North Mountain
to North Point & North Mountain Ledge
Distance: 5.92 miles
Duration: 3:14
Elevation Min: 2224ft
Elevation Max: 3074ft
Elevation Gain: 850ft
Maps: We didn't have a map, but we used the instructions from http://catskillmountaineer.com/NSL-north.html (not including Ashley Falls).
Parking: NY DEC Parking at 42°12'2.51"N, 74° 3'30.39"W
One of my goals for this summer was to get out of NJ for a hike, and more specifically to finally go hiking up in the Catskills (2-2.5 hours away from me) and today I finally got to do it! The drive alone was breathtaking, especially on NY-23A while passing Kaaterskill Falls (definitely a hike for the future!).
We parked on the "Sleepy Hollow Horse Tail Parking" lot on Scutt Rd. and continued to follow the instructions from the link above. The website warned of the trail being wet, and it did not lie! We got an incalculable amount of rain in the past few days, so the majority of the hike was wet. Thankfully there were Lincoln Log-like bridges in the beginning and sufficient amount of rocks/roots to walk on to avoid the infamous "splash."
The sign marking the parking lot.
Coming out of Scutt Road this sign is to the left and the trail starts right after it.
The trail was incredibly well marked the entire hike with these markers (and later red, and later blue).
The wonderful "Lincoln Logs" as I was calling them.
The trail register. Maybe if somebody goes missing the authorities check here to see if they signed it?
The great thing about these trails were how easy they were to follow. Each trail was super clearly blazed and marked, and at each intersection they had these amazing signs (especially helpful for someone like me who doesn't own a map).
Following the very wet trail.
On a map back at the parking lot they were calling this area "Ledge Falls." Now I don't know if down the trail there was a large ledge with water falling over it, but for all intensive purposes we saw water falling over rock ledges.
Some more falling water.
And our little buddy! He wasn't scared of us at all.
From here we followed the trail until we reached the final junction of our hike with the blue trail. From there the trail begins to really ascend with a few bits of rock climbing, but again nothing too strenuous. After the first bit of shimmying up 6-ish feet of rocks we were greeted with the first taste of what we could see from the top! Both of us have only been hiking in New Jersey and Massachusetts so we had never really experienced anything over the 2000-foot mark so this first taste at roughly 2850 feet really wowed us, so we stopped for a quick snack before we finished the climb.
The final trail junction of the ascent!
The last .3 miles felt like nothing even though they were exclusively uphill.
There was really only one switchback on the hike, and it was marked and blazed very clearly.
This was the first view from an unnamed ledge, took our breaths away!
The final ascent was all uphill, but it went by fast because we were super excited after seeing the view from the ledge. The only truly difficult part was the very last part of the ascent up two tiers of rock which called for some creative climbing. The view from North Point was absolutely breathtaking. We could clearly see the Hudson River Valley (and river), and we pretended to figure out where MA and VT were. There was a hiker at the point enjoying the view so we continued our hike to North Mountain Ledge which wasn't too much further away. We followed the trail sign at North Point, passed by Pocket Hole Ledge and finally arrived at North Mountain Ledge (both unmarked) where we sat down to have lunch, and where a little friend decided my water bottle was home!
The two-tiered ledge/the last obstacle from the view!
The sign at North Point. We kept going towards Stoppel Point to give the hiker that was already at North Point some privacy and to give us some privacy when we have our lunch (and so we don't disturb any poor unfortunate souls to go past us).
Pocket Hole Ledge! Not much to see here except for some limited views of the same thing from the rock pictured.
The breathtaking view from North Mountain Ledge! It was an excellent picnic location.
One of the new friends I made this trip!
Coming back to North Point the views start immediately.
North Point in all of it's glory! It was beyond breathtaking and this picture does it no justice. Below is North/South Lake and Kaaterskill High Point, along with the Hudson Valley.
Can't miss the classic "We Did It!" photo!
After going back down the blue trail, onto the red trail, we finally made it back to the yellow trail back to the road.
We drifted away from the route the website took purely because we were tired and it was getting to be late in the day. The return trip was identical to the hike up, just everything up was now down (what a concept) and still very wet. Overall this was a great hike! Almost 6 miles and 850ft elevation gain, it wasn't anything too strenuous and most of the ascent was stretched out over the entire hike so there was no point of "just up." The views were incredible, and we made it back at the car at an adequate level of tired. What a great day.
We were even treated to the sunset off of Bear Mountain on Route 9W on the drive home.
Hike Summary:
- Left out of parking lot, left onto road, right onto yellow trail
- Yellow trail to red trail (to terminus)
- Red trail to blue trail
- Blue trail to North Point, and then to North Mountain Ledge
- Retrace route
No comments:
Post a Comment