Really fun week getting in my first mountain adventures of the year while exploring some new areas and trails. Hopefully just a start to what should be an epic summer.
Hike #1: Catskill Mountains of New York
After doing hiking in the Adirondacks, Green Mountains, Berkshires, Hudson Highlands, Acadia National Park and Baxter State Park in the last few years, the major flaw in my mountain resume was no trip to the Catskills. I can excuse this for 2018 as I was focused on high points, and maybe 2019 since I was injured and wanted to cross off a few bucket list hikes, but surely it was time to cross off an experience going to this range. While there's a few long bucket list hikes still on my list (Pemi Loop, Adirondacks GRT, Fundy Footpath), I mostly took care off the ones I really wanted to do in 2018 and 2019, which freed me from the feeling that I "had" to do certain hikes first.
There's a few hikes/mountains in central MA and NH still on my list (Major, Cardigan, Kearsarge, Wachusett), but I wanted something unique for my first hike of the year. CT finally reopened earlier in the previous week, so I planned this and asked hiking friend Matt to come with. Planned out a loop in Indian Head wilderness: starting from Prediger Road Trailhead, take roads to the Roaring Kill trailhead (unfortunately, but it was the only way to make this a loop) before switching onto Pecoy Notch trail (yellow blaze) for maybe a quarter mile, then take Mink Hollow trail (blue blaze) for 2-3 miles, about 500' gain. Rest of the hike would be on the iconic Devil's Path, red blaze where most of the gain would happen.
Drive over was a pretty reasonable 3.5 hours, catskills seem so far away but they're actually closer than the whites. I was a little tired on the drive, likely since Matt slept for the first 2.5 hours (besides the usual 4-5 hour sleep I normally get). Was glad to be on the road by 5am, usually the later you get going the worse the trip is (have to drive back at night). Cool but comfortable to start in the low 50s. It had been extremely foggy coming over and I was worried that the trail would be really wet and there would be no views. The no views I was actually worried about regardless as I knew most, if not all summits are tree-covered in the Catskills. Fortunately, in the last hour of the drive, it suddenly went from low visibility to completely clear skies. However, at the start, there were still clouds higher up.
Pretty boring 2.5 miles on the road. Matt's hiking pace has been really inconsistent. Sometimes he forges ahead and drops me, other times he lags far behind. I was pretty surprised that he was well ahead of me at the end of the road section. We got to the pecoy notch trail, took that for the short distance to the mink hollow trail and continues. My legs were absolutely burning from the climbing, and Matt got well ahead of me again. This was a little concerning, but made sense as it was my first true steep hills of the year. I found this trail to be somewhat poorly maintained and not very fun overall. We didn't actually get much of the elevation gain at all as we gained about 700 feet, then went back down another 300. I was glad to get to the Devil's Path, where the true start of the hike was.
Awesome 1200' climb up sugarloaf mountain (3806') in just 1.2 miles. Pretty brutal stuff, lots of technical rock scrambles. However, I was feeling much better from this point on and through the rest of the hike, we switched places here and I was well ahead of Matt. Some calf burning, but only from the steep grades and felt much more manageable. Eventually got to the top of the ridge, where the forest was pretty cool and the flat sections were very easy and non-technical. One of the least dramatic summits I've seen, neither of us realized we had gone through it until we started descending again. I wish there had been a summit marker. We came out to a pretty nice, albeit not-panaromic viewpoint. Interesting how the hills/mountains one directions were fully bloomed and green, whereas the trees out towards the higher elevations looked dead and wintry (no leaves).
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| Green leaves at the lower elevation, trees have no leaves higher up |
Good descent down sugarloaf, followed by a brutal climb up twin, 800 feet in .6 miles. The ascent was quite tough but again, very fun. Twin also had no summit marker, but there was a better viewpoint just after that. I was confused and actually thought I had summited Indian Head. Indian Head afterwards was fairly easy, another steep climb but much shorter. Twin summit is 3,652' and Indian Head is 3,573'. All three are Catskill High Peaks. Decent viewpoints here and there. Matt really lagged after that, I had to stop and wait for him frequently. Finished up the hike just over 6.5 hours with 3800 feet elevation gain, 13.6 miles. Feel like this was a decently hard longer hike, but felt so much better than I typically do on a 4 hour+ hike. Definitely credit some of that to generally solid trail running the past few months and decent mileage as opposed to the pretty much no running this time last year.
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| View near Twin summit, looking back at Sugarloaf |
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| Some cool terrain going up Twin |
Fun hike overall, would say the terrain and climbs were top notch. However, it is seriously lacking in views, a few solid viewpoints here and there, but overall nothing better than a 7/10 and no above treeline hiking or open summits, which is present in many other mountain ranges.
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| Best view near Indian Head mtn |
Well, I now am 3/35 on the Catskills High Peaks. The list of summits in mountain ranges is really cool and makes for a fun way to bag peaks and explore an area.
