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By Pamela Chergotis
“Look,” said Tom. “Another crazy bastard got here before us.”
We generally prefer to find trailhead parking lots empty. It’s not so much that we mind our fellow hikers (okay, we do) as hanker after the feeling, utterly sublime, of climbing into the lap of a mountain we have all to ourselves. But on this morning at the foot of Balsalm Lake Mountain, we’re glad to find someone’s gone ahead. The snow is deep, and even with snowshoes, a broken trail makes the difference between joy and drudgery.
Our hero signed the register as Matt Smith of Chatham. The indefatigable Mr. Smith plowed through the untamed snowpack alone. As we picked our way up the mountain in his footsteps, our admiration grew. Matt wore snowshoes instead of posthole-making boots, which drives us nuts. When he had to piss he walked six feet off trail and then kicked some snow over. (Pay attention, gentlemen!) We would have liked to thank Matt, but hoped we wouldn’t catch up with him in case he was inclined to have us share the work.
We prefer to hike Balsalm Lake Mountain in winter. At 3,720 feet, the mountain is among the tallest in the Catskills but has the easiest way to the top. It’s usually too short for a full day hike, but snow slows things down just enough. It’s in an especially remote section of the Catskills, and has a true backcountry feel. When the leaves are down, views of Graham and Doubletop mountains float over your right shoulder as you climb.
There’s no view on the summit unless you ascend a steel fire tower slick with ice and rocked by wind. If you succeed, you’ll be rewarded with the most sweeping panorama in the Catskills. But you don’t have to climb all the way to the top to get a little something, a small, thrilling look over the treetops. As you rise through a spiky ring of pointed firs and distant peaks, the temptation to continue up is intense. Maybe when spring comes.
As on most Catskill peaks, Balsalm fir dominates past the 3,500-foot marker. But this mountain is more thickly blanketed than any peak I can think of, other than maybe Slide. In the last half mile before the summit, the trail passes through a glorious colonnade of snow-covered fir that slowed my steps in wonder.
Sneak Peak
The hike: Quaker Clearing, at end of Beaverkill Road, Ulster County
Directions: Take Route 17 to Livingston Manor and follow signs for Lew Beach
Route: Follow Dry Brook Ridge Trail (blue blazes) north
Photo by Pamela Chergotis
By Pamela Chergotis
Tom and I sat atop a ridge along the Appalachian Trail to watch the storm come in. We knew the hills of Vernon were out there, but a thick gray mat hung overhead, concealing everything. The air pressed down on us. Something was coming.
We thought Irene would cause trouble at the shore. The usual images of boarded-up beach houses and storm-tossed marinas came to mind. But this hurricane proved to be a disaster of inland places. That thick gray mat held water, so much of it.
And when it fell, all at once, the quiet streams, the little trickles, swelled and raged, pushing boulders and trees before them.
Hiking since Irene just hasn’t been the same report. Sawhorses with “road closed” signs block the narrow mountain passes that lead to trailheads. Others you can get to only by picking your ankle-turning way through washouts, around blowdowns.
But one treasure has emerged unscathed from the wreckage. There’s really nothing more you can do to the Badlands, as the pitch pine barrens of the Shawangunk Ridge are called. Fire, ice, wind, rain have all had their way so completely, the rocks and plants left are perfectly suited to their time and place.
Geological time hasn’t yet finished with melting and tumbling the Catskills. But the Badlands have gotten past all of that messy living earth stuff and settled into a regal retirement.
Nothing protects this most exposed of ridges from the full onslaught of the sky. Water has already washed away the soil and soft rock, leaving great blocks of very hard, and stunning, white quartzite. Out of the quartzite fissures grow a fairytale forest of pitch pine. Most of these gnarly trees are under six feet tall. Some grow so low in their mania to adapt, they creep along the ledges like groundcover.
You can’t take a bad picture in the Badlands: the 180-foot Verkeerderkill Falls (in winter, minerals streak the icefall with pastel pinks, blues and greens); the 360-view at High Point, overlooking the Catskills; the oceans of blueberry plants that turn scarlet every fall.
