Had a special request to hike a pair of Catskill mountains with my buddy Jim today, to complete his goal of hiking the 200 hundred highest peaks in the Catskills. To make it more interesting, we decided to throw in a third peak and a spotted car to do a one way, longer traverse. Our goal was to hike up to Hunt Hill, then over to Cabot Mountain, and finally to Touchmenot Mountain before dropping down to our spotted car at the entrance to Little Pond Campground. Our starting point was at 1300 feet elevation along BWS Road #8 on the south side of the Pepacton Reservoir, where a narrow corridor leads to state land.
Walking the line..we headed steeply up the state land boundary, complete with barbed wire.
Higher up along the barbed wire boundary line in a deep hemlock grove. Conditions were great, as there was only about an inch of snow atop a crusty underlying snow which we were able to walk upon.
As always, we found interesting rock formations on the slopes of the peak.
A passing snow squall blurred our view through the trees to the north over the reservoir towards Perch Lake Mountain.
The climb up Hunt Hill's slopes was quite steep, as we gained over 1000 feet in less than 3/4 of a mile.
After emerging from the dark hemlocks, we hit a hardwood forest, where all of the branches were locked in a coating of ice.
Hitting the 2350 wooded summit of Hunt Hill. The wintry conditions made up for the lack of any significant views.
The woods at this elevation took on a fairy tale feel, with ice and snow coating nearly everything.
Beech leaves provide a nice contrast to the colorless winter scene.
From Hunt Hill, we followed the ridge east to an adjoining parcel of state land. This was a long ridge walk, climbing up and over a 2311 foot bump, then turning SE and steadily ascending up towards Cabot's false summit.
As we climbed up Cabot's 2910 foot NW peak, we began to hit the only are of significant blowdown we found all day.
The open, snowy woods atop the NW peak of Cabot.
Continuing off the NW summit bump, we head through more icy hardwoods.
Between the NW summit and the true summit, we ran smack dab into a red blazed DEC trail, which brought us right up towards Cabot's true summit.
The trail passes unceremoniously over the 2970 foot summit of Cabot Mountain, where the snow depth got its deepest at a fluffy 4 or 5 inches, atop a hard crust.
With clearing skies above, the gorgeous trail atop Cabot's summit ridge was absolutely beautiful.
At the far south end of the summit ridge, at a bend in the trail, is a rock ledge with a view.
From the ledge, the view SE over Little Pond towards Mongaup's peaks in the distance is spectacular.
A 60 foot drop from the ledge means good footing is a must. As we enjoyed the vista for a couple of minutes, the clouds began to break...unveiling a different look.
The descent off Cabot's summit ridge is nothing short of scary in icy conditions, which is exactly what we were facing on the way down. This part of the trail felt surprisingly similar to the Devils Path, complete with red trail markers. We were forced to butt slide down in a couple of particularly steep, icy spots.
Through the bare trees, we were able to capture a small glimpse of our last peak of the day, Tocuhmenot Mountain, sitting about one mile away.
As we dropped to under 2500 feet on a nice land bridge between the peaks, we left some of the harsher wintry conditions behind.
At a trail junction, we left he red blazed trail and followed the blue marked trail up towards the summit. An easy, uneventful climb brought us up to Touchmenot's 2762 foot wooded summit, which sits a mere 10 feet off trail. Peek a boo views through the trees were the best we could find up here. This was, however, Jim's completion of the 200 hundred highest peaks in the Catskills.
The drop off Touchmenot's summit was much more gentle than Cabot's as we followed the trail down the long south ridge.
Just off trail we spotted a rock wall, a Catskill staple.
A short bushwhack brought us out to the shore of Little Pond. From the beach area, we caught a nice glimpse north at Cabot's south ridge along the water and summit area that we had just been on in the distance.
We explored the campground area a bit, passing by a pretty dam at the outlet of the pond.
Followed the park access road the rest of the way out to the spotted car on Big Pond Road. Hiked about 7.5 miles RT with 2100 feet of ascent. Congrats to my buddy Jim on hitting the 200 highest Catskill peaks! Glad I could be there with him on this one!
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