Blackhead Range, Catkills, NY

Sunday, December 9, 2012: I didn't get much sleep on Saturday night. We decided on the Blackhead Range as the car rolled away from the Croton Harmon train station. The train I got off arrived at 7:28am from Grand Central. We consulted the giant New York state map book to find a string of towns in the Catskills: Tannersville, East Jewett and Maplecrest. We exited the thruway onto route 32 and made the left toward Hunter infront of a three story house mounted with a black weathervane. This was our first time ascending into the Kaaterskill Valley. Having gone to school in Oneonta, I've driven route 23 across the northeast bluff of the plateau tens of times. The Irene washout in the Kaaterskill Valley remains noticeable from the road. Giant boulders and what could be some of the forest's oldest trees laid dislodged and scattered in the sandy rock beds, a steep drop below the guardrail. We drove through Tannersville and made a right, northward, towards Onteora Park.  Antiquated and decaying wooden lookout towers stood along the side of the road. One in the trails, one up on a hill and one across an open field. At an intersection a stone church had been pushed too far into the soft earth. I thought about using the trailhead on the southern end of the range. We were the second car in the parking lot which appeared closest to the first summit on the map. Green Vermont plates hung on the back of the other car. No sign of Vermonters all day on the ridge. The road ended in a lawn just beyond the gravel lot. Wood burned in the house on the lot. An SUV pulled up to the house as we geared up and a girl got out, hitched up her sagging pants and walked inside. My dad, Peter Ross, changed his clothes and we refined the contents of our packs before we lifted them onto our backs at 9:58am. At 11:13am we had ascended the 1,250' to Caudel, descended the 100' after it, and ascended the remaining 350' to Camel's Hump (3520'). By 11:44am I discovered the summit of Thomas Cole Mountain (3940') and Pete was right behind me arriving at 11:50am. After Thomas Cole we lost and regained 250' plus a few more before snaking through Black Dome's pine capped summit. Unlike on Cole the trees cut below a south-facing rock ledge awards us with an expansive view of the valley holding Hunter and Tannersville in the Hunter - West Kill Mountain Wilderness and Indian Head Wilderness. The scene rises in the slopes and the prominent, blackened ridge-line af the Devil's Path's meanderings above the earth. We descend 550' into the Lockwood gap and intimately study the sedimentary form of the Catskills. The relief in one particular position over Lockwood grows quite drastically into a formidable shelf upon the valley. A seat for a giant. Along the trail in tinier demonstration the thin layers chop up and interlock like the mid-shuffle failure of a card dealer. From Lockwood we observes a few signs and hike up to Blackhead's summit. It waits 500' above us. On top I jog a gentle 50 yards of meandering trail through our third cap of misty pines of the day. The dampness and chill sit upon me at 1:17pm when I arrive and continually haunt me through the five minutes until Pete's arrival. I set my clock to a ten minute timer. Pete and I discuss the landscape and eat our lunches hastily. The alarm rings and Pete takes off first. I take a minute to dawn all my layers, gloves and hat. I swallow a few orange slices. The trip back times out like this: 46 minutes back to Black Dome (2:26pm), 34 minutes to Thomas Cole (2:53pm), and 23 minutes to Camel's Hump (at 3:16pm). We arrive back at the car by 4:24pm. I urinate into the leaves beside the parking lot and beside my own flow of precipitation keenly realize the first drops of an atmospheric contribution to the puny insistence of the bare forest's dead coat. I'm a little disappointed I didn't plan this one better. A loop model could quite efficiently capture Windham High Peak to the north.