A Day on the BlackHead Range

[Jay H]

Dr Wu and I did a catskill hike on Saturday, Feb 5th (2005, about coffee time) from Barnum Road near maplecrest. It was an early day for both of us, having gotten up around 2:45AM to get on the road by 3:15. Took me just about 2 hours to get to Peck Road so I had time to spare for our agreed meeting time of around 6:30am. Nothing like waking up to complete darkness and travelling up the NYS Thruway with truckers. I digress! Sorry.

Anyway, fast forward a bit, we spot my car on Peck road with the intention of driving to Barnum and doing a loop from barnum up the Blackhead range trail to the Escarpment trail north to Windham HP and my car. So we leave the car around 7:15ish with Dr. Wu in bareboots and me in my crampons. The mild sloped road that we're on tends to get wet in the spring so I figured I'd wear my crampons to start and the trail was already fairly broken in.

We make a sharp left to abandon the old road, Dr. Wu signs in at the register and we prepare for a nice day ahead, it is obvious already that the weather is going to be warm and the skies are clear. Gradually the trail rises to the first hump, known as the Caudal (caudal...caudal fin, the back of the fish, or perhaps the back of the Camel..Read on!). Apparently, many hikers go to the Caudal and return because the snow becomes less packed and evidence of one or two snowshoers remain. Views from the Caudal are very nice, a good sign of things to come.

Heading onward, we press on through the open woods to another hump, just over 3500'. The 3500' sign appears and we climb a short bit to get to the Camel's Hump.. (No sign of any camels!). A great view of Thomas Cole summit appears before us and the skies are blue! At this point, Dr. Wu has put snowshoes on and I put mine on sligthly after.

Summiting Thomas Cole, we return to the pines and a nice short summit hump before heading down towards Black Dome. A small ledge traverse brings us to a great view of Black Dome. We are rewarded on the summit of Black Dome with a beautiful view of almost the entire Devil's Path except for West Kill. Could make out the Hunter firetower and the firetower on Overlook.

panoramic shot from Black Dome

I marked the peaks as to the best of my limited knowledge. I'm not the best at ID'ing peaks, if any of the experts out there correct, me, much appreciated.

Marked panoramic shot from Black Dome

Anyway, after spending much time on Black Dome, eating and drinking, we regretfully leave to head towards Black head, expecting a nice descent and a climb to Black Head... Hummp. At one point on the descent, we take our snowshoes off to handscramble down a tight ledge. At this point, we both continue down bareboot style, being very careful not to slip on the slushy snow. At this point, shorts and a T-shirt are the clothing of the day!!! I believe somewhere on the descent, Dr. Wu reattaches his snowshoes for the safer descent.

And of course, the trail is fairly well packed by previous hikers. We meet a guy going up towards Black Dome, who we'll run into later....

Going up black Head, I simply put my crampons back on and head up, seeing a lot of postholers as expected. It gets real steep towards the best viewpoint on BH and crampons and snowshoes are very very helpful hear, irrigardless of the snow conditions. Yeah, it's possible to bareboot here, heck, it's possible to bare boot 12+ inches of fresh powder.

Anyway, great views of Hunter and the firetower can be seen clear as day. Couldn't see any skiers though.

After a bit of a rest and some scenery viewing, we run into two ladies and a 7 year old kid who were trailing us up the mountain, all on snowshoes... Yippee! Dr. Wu and I leave to the summit while the party of three enjoy the views... We get to the summit and continue to the intersection with the escarpment and decide that it's not a good idea to continue. Too much time enjoying the views and the snow is getting very soft, too soft to bareboot even on the packed trails. 10.3 miles at 12:40pm... + long drive for Dr. Wu to get back to boston... We turn around! We had thoughts of going down to Big Hollow and walking to Peck or catch a ride but decided we did have enough time to go back and it's certainly more interesting than a road walk.

Head back, pass the party of three on the viewpoint and we continue down.

We run into the same guy that we passed going down Black Dome and we chat. The guy is from Buffalo, NY but living in Parsippany NJ now (just 6 miles south of where I live in NJ) and this was his first catskills hike. nice day for one!

