(no subject)
All in all, a very pleasant weekend. We drove up to the Catskill mountains early Saturday morning, getting on route 28 in Kingston, driving about 20 miles northwest. Then we found the campsite (Kenneth L. Wilson) with some difficulty, for it's location on all the topo maps, and the coordinates I programmed into my GPS turned out to be incorrect, and we had to drive about three more miles to the east. The campsite turned out to be very nice, with a real beach, nice flat camping spots and plenty of room between the spots. Interesting note: the DEC reserves camping spots in most campgrounds for a minimum of two nights, but even though we stayed only one night, it was still a bargain at $17 per night. In exchange, you get a flat camping spot, a cement fireplace with a metal grid, a real bathroom nearby, and a shower cabin. You have to either buy firewood, or collect dead and fallen trees in the camp ground.
After we registered, we took off on a general overview of the area. We were in the Ulster county part of the Catskills, four miles south of Phoenicia on route 28. I took my friends up route 42, which branches off route 28 in Shandaken. In my opinion, it is one of the prettiest roads through the Catskills, passing through several mountainous corridors, with Balsam mountain on one side, and Halcott mountain on the other. The road passes through a shaded, dark tunnel with trees on both sides overhanging from the steep walls of the pass. Then we turned onto a small local county route number six, and proceeded to the town of Spruceton, where we parked and entered the Hunter Mountain trail. In about two hours we hiked up from 2188' to 4040' of elevation above sea level, and walked about 3.4 miles. Along the way we encountered some magnificent views of the Catskills, but because it was raining heavily,and it was very foggy, we could not see far. We were decked out in nice ponchos, and had good hiking boots on, so we enjoyed relative dryness. There were a couple of lean-tos (little wooden huts erected by the Department of Environmental Conservation for hikers to camp in) but they are so dirty and small, I'd rather pitch my tent outside. Perhaps they provide some protection from the elements, but they don't look welcoming at all. When we reached the summit, the rain turned even colder, the temperature up there was 49 degrees, and the wind intensified quite a bit. There was a fire tower there, about five stories tall, but because of the fog, there was no use climbing it. Now, we were on the summit of the Hunter Mountain, but there were no chair lifts there, because what most people take for the real Hunter Mountain is a skiable branch of it a mile away, which is a couple of hundred feet lower. We were on top of the *real* Hunter Mountain :) So we went down the mountain on a different trail, which looped around for about 5.6 miles, leading us back to our car. As I always observed before, going down, especially on rocky, uneven paths, is even more difficult than going up, if not on one's lungs then on his legs. We passed a beautiful, secluded waterfall, and that made up for whatever discomfort our legs felt. In our hike up and down we only met six people, on one of the most popular hiking trails in the Catskills. I guess rain had something to do with that, but the woods are so beautiful in the rain!
After nine miles of hardcore hiking, we tried some fishing, but whatever trout was suspected living in the West Kill did not want to come near us. So we went back to the camp to setup tents and cook dinner. Now, for cooking and warmth you need a lot of wood. With a closed iron stove inside a house, four logs can keep you nice and warm a whole night, but for an open fire, you got to stock up on a dozen big logs for a few hours. And chopping those logs can be quite labor-intensive. It took us about an hour to saw, and chop up enough wood for one night. Thankfully, we had a downed tree right next to our camping spot. I sawed off two big logs from it, only to discover that the wood was too freshly fallen to split with an axe. Well, maybe if I had a bigger ax than my hatchet, we would have split it, but as it was, we had to contend with narrower trunks, sawed into two-foot long logs.
We grilled some kebabs and had a great dinner, illuminated by the lights of my car. Next time I am bringing a propane lantern and a small primus. But not for real wilderness carry-in trips, because for those you really do want to minimize the amount of portables on yourself, so as to conserve energy to be able to chop more wood later.
We polished off a bottle of vodka, and flossed all important questions of philosophy, finally agreeing that nihilism was not viable in the framework of bare natural survival, where basic instincts kick in. We areed that the concept of self-enclosed super-ego was unnatural, and that every living creature could produce a grammar parsable by any other living creature. And of course we sang in Russian. I realize how much I love my friends, and how lonely I am, having nobody to share my tent with.
After we registered, we took off on a general overview of the area. We were in the Ulster county part of the Catskills, four miles south of Phoenicia on route 28. I took my friends up route 42, which branches off route 28 in Shandaken. In my opinion, it is one of the prettiest roads through the Catskills, passing through several mountainous corridors, with Balsam mountain on one side, and Halcott mountain on the other. The road passes through a shaded, dark tunnel with trees on both sides overhanging from the steep walls of the pass. Then we turned onto a small local county route number six, and proceeded to the town of Spruceton, where we parked and entered the Hunter Mountain trail. In about two hours we hiked up from 2188' to 4040' of elevation above sea level, and walked about 3.4 miles. Along the way we encountered some magnificent views of the Catskills, but because it was raining heavily,and it was very foggy, we could not see far. We were decked out in nice ponchos, and had good hiking boots on, so we enjoyed relative dryness. There were a couple of lean-tos (little wooden huts erected by the Department of Environmental Conservation for hikers to camp in) but they are so dirty and small, I'd rather pitch my tent outside. Perhaps they provide some protection from the elements, but they don't look welcoming at all. When we reached the summit, the rain turned even colder, the temperature up there was 49 degrees, and the wind intensified quite a bit. There was a fire tower there, about five stories tall, but because of the fog, there was no use climbing it. Now, we were on the summit of the Hunter Mountain, but there were no chair lifts there, because what most people take for the real Hunter Mountain is a skiable branch of it a mile away, which is a couple of hundred feet lower. We were on top of the *real* Hunter Mountain :) So we went down the mountain on a different trail, which looped around for about 5.6 miles, leading us back to our car. As I always observed before, going down, especially on rocky, uneven paths, is even more difficult than going up, if not on one's lungs then on his legs. We passed a beautiful, secluded waterfall, and that made up for whatever discomfort our legs felt. In our hike up and down we only met six people, on one of the most popular hiking trails in the Catskills. I guess rain had something to do with that, but the woods are so beautiful in the rain!
After nine miles of hardcore hiking, we tried some fishing, but whatever trout was suspected living in the West Kill did not want to come near us. So we went back to the camp to setup tents and cook dinner. Now, for cooking and warmth you need a lot of wood. With a closed iron stove inside a house, four logs can keep you nice and warm a whole night, but for an open fire, you got to stock up on a dozen big logs for a few hours. And chopping those logs can be quite labor-intensive. It took us about an hour to saw, and chop up enough wood for one night. Thankfully, we had a downed tree right next to our camping spot. I sawed off two big logs from it, only to discover that the wood was too freshly fallen to split with an axe. Well, maybe if I had a bigger ax than my hatchet, we would have split it, but as it was, we had to contend with narrower trunks, sawed into two-foot long logs.
We grilled some kebabs and had a great dinner, illuminated by the lights of my car. Next time I am bringing a propane lantern and a small primus. But not for real wilderness carry-in trips, because for those you really do want to minimize the amount of portables on yourself, so as to conserve energy to be able to chop more wood later.
We polished off a bottle of vodka, and flossed all important questions of philosophy, finally agreeing that nihilism was not viable in the framework of bare natural survival, where basic instincts kick in. We areed that the concept of self-enclosed super-ego was unnatural, and that every living creature could produce a grammar parsable by any other living creature. And of course we sang in Russian. I realize how much I love my friends, and how lonely I am, having nobody to share my tent with.