I'm 12/48 for white mountain 4000 footers, 12/50 for the high points and 1/46 adirondack high peaks. There's no official list for Acadia National Park as they're all really small, but I'm 3/30 or so on those. Lots of cool lists to work on the future, I probably won't make the catskills one a priority but it's something to think about. I did a little bit of filming, here's the video below:
(for some reason the only way to embed the video in my blog is to search for it on youtube, and I can't find it because my videos aren't popular at all)
Hike #2 (mini-hike):
Stopped by Storm King Mountain in the Hudson Highlands as it was literally on the way back, about an hour from the catskills. Like Acadia NP, it seems like the hikes in the Hudson Highlands are pretty short but have some phenomenal terrain and views. I checked out the general area doing Breakneck Ridge in 2018 (awesome!) and Bear Mountain in 2019 (not so awesome!). Storm King is directly across from Breakneck Ridge and the mountain looked really cool from the other side.
Matt was dogging it again, so I just went ahead early and texted him the route directions. Some really fun rocks to climb on and generally a very pleasant path to walk on. Amazing lookout at the summit, 1339' elevation, Matt was really far behind so the pictures of me were taken by leaving my phone in cracks in rocks and putting on a timer. Ran some of the downhills on the way back. Short (2.7 miles) hike but so fun. Funny how much better than the views were than the catskills despite working a lot less for them. This area seems awesome and I feel I could spend several days there. Got 700' feet gain or so which is surprising as this felt pretty easy.
Tuesday: 8 Miles
Easy morning around the pond with Dad. Watch dead from yesterday, Dad's watch died 6 miles in, had to post the dreaded manual. PM attacks have been much less of a problem lately, but had one on this run. 6:50s pace, overall felt solid, much better than expected post hike but legs struggling on the few uphills.
Wednesday: 10 Miles
Holyoke Range Traverse with Aiden. I had mapped out several routes with mountain running and this one had been on my list for a while. We actually meant to do this in March, but coronavirus happened and it was my first run with him (with anyone besides Dad/Brady) since the restrictions happened. This traverse is in western massachusetts, not quite out to the berkshires (just east of I-91). The first half of goes over the 7 sisters course, second half isn't quite as a tough but a good 700' climb up Norwottuck, which I had done with Dad in 2017 while visiting colleges.
Quite foggy and humid to start, the lack of views at each summit was disappointing but I was just glad the trails were dry, would have been a mess (many falls) if they weren't. Met Aiden at Harris Mtn road, where I picked him up and drove to Old Mountain road for the start. We really should have warmed up as the start begins with an immediate climb up Mt. Holyoke, 700' in the first mile or so. I got extremely tight on this, and felt horrible physically. There was a real lack of control, as I nearly faceplanted on the short descents mixed in there. It was quite bad, I was not smooth on anything. After stopping at the summit (also, apparently we crushed that climb as we went 1-2 on a segment going up, despite there being a race through there and an FKT) and taking a few minutes to stretch out, I felt much better and more controlled through the rest of the run. A ton of steep climbs and descents awaited us, I generally got a little ahead of Aiden on the downs, then he caught back up on the Ascents.
Crossed route 116 where the main visitor for Mt Holyoke range state park is (now in Amherst, started in Hadley). Aiden had stashed water there which felt amazing to drink since it was kinda hot and very humid. The next climb up Norwottuck was absolutely brutal, Aiden did quite well and beat me to the summit by 40s. I was still 50s faster than my 2017 run and top 10 on the leaderboard, so despite feeling so slow and hurting, I guess my climb was still solid. Not much ascent for the rest of the run, mostly descent. Got really far ahead of Aiden on the down and planned to wait at the final summit, but there wasn't really a clear summit and I ended up continuing all the way down to the parking lot. Was pretty tired on the short, final climb even though it was the easiest one yet. Pretty awesome run, I really like this area of Massachusetts. 3300 feet elevation gain or so. Tiring but not absolutely brutal.
https://www.relive.cc/view/vXvLY3m3g7O
Thursday: 8 Miles
Barn Island in the morning with Dad and Brady. Shirtless because it was so humid. Legs pretty heavy from the previous day, Dad dropped me several times. First run here in a while.
Friday: 9 Miles
Slept in and avoided pouring rain, waited to run in the evening. Slow, easy pace with Dad but still felt heavy.
Saturday: 13 Miles
Another trail run with Dad exploring new stuff (Buck Hill two weeks ago, Nehantic last week). I felt tired on both of those to some extent, but that was nothing compared to today. Very humid again, trails were also quite wet. Was pretty surprised just how technical and hilly the whole trail was, couldn't crack 10 minute pace on some sections (first mile was 11:05). Noticed early in the run that I had some shin discomfort- not too sure where that came from since I haven't felt in months but probably from the mountain stuff and not doing much rolling out/stretching.
Anyway, I started to feel like crap in the second half. Shin discomfort got worse, I fell a few times, legs weren't feeling very strong. Dad and Brady dropped me pretty hard at points. An ugly day for sure, but the worst was when the last 3 miles of the trail were closed and we had to finish on busy route 2. Shin hurt there and when I got to 13.1, my minimum standard for a long run, I called it and walked back.
Sunday: 8 Miles
Easy Ninigret stuff with Dad, utilized both the park and refuge. Shin felt way better although still uncomfortable on the pavement.
Weekly Total: 56 Miles
YTD Mileage: 1,433 Miles (on track for: 3,441 Miles)
Final May Mileage: 269 Miles, nothing special but not bad either
Weekly Highlight: Monday's and Wednesday's return to mountain bagging.
Weekly Lowlight: Shin discomfort coming back and feeling like garbage on Saturday.
Movies Watched: The Invisible Man, Terminator: Dark Fate
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