kmorgan
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Despite the forecast for hot weather, I decided on hiking North Dome and Sherrill yesterday. I had only recently started hiking again after a recurring knee injury forced me into hiatus for 5 months during the winter, but had already done several hikes in Harriman and Memorial Day weekend had hiked Peekamoose and Table as my "return to the Catskills" hike.
I knew from most of my planning that this was to be about a 7 to 7-1/2 mile hike and should be about 300 feet of altitude gain less than the Peekamoose hike. So I felt confident it shouldn't be a problem.
The first indication that things weren't to go as planned was the night before when I couldn't fall asleep. I finally dozed off around 11:30 and woke at 3 a.m. and stayed in bed until 4 hoping to get a little more rest.
I left my house on Long Island at 4:45 and picked up my friend Rich at 5:30. We had an uneventful drive up and arrived at the Devil's Path trail head on Spruceton Rd. as planned at 8:10 and were on the trail at 8:30 sharp.
There were surprisingly few bugs out an about but that was to change later on.
I had planned to leave the trail at a point about 8 tenths of a mile in just as the trail began to veer away towards the southeast. When we reached that point I saw the remnants of a cairn and knew we were where we wanted to be. I took a heading off the map with my compass and we started up.
At first I thought the going was pretty easy and we negotiated the cliffs without much incident. It took us much longer than I thought it would to finally get to the summit of North Dome, we arrived at noon, and by then the black flies and mosquitoes were out in force. We signed in at the cannister and grabbed a quick drink and a snack and headed for Sherrill.
Going down the West side of North Dome was fairly easy, and from time to time we were on what looked like a herd path. As we neared the col we worked our way around to the north a bit and began our ascent of Sherrill.
Sherrill was a much more difficult ascent. The cliffs were more precarious and we had started to feel the heat. I couldn't believe how hard a time I was having. I had to stop every 4 or 5 steps because my heart was pounding in my chest. I felt like one of those climbers in the death zone on Everest! I asked Rich how he was doing and he said fine, so rather than bail I took plenty of breaks and we finally reached the summit of Sherrill at 2 p.m. I felt much better after a short rest on Sherrill but now Rich was saying the heat was getting to him.
I discussed my alternate exit plan to head out on a heading that would put us just north of North Dome's summit at about 2500 feet and from there take a bearing for the western parking area between the sections of private property, rather than going back over North Dome and out the D.P.
Rich was all for this and so I took a bearing and off we went. After getting down Sherrill to about 2600 feet Rich started feeling the heat more and more and was now saying he felt like he was going to pass out. It had began raining pretty hard for a while and after it stopped things were even more slippery. Going down a particularly precarious cliff face I was holding onto a tree limb and a dead limb it was supporting fell on my head. We were making slow progress and he was resisting anything that even resembled going up hill.
I explained that to avoid the private property we had to go over a ridge but he was having none of it and kept veering off course to the north and down.
The going was getting rough and there was a lot of slippery, mud and leaf covered rock to negotiate and soon we were both taking the occasional spill. At one point while crossing a dry stream bed I slipped and came down hard on my side and for a minute thought I might have broken a rib! Fortunately I also took the fall on my arm and a knee and after a few minutes was none the worse for wear.
Meanwhile, Rich was taking more and more falls at one point actually fell face first into a good size boulder. He wasn't bleeding and didn't develop a bruise but it just added to his frustration.
Eventually it became obvious that I had to get us out faster. Rich was having more and more trouble maintaining his footing and I was beginning to get some cramps in my inner thighs. When Rich said he was running out of water and we were still a long ways off from the road I said screw it and took a direct heading for the alternate parking area across the private property. If we had a confrontation we'd just have to explain that it was an urgent situation.
We finally started seeing signs of civilization. Woods roads told me that we were on the private property but getting closer. Eventually we saw horse paddocks and a rock wall. We crossed the rock wall and got down to a stream where Rich began cooling himself down. Rich wanted to stop and rest for a while, but we still had a lot of whacking to do so I got us moving again and we eventually hit the river running alongside Spruceton Road. We followed the river until we got to the road and the parking lot. I told Rich to wait there and did the road walk back to the D.P. trail head and my car. It was now 6:45 p.m. I've never been so happy to see a cooler full of diet root beer! I got in, got the A/C cranked up and drove down to get Rich.
On the drive out it began raining very hard and I had to keep my speed down to 40 mph even with the wipers running full speed. We stopped at the country store for a sandwich, Gatorade and coffee, and got back to Long Island at 10:30 pm. A very long day....
Total hike just over 7 miles, 10 hours 45 minutes, 2680 ascent. And I'm never hiking these two #@#$'ing peaks again!!!
