Kaaterskill High Peak

[Big D]

Taking advantage of a day off in the holiday week, Pete decided to finish his 3500's off. Grover and I were glad to be able to join him on this trip. Sunny skies and mild temps greeted us at the trailhead. We packed everything for this trip not knowing what the conditions were going to be and there was about 8" of snow in the woods at the PA. The snowmobile path was bare for about 200 yards past the register and then alternated from hard packed snow to water running across the trail. You could really see how the snow melt last weekend had affected the trail. Grover and I used Stabilicers and Pete barebooted untill after we left the snowmobile trail and hit the first really steep climb and we all put crampons on and the trail was mostly hardpacked snow or ice with a trace of new snow until the summit, then it was crusty snow with 8" of soft snow underneath. We wandered around the summit for a few minutes looking for the view point off the eastern edge and finally gave up and went back to the trail and went to the ledge that overlooks the mountains of the Devil's path. Here the sun had gone to work and had made spring corn snow. We throughly enjoyed our 45 minutes of lunching and toasting the new 3500er Pete with the champagne I had lugged to the top. After Pete took about 100 photos with his daughter's camera we started down the cliffs using a rope for extra safety. The snow was soft and slick as we hit the snowmobile trail so we broke out the snow shoes that we had carried and I realized I was missing one of my hiking poles, so while the other 2 took another break I sped back up the hill until the bottom of the cliff with no luck. We used our snowshoes the rest of the trip out following the snowmobile path until the bend and bushwhacked back to the LP, it seemed we had better traction. There was another car in the PA so I left a note that I had lost a pole and my phone number. You can imagine my surprise when my phone rang about an hour after I got home, the hikers that were behind us were headed back to Syracuse and had saw the sign for my town and stopped to return my lost pole, they refused any reward and we compared notes on the hike and then were back on the road again. It was Christmas all over again. Thanks again guys and hope you had a safe trip. It was great day in the woods