Anyway, the return trip is uneventful, quick stops at the viewpoints, back down to Barnum at about 5pm sharp. Ran into another hiker who said at about noon, he said "why the heck am I inside" looking at how nice a day it was and headed out just to do Thomas Cole and return.

OK, if you're read this far, you must be

1)Not a football fan (the superbowl is on)
2)Really bored.
3)Really like me, Dr Wu, or the catskills
4)Somebody has a gun to your head.

You're reward:

Pictures from the hike

A great day for a hike, though it was a bit too warm to do some serious mileage with the soft snow. We did a respectful ~9.2 miles with 3 peaks just under 4000' and enjoyed the hike immensely. Dr. Wu, it was certainly fun hiking with you, another face to put to a name and we'll have to hook up anytime you want to do another catskill peak. Sorry about the little infraction with the law on the way here, should of invited him to go for a hike, seeing that its helluva lot more fun than sitting in a patrol car with a radar gun... Plus, he'd burn more calories off too.

Jay

P.S. If the guy (mid 20's) wearing an Orange SierraDesign windshell from Buffalo, NY but living in Parsippany NJ is reading this, We passed you going down Black Dome and also on Black Head, we think we found your 22oz Nalgene bottle about halfway up the east face of Black Dome (because it wasn't there on our way down and we only passed you). If you are on VFTT and reading this, I have your Nalgene, fairly beatup - almost empty. PM or email me.

 

[MattC]

Great pics as usual Jay. I like the moon one. I have almost the identical shot of the DP from that BD lookout, except w/o the snow. I think you pretty much nailed all the IDs. The marked shot reminds me of the marked photos in the Overlook fire tower. It was also very thoughful of you guys to scout out another possible rock shelter for me just in case my rent in New Paltz becomes too expensive. Hey, those rock shelters worked pretty good for the first Americans a few hundred years ago...

Matt

 

[dr_wu002]

I agree with Jay -- this was a great hike. I'm sure just about everybody that was out this weekend had a great one but only a few got to enjoy the Blackhead Range as we really didn't come across many people.

Black Dome is the last of the three Catskills Peaks with 2000+ feet of prominence -- and it's #51 of 55 in the Northeast US. It's also the high peak of the Blackhead Range (?) -- maybe because Blackhead is a more striking peak when you see it from almost any view points. I don't know -- it doesn't really matter. It was a fun hike.

The total mileage was 9.2miles and elevation gained about 4600' for the out and back across Thomas Cole, Black Dome and Blackhead and then back over Black Dome and Thomas Cole. I struggled terribly -- as I have surprisingly for many hikes this winter -- until I started to relax and lower my blood pressure where things just got easy after that, even over the last 1000' of elevation. JayH made the whole thing look easy from start to finish.

Here is the link to my pictures of the hike:
http://community.webshots.com/album/267638828QBxXkv

Matt: Not only did we scout out that little cave, but we moved some of your furniture there! You move in tomorrow!

JayH: Thanks for putting up the trip report! I enjoyed hiking with you -- hope to make it out to the Catskills again soon. Hope you get to the Whites sometime soon (and finally get some views on Bondcliff!!)

Regards,

Dr. Wu

 

[Jay H]

Hey, I realized I messed up one of the peaks... Hunter, it would actually be the east face of Hunter, not the west.

I forgot to take a pano from Black Head. It's another 180deg view but since it looks back towards Black Dome and more west whereas the view on Black Dome is more south, you got more of a view of Hunter, the ski area, and you could see West Kill and perhaps St. Anne's Peak (or as Snowshoe infamously named it on my devil's path hike, PissMeOff Peak )

My ADK catskill books says you can see Slide and the summits of the Burroughs Range too. I wonder if those are the peaks above Stony Clove.. should be in the right general direction.

Refresh my member, Cortina Ski Valley is closed for skiing right, did they take down the ski lifts. I could not see the lifts with my binoculars and driving past the center on Rt 23A, I see a sign that says "Cortina" and says "Paintball" on the bottom. I could make out the lifts on Hunter even though it's further away, but did not see any lifts on Cortina and I'm pretty sure that place closed years ago.

Going to look at your Dr. Wu's pictures now...

