Normal Rockman: Catskill Mountains Long Path Traverse: Trip 3 (Sections 23-25)

Backpacking in the Catskill Mountains: Long Path Sections 23-25

On the eastern edge of the Catskill Mountains lies the Catskill Escarpment, a 10 mile, 3,000+ foot cliff looming over the low-lying Hudson River Valley. If you've ever driven up the New York State Thruway, you've seen the Escarpment jutting starkly to the west. Long Path sections 23-25 traverses significant parts of the Escarpment, weaving through the remains of a historic hotel, circumventing a glacially carved lake, summiting balsam capped high peaks, and passing an impressive number of glacially plucked ledges, often offering expansive views of the Hudson Valley.

At a Glance

Trail Type: Point-to-point

Time: 2 to 3 days

Mileage: 22 miles

Elevation Gain: 6400 feet

Catskill High Peaks: Blackhead and Windham High Peak

Start: Harding Road Trailhead, Palenville, NY (https://goo.gl/maps/gvtJvC9SYDsmzKsA8)

End: Escarpment Trailhead, Windham, NY (https://maps.app.goo.gl/ukrN8pANs9ZYiSJt5)

Trip Dates: 9/3/23-9/4/23

Water Availability: solid, water flowing in expected places

Trail Overview

These final sections of the Long Path (LP) within the Catskills pick up where the previous finished: the Harding Trailhead at the base of the deeply carved Kaaterskill Clove on 23A in Palenville. These LP sections largely overlap with the better-known Escarpment Trail, with the only real difference being that the Long Path starts within Kaaterskill Clove, whereas the Escarpment Trail typically starts 2000 feet above the Clove's base, up at North-South Lake. Strangely and somewhat irritatingly for someone who enjoys the sweet satisfaction of geographically coherent backpacking routes, the Escarpment Trail doesn't actually run the full length of the Catskills Escarpment. You'd have to start much further south, near Overlook Mountain in Woodstock, for the real deal. I'd like to do the full traverse some day.

Anyway, these LP sections start at the base of 1 of the 3 major breaks in the Catskills Escarpment: Kaaterskill Clove. The trail climbs up from the clove to the former site of the once-famous Catskill Mountain House at North-South Lake. Glacially exposed ledges and deposited erratics abound in this area and the LP passes a multitude of them, often providing iconic views of the Hudson Valley to the east. From North-South Lake, the LP climbs up to North Point and Stoppel Point feet before descending down to Dutcher Notch around 2,500 feet. The trail then ascends another ridge and minor peak, Arizona Mountain, before summiting Blackhead Mountain, one of the highest peaks in the park at 3,940 feet. Dropping down over a thousand feet, the trail pushes along the northern most ridgeline of the Catskills, passing iconic views of the Blackhead Range from Acra Point and Burnt Knob, before summiting Windham High Peak at 3,524 feet. From here, it's a short jaunt down to the Escarpment Trailhead on Route 23A in Windham.

Trip Report

Day 1:

We did this route in 2 days, as neither the mileage nor the elevation are too bad (barring the initial ascent) along this route, but doing it in 3 days is also very sensible. My cousin and her husband met us at our finish point in Windham and drove us to the starting trailhead on 23A to do the first few miles of hiking with us. The initial ascent is a steep but well graded climb up the north side of Kaaterskill Clove, about 3 miles and 1600 feet of elevation, and we were sweating profusely most of the way up. The trail meets with Schutt Road just below the summit of South Mountain, turns east, and in a little under a mile reaches Boulder Rock (one of the nicer glacial erratics in town) and the first tremendous view from the Wall of Manitou. A little further on brings you to North-South lake where you'll first encounter a large grassy expanse, the former site of the Catskill Mountain House, and some stunning views out towards the Hudson Valley. This is a very popular area and you're sure to see plenty of people. We took some pictures here and then moved on to North Lake where we decided to head over to the beach, take off our shoes, and have lunch. After packing up, we followed the trail north to loop up around North-South Lake and ascend North Mountain, which passes several nice [glacially plucked] ledges with more tremendous views, including Artists Rock, Sunset Rock, and Newman's Ledge. This is a great area for observing geology: I've already touched on the glacially deposited erratics and the glacially plucked ledges, but it's worth noting that North-South Lake is itself the result of glacial scouring when a glacier climbed up the Escarpment from the Hudson Valley sometime between 15-20,000 years ago during the Wisconsin Glaciation. Keep your eyes peeled for glacial striations as well--scratch marks left in the bedrock by rocks embedded in the bottom of glacial ice as it scraped its way through the area. There are also great places to observe stratified bedrock which showcase distinctive layers, alternating between mudstone, sandstone, and conglomerates. Of particular note are areas where you can see a shift in strata between sandstone/mudstone and conglomerates--a change in depositional environment suggestive of a shift in the placement of one of the massive braided river channels which deposited the ~365 million year old sediments which ultimately formed the Catskills. Ok, enough of that. We topped out at North Point, which offers a great view back of North-South Lake and the Escarpment parading back to the south. If you're doing the trail in 3 days, consider following the trail a bit further to find some primitive campsites to set up shop. Remember not to leave a trace--this is a common day hike and has undergone enough trauma as it is. We stopped for a snack and drank some water before pressing on.