The trail follows the ledge that rims the central ravine. The blazes sometimes fool you into thinking they run right off the ledge. But they never do.
Sneak Peak
The hike: Loop at Sam’s Point formed by the Long Path (teal), high Point Trail (red), High Point Carriageway, and parts of the Loop Road.
Trailhead: Nature Center at Sam’s Point Preserve, Cragsmoor
Blazes: Long Path, teal; High Point Trail, red
Length: 10 miles round-trip
By Pamela Chergotis
Hikers and walkers adhere to the same basic laws of locomotion, but there’s a world of difference between us. Walkers say things like, “How about we stretch our legs?” Or, “Let’s go this way for 20 minutes and then turn around.”
Hikers are not so well-adjusted. Before starting out we pore over topographical maps looking for some rugged feature of the landscape – a waterfall, a pond, a peak – where it would be pleasant to eat a sandwich. Addled by endorphins, we cross exposed ridges in lightning storms or hobble for miles on twisted ankles to get to some arbitrary spot on the map. If we don’t make it, we’re overcome by a sense of worthlessness impossible to explain to the walkers who worry about us.
Hikers will obsessively go after every peak in a mountain range, like the 46er Club in the Adirondacks or the Castskills’ 3500 Club. New Jersey hikers have a K1 Club that answers their wish for “those cool peakbagger decals…like they have in our more vertically blessed states.”
High Point, at 1,803 feet, is New Jersey’s highest prominence, but you wouldn’t know it from the trailhead. An obscure pull-off along Greenville Turnpike fits only two cars. There are no signs or trail registers, just a teal blaze and the start of a faint footpath. The overgrown track doesn’t see many feet, but this is wonderful – peakbaggers don’t often get a chance at solitude. After only a few hours’ walk up a gentle, forested slope, you’ll find yourself at the top, and see many natural wonders along the way.
The Dryden Kuser Natural Area, 300 feet below the summit, is sublime. A boardwalk carries you through a bog teeming with mosses, flowers, and stands of Atlantic white cedar, which you won’t find this high up or this far inland anywhere else. You’ll hate to leave this section of trail, but continue up the Shawangunk Ridge and you’ll be compensated with a series of sweeping overlooks to the west and east.
Yes, you can get to the top of this A-cup mountain in seconds by turning off Route 23 into High Point State Park. Among my persnickety hiking rules is: stay away from drivable mountains! Especially ones paved over with parking lots and restrooms. (You hear that, Whiteface?)
But we made an exception here. Tom and I stopped just short of the lot to peer at the scene through parted bushes. Visitors made their stiff-legged way in two streams, one toward the restrooms and one toward majestic High Point Monument. “I really need to stretch my legs!” declared one man as he stepped off the Colonial Musketeers Fife and Drum Corps bus.
Sneak Peak
The hike: High Point
Trailhead: Greenville Turnpike, Greenville, N.Y.
Blazes: Teal. This section is co-aligned with two long-distance trails, the Long Path and the Shawangunk Ridge Trail.
Length: 10 miles round-trip
By Pamela Chergotis
My husband Tom and I have long nurtured a fantasy about being on the lam. It’s not that we’re planning to knock over a bank or anything. We just like the idea of being on the move, dodging pursuers and living by our wits.
We decided we’d reconnoiter at the marble Curtis-Ormsbee monument on the back way up Slide Mountain. We picked it because it’s familiar and comforting. We could find our way there in the dark if we had to. It seems impossible that we could ever be frightened within the innermost folds of the Catskill Mountains.
And from there you can walk a very long way in any direction without crossing a road or seeing a house — perfect for fugitives, whether they’re running from the law or the grind of daily life. A section of trail is on the Long Path, which runs from Manhattan almost to Albany and connects with other long-distance trails like the Appalachian Trail and the Devil’s Path.
Slide is the tallest mountain in the Catskills, at 4,180 feet, it’s among the highest in the state.
