[at-l] Trip report

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

I should have went hiking in the cold in wind on Saturday, but instead I
ended up heading out on Sunday with Bascom Grillmaster...
We headed for Rusk Mt, up near Hunter in the Catskills. Overcast and gray
wasn't so bad, but it started raining on the way up. Of course we didn't
even consider turning around <g>. The rain then mixed with snow, then
ended. After a drive through Spruceton on a much "boonier" road than I seem
to remember we reached the parking area. Since the clouds hung low and it
was still lightly raining or sleeting I decided to start out with the rain
gear, especially since Rusk is a bushwhack.
A great surprise in the register was that someone else was also heading for
Rusk that morning.
BTW, did I mention that there was some small amount of snow on the ground?
(ask Stitches, she'll vouch for my hikes <g>).
Short hike up the firetower road to the turnoff for the bushwack. Both the
guide and the map only show one drainage, and there appear to be at least
two on the ground.  We try to stick to the main one... things are slick but
the climb isn't too bad. We even start out following the other tracks, but
they wander around so much that we become concerned that they may be
hunters tracks not going where we want, so we start our own route upward.
About this time it starts to snow, but after a while we work our way
through the snow band and into the cloud band. No views here anyway, just
through the trees, and the cloud took care of that...
Eventually broke into the saddle at the top of the ridge, and hung a left
turn to try to find a route up through some ledges. We had come out much
closer to the summit that I thought we would, and met the two other guys at
the canister.
It's another typical Catskill peak where you could do a bit of wandering
around looking for the top, but the tracks the other guys had already made
up there would have been very helpful.
Didn't hang out long at the top, chilling off fast with some of the sweat
we generated on the way up. Put some more warm layers on and then headed
back out. Found a nice herd path for the way down, but it disappeared after
a quarter mile or so. Checked the compass bearing and figured we were
dropping off the summit ridge too soon, so we contoured around some more
and picked up the drainage again. I was duly impressed when we eventually
hit the trail right where we had left it, tho you could hardly miss with
the way the terrain is arranged.
Pretty short hike overall, but it was good getting out...

skeeter