Me and Ivy at Sunset Rock (left) and view south from North Point (right)

Lunch spot at North Lake (left) and a great change in depositional environment (right)

From North Point, we pressed further along the Escarpment another 3.5 miles before dropping steeply down to Dutcher Notch at 2500 feet. This is a pleasant stretch of trail which doesn't ask too much of you and also offers 2 good viewpoints at Stoppel Point and Milt's Lookout. Stoppel falls just short of being able to claim the title of a Catskill High Peak (>= 3500 feet) but that doesn't stop it from having a nice view. Just beneath Stoppel you'll also find the remains of a plane crash. I'm not sure what the history is but it probably wasn't a fun time. Once we hit the trail junction at Dutcher Notch we shot down east to collect water at a pretty reliable spring about 0.5 miles down the trail. A bit of a haul for water with more vert than we would have liked, but so it goes. And it was worth it because we ended up running into a woman, Destiny, who was leading/guiding a camping group down at Colgate Lake. Ivy, being the amazing girlfriend that she is, and knowing that I was interested in doing something like this but was too shy to directly ask about it, asked Destiny if I could get her contact info and talk to her about getting involved. Writing about this trip some 6 months later, I can proudly say that I am an official member of the Destination Backcountry Adventure (DBA) team and participated on my first guided camping trip as an apprentice back in early February. Thanks again, stink.

After filling up our water and saying goodbye to Destiny, we hopped back up to the Dutcher Notch junction in the rays of the lowering sun, becoming more aware of our limited time to find a campsite. If you're doing this in 3 days, I'd recommend pushing on to Batavia Kill Lean-to. Doing it in just 2 days here, we had 3 options:

1. climb up 1500 feet to Blackhead and drop another 1000 feet down to Batavia Kill Lean-to, about a 3 mile trip (not Batavia Kill Shelter--which sounds like a place you never want to go if you are a dog)

2. find a place to primitive camp (below 3500 feet) on the ridge before Blackhead

3. Camp at Colgate Lake where Destiny and the DBA crew were

Having already gone about 10.5 miles and done 3400 feet elevation, we were not looking forward to the idea of going up and over Blackhead and at the time I wasn't even aware of campsites at Colgate (nor would I have wanted to crash the DBA party), so we elected for option 2: shoot up to Arizona Mountain and the ridgeline before Blackhead. I remembered this area from a previous trip of the Escarpment Trail back in 2021 and recalled areas that seemed suitable for primitive camping. Since we only had a single 2p tent to negotiate, this ended up being even more plausible. On the climb up Arizona we caught another nice view back at the Escarpment Trail (with the Devil's Path off in the distance) and were then caught off guard by how nice and grassy the area around Arizona Mountain is, especially in the fading sunlight. We found a spot to set up camp in the shoulder beneath Arizona and Blackhead, made some dinner, sniffed each other, and decided we'd wake up early to catch a sunrise at Blackhead, where I knew there should be good views.

Day 2:

On day 2, Ivy and I woke up early to pack up camp and summit Blackhead to watch the sunrise from Camp Steele. The view from up here is great--the mid Hudson Valley, Albany, the Taconics...we unpacked, set up breakfast, and drank coffee, soaking it all in. It was all incredibly pleasant. It was chilly to start and there was something between a breeze and a wind pushing wispy clouds over our heads, but both the clouds and our chill quickly dissipated in the growing sunlight. Once we had had our fill, we descended Blackhead to the Batavia Kill junction, which is a particularly steep and fairly technical section. I hopped down to Batavia Kill proper to refill some water and we set back off north along the LP, through about 2 miles of simple but beautiful trail which brought us to Acra Point. There's a nice lookout to the northeast where you can see Albany quite well. There is also a short spur trail (Yellow Mark) near Acra Point which leads to a western lookout showcasing a pretty incredible view of the Blackhead Range.

Wrapped up for sunrise (left) and Ivy and Poo Poo Duck (right)

Jefferson Steel Flex (left) and view of the Blackhead Range from Acra Point (right)

From Acra Point, we followed the Long Path to descend to a col around 2750 feet and then sharply climbed another 300+ feet up to weave underneath Burnt Knob. After this initial vertical, there is yet another fine glacially plucked ledge offering yet another banging view of the Blackheads. The trail then continues to climb over another small knob and down to another col before beginning the 1 mile, ~650 foot ascent to Windham High Peak. We were getting pretty tired by this point and were looking forward to our final summit of the day. There is an nice view looking north from Windham High Peak. We stopped and ate lunch here and met a nice girl named Whitney who just got married after completing a year of travel across the US and also completing her PhD. Big things happening for her. Anyway, here's the home stretch! The descent of Windham isn't too bad--about 2 miles and 1200 feet to a junction with some mountain biking trails. Mountain bikers definitely should NOT be on the Long Path, but some group of 3 old dudes were doing it anyway and kept passing us and then stopping for technical problems, or perhaps gastrointestinal/psychoemotional problems. Wish they would have stayed in their own trails. Then after them we passed distressed middle aged couple who stopped us to ask some water, as the woman seemed pretty dehydrated. We offered up a SmartWater and my final precious LiquidIV and wished them well, before going on to complete our a final stretch of trail to reach the spacious Windham Valley. We ripped off our boots and triumphantly splashed around in the creek for a while, enjoying the bright sun shining in the glacially carved valley, the cool water on our battered feet, our beautiful love for each other, and the general majesty of the Catskills. And yes, we went directly to the Phoenicia Diner after this. Another banger trip in the books.