally summited the mountain at about 2:30p.m. We spent plenty of time on the summit, enjoying the sun and eating some food. We headed down starting at about 3:00, and took our time on the steep, rocky trail. Early on though, TJ hit a loose piece of shale and took a pretty hard fall onto a sharp rock. It took a minute or two to recover, but we were on our way again shortly. The way down was probably in my top-five miserable hike-outs, just because the trail was so loose, wet, and steep. We finally got out around 4:30, got in the truck, and drove to TJ’s parent’s house a few hours north. There, we had dinner and went to the Common Roots Brewery taproom. We filled our growlers, then retired to the house for Cards Against Humanity and beer.

Sunday morning, we woke up and went to breakfast, then drove back to campus. It was a great weekend for both of us to finish the last two 4000-footers in New York State!