Only Halcott left for my 3500. Rich still has 18 peaks to go.
Pictures here
I knew from most of my planning that this was to be about a 7 to 7-1/2 mile hike and should be about 300 feet of altitude gain less than the Peekamoose hike. So I felt confident it shouldn't be a problem.
The first indication that things weren't to go as planned was the night before when I couldn't fall asleep. I finally dozed off around 11:30 and woke at 3 a.m. and stayed in bed until 4 hoping to get a little more rest.
I left my house on Long Island at 4:45 and picked up my friend Rich at 5:30. We had an uneventful drive up and arrived at the Devil's Path trail head on Spruceton Rd. as planned at 8:10 and were on the trail at 8:30 sharp.
There were surprisingly few bugs out an about but that was to change later on.
I had planned to leave the trail at a point about 8 tenths of a mile in just as the trail began to veer away towards the southeast. When we reached that point I saw the remnants of a cairn and knew we were where we wanted to be. I took a heading off the map with my compass and we started up.
At first I thought the going was pretty easy and we negotiated the cliffs without much incident. It took us much longer than I thought it would to finally get to the summit of North Dome, we arrived at noon, and by then the black flies and mosquitoes were out in force. We signed in at the cannister and grabbed a quick drink and a snack and headed for Sherrill.
Going down the West side of North Dome was fairly easy, and from time to time we were on what looked like a herd path. As we neared the col we worked our way around to the north a bit and began our ascent of Sherrill.
Sherrill was a much more difficult ascent. The cliffs were more precarious and we had started to feel the heat. I couldn't believe how hard a time I was having. I had to stop every 4 or 5 steps because my heart was pounding in my chest. I felt like one of those climbers in the death zone on Everest! I asked Rich how he was doing and he said fine, so rather than bail I took plenty of breaks and we finally reached the summit of Sherrill at 2 p.m. I felt much better after a short rest on Sherrill but now Rich was saying the heat was getting to him.
I discussed my alternate exit plan to head out on a heading that would put us just north of North Dome's summit at about 2500 feet and from there take a bearing for the western parking area between the sections of private property, rather than going back over North Dome and out the D.P.
Rich was all for this and so I took a bearing and off we went. After getting down Sherrill to about 2600 feet Rich started feeling the heat more and more and was now saying he felt like he was going to pass out. It had began raining pretty hard for a while and after it stopped things were even more slippery. Going down a particularly precarious cliff face I was holding onto a tree limb and a dead limb it was supporting fell on my head. We were making slow progress and he was resisting anything that even resembled going up hill.
I explained that to avoid the private property we had to go over a ridge but he was having none of it and kept veering off course to the north and down.
The going was getting rough and there was a lot of slippery, mud and leaf covered rock to negotiate and soon we were both taking the occasional spill. At one point while crossing a dry stream bed I slipped and came down hard on my side and for a minute thought I might have broken a rib! Fortunately I also took the fall on my arm and a knee and after a few minutes was none the worse for wear.
Meanwhile, Rich was taking more and more falls at one point actually fell face first into a good size boulder. He wasn't bleeding and didn't develop a bruise but it just added to his frustration.
Eventually it became obvious that I had to get us out faster. Rich was having more and more trouble maintaining his footing and I was beginning to get some cramps in my inner thighs. When Rich said he was running out of water and we were still a long ways off from the road I said screw it and took a direct heading for the alternate parking area across the private property. If we had a confrontation we'd just have to explain that it was an urgent situation.
We finally started seeing signs of civilization. Woods roads told me that we were on the private property but getting closer. Eventually we saw horse paddocks and a rock wall. We crossed the rock wall and got down to a stream where Rich began cooling himself down. Rich wanted to stop and rest for a while, but we still had a lot of whacking to do so I got us moving again and we eventually hit the river running alongside Spruceton Road. We followed the river until we got to the road and the parking lot. I told Rich to wait there and did the road walk back to the D.P. trail head and my car. It was now 6:45 p.m. I've never been so happy to see a cooler full of diet root beer! I got in, got the A/C cranked up and drove down to get Rich.
On the drive out it began raining very hard and I had to keep my speed down to 40 mph even with the wipers running full speed. We stopped at the country store for a sandwich, Gatorade and coffee, and got back to Long Island at 10:30 pm. A very long day....
Total hike just over 7 miles, 10 hours 45 minutes, 2680 ascent. And I'm never hiking these two #@#$'ing peaks again!!!
Only Halcott left for my 3500. Rich still has 18 peaks to go.
Pictures here
Thank goodness I have Flammeus to follow me into and out of trouble! [Just kidding! Golly, no one will ever be willing to hike with us if I admit too much!]
