[at-l] Catskill Trip report

[hudsom at us.ibm.com (Mark Hudson)]

Well, after a ugly week at work I decided that I absolutely had to be out,
so despite some shakey weather reports I headed out for a Catskill day hike
on Saturday.

Drove up outside Tannersville, and found out there was a bridge out on the
road to the trailhead. Want to guess which side of the bridge I was on?
Fortunately it only took about 10 minutes to drive around.
Hit the trailhead just after 9 am, one other car in the parking lot. Headed
up to Twin Mt, overcast and extremely high humidity (like Florida?) but
only about 70 degrees. Hit Twin, no views, back down the slick rock and
over Sugarloaf to have lunch at the Mink Hollow lean-to. Clouds starting to
lift and some very warm sun shining through. Up a nice steep climb to
Plateau Mt, back track to Mink Hollow, and circle around Sugarloaf to get
back to the trailhead.
What I've left out is that the Catskills are the only place I've ever hiked
where you want crampons in the summertime. Much of the geology is shale;
slick, wet shale. By the time I took the fifth flyer on my butt (insert
expletives here!) it was getting rather old....
There's also plenty of water, no drought this year in the Catskills. There
must have been a good size storm lately too, since there were plenty of
branches down that still had green leaves on them. There was plenty of
standing water on the route back, and by far the safest thing to do was
slog straight through rather than rock hopping on the slick shale, so slog
it was. Unfortunately some of the slick stuff underwater couldn't be seen,
just to keep things interesting.
I don't really know what the miles added up to, making it out about two pm
after hiking pretty continuously. Plenty of altitude change, my knees were
feeling it.
BTW, has anyone else noticed that when they place the "No Camping Beyond
This Point" sign at the 3500 foot level, there's always a great camping
spot about 10 feet higher up???

skeeter