Jay

P.S. Yeah, another Pemi trip would be fun, I'd like to do the outer loop over Lafayette perhaps... Eric and I did the inner loop down the franconia brook over to Bondcliff, if we had more time, the outer loop looks fun too. And then perhaps I'll actually get some views on Bondcliff..

I checked out the Prominance list, I've done all the catskill ones and some of the ADK ones. Of course my NH/ME list is quite lacking though.

 

[Rivet]

Sounds like a good trip.

I was on Windham High Peak with my dog around 1 pm on Saturday and the conditions were perfect (both the weather and trail). I was able to bare boot the whole hike as the treadway was already sufficiently packed.

I remember that view from Black Dome and was wondering what the peaks are that you can see through the notch between Plateau and Hunter.

 

[Jay H]

I'm really beginning to think it would be the Burroughs range, I checked out a road map and looked at where Black Dome is, where Rt 214 (stony clove) is and just did a straight edge past it and it is towards Slide Mountain. I can play with MapTech's Terrain Navigator when I get home tonight. I can do a 3D view from Black Dome and see if I can get the scale large enough to cover the Burroughs range from Black Dome and see if I can figure out those peaks.

Rivet, I saw your Trail Condition. If you did it from Peck road, you would of seen my car there. When Dr. Wu dropped me off after our hike, my car was still the only one there. I was considering going up to WHP after our hike but it was already 5pm and I figure it would be another 3 hours out and back and would be dark by the time I got to the summit. I have to do that peak again soon, the last time I was up there, it was cloudy and no views.

Jay

 

[Rivet]

I started from the lot of Rte 23. I have climbed Windham before from the other side, going over Burnt Knob.

The views were nice. It seems like the viewpoint to the south near the summit was "improved" (looking at Blackhead range) as I don't remember much of a view there before. Supposedly you can see Albany to the north (the Corning towers are the tallest buildings) on a clear day, but I couldn't pick them out.

 

[MattC]

Rivet-I was walking in your tracks on WHP the following day. I also had trouble IDing Albany-and it's my hometown! I think you're right about that south-facing view being "improved." I don't remember it either, and I seem to recall a mention on a past thread about DEC whacking some of the vegetation up there. I think my favorite part of WHP is the Norway spruce stands. In the bright sun-on-snow conditions (like we just had), the glaring light in the open hardwood sections contrasts very dramatically w/ the darkness of the spruce groves.

Matt

 

[Mark Schaefer]

Answers to a few questions that came up in the thread and pictures.

Caudal means tail, and as it is lower/behind the Camel's Hump it is often referred to as the Camel's Tail.

Slide is visible from the Blackhead Range. In Jay's photo #22 Slide is at the far right rising over Hunter's eastern ridge. The rest of the Burroughs Range appears as one mass just to the right of Stony Clove. Also in that photo you can see the lower 2800' summit of Ashokan High Point over Mink Hollow to the left of Plateau.

Jay's #6 is Hunter with the East Jewett Range in the foreground on the right. Basically the same view as Dr. Wu's #3 through #5.

Dr. Wu's picture #29 is Huntersfield with the Ashland Pinnacle to the right. Cave Mt is hidden by the mass of Black Dome (refer to #28) where part of Huntersfield can be seen at the far right.

 

[dr_wu002]

Hi Mark,

Thanks for the info about Huntersfield. Could you identify this peak? I honestly didn't try to hard (my bad) and didn't even pull out my compass to mark the direction but maybe you can ID it for me.

Regards,

Dr. Wu

 

[Jay H]

Could it also be the berkshires?

I figure almost due east of the Blackhead range is Hillsdale, NY in Columbia county and if you take Rt 23 east of Hillsdale, you head right towards Catamount in the Berkshires, just about north of Bash Bish falls which is Mass.

Jay

 

[Mark Schaefer]

I think Jay is correct on the Berkshires. The view is from the eastern ledges on Black Dome looking generally ENE over the col between Blackhead and Acra Point. You would be looking in the general vicinity of Pittsfield Mass. That would be looking over a fairly low point in the Taconic Ridge and the Berkshires would be visible over the Taconics. It is hard to say which Berkshire is the high point in the photo. It might well be Greylock. If my memory serves me you can see the Catskills from Greylock.