But don’t let that intimidate you. Boy Scouts with pudgy thighs and old people leaning on sticks
make it to the top. Most hikers take the most direct trail up, but that way is boring. Save it for the way
down. I’m going to take you ’round the back, up the Curtis-Ormsbee trail, which is fi lled with delights. You’ll step out onto ledges with sweeping views you won’t get at the summit.
You’ll walk a path dusted with crushed quartz so improbable in this wilderness, so civilized, that early trailbook writers called it“the garden path.”
The trees stand tightly together on the trail’s higher section, casting a perpetual twilight. The shade and altitude will keep you cool when you’re breathing hard.
Take long, deep breaths because the best part is the balsam fi r that blankets the mountain starting at 3,500 feet.
The sun bakes the needles until they release their wild, pungent spice you won’t recognize from air freshener trees. The only way you’ll ever know it is to hike up the mountain on a day of radiating heat.
Sneak Peak
The hike: Slide Mountain
Trailhead: County Route 47.
Blazes: Yellow (Phoenicia-
East Branch Trail), Blue
(Curtis-Ormsbee Trail), then
Red (Wittenburg-Cornell-
Slide Trail)
Length: 5.1 miles
In eary Westerns, the Pocono Plateau stood in for the Rockies.
By Pamela Chergotis
The first American movies weren’t made in Hollywood. Thomas Edison established the world’s first movie studio in West Orange, N.J., in 1893, and for the next 20 years the fledgling industry drew from the theatrical talent already to be found in New York City. When story lines moved the action outdoors, early filmmakers looked for natural settings in the countryside just to the north.
D.W. Griffith picked the cliffs above Milford, Pa., for “The Informer,” a Civil War melodrama with a running time of 18 minutes. Mary Pickford played the sweetheart of a Confederate captain. Lionel Barrymore played a Union soldier.
The cliffs also had a part to play. In their most demanding role, in Westerns starring Tom Mix, these modest ledges were called upon to impersonate the Rockies.
The Rockies they’re not, but that’s fine with us. They’re close to home and, unlike peaks that are all rock and ice, the cliffs are beautifully forested while still giving that soaring-above-the-world feeling mountain hikers like me crave.
The National Park Service calls Cliff Park the eroded “eastern fringe of the Pocono Plateau,” and maintains a 2.7-mile trail that rises to nearly 900 feet as it follows the Delaware River from the Raymondskill Creek to Milford Knob. Short spur trails lead to ledges with extensive views of the river, Minisink Island, the floodplain, and, in the distance, Point Peter.
The park service plants the floodplain with corn and hedgerows to feed and shelter wildlife. The patchwork of striped fields are fun to photograph. Route 209, at the bottom of the cliff, is barely perceptible.
A short, steep climb from Raymondskill Road leads to the Cliff Park Trail, which then rolls gently for the rest of the way. It’s not very rugged and wide enough so that two or more people can walk side by side. It’s a good hike for when you want to get some talking in with your walking. The forest that slopes gently away from the ledges toward the historic Cliff Park Inn property on the other side is as much of an attraction as the riverside views.
The last overlook on the trail is Milford knob. The star that shines over Milford at Christmastime is bolted there.
From the knob, the borough retains its Currier & Ives look. Milford claims more than 300 buildings of architectural significance, and from the knob you can easily make out its most prominent examples — Forest Hall, the Pike County Courthouse, the Milford Schoolhouse. Cupolas abound. The fresh scars of new development dig into the surrounding hills.
You can also get to the cliff by climbing the 1.4-mile Milford Knob Trail from the North Contact station on Route 209.
We like to make the hike into a longer loop by combining the Cliff Park Trail with the Hacker’s Trail and Buchanan Trail. Hacker’s Falls always rushes, and the small pond encircled by the Buchanan Trail is a jewel.
If you haven’t been hiking all winter, Cliff Park is a good place to start — its ease and its many rewards will spur you on to more springtime adventures.
Trailhead: Raymondskill Road. From Route 6 in Milford, take Raymondskill Road south toward the Delaware River.
Blazes: White
Length: 5.4 miles
dirt 