nietzschescat
New member
We started from the trail head at Denning. The parking lot was full, but it was mostly people camping along the Neversink River. This is a really beautiful and special place. The bridge over the river is not as scary as it looks, but I'm not sure how scary it would be in the winter.
We met a ranger on the way in who gave us some good advice. We had thought just to explore the area since we hadn't been there before and possibly walk down the fisherman's trail and head up Friday Mountain, but it quickly became apparent that we would need more time to do that. We decided to turn around take a compass bearing from Donovan Brook and head up Lone.
I thought this mountain was difficult because you couldn't see it while you were climbing it and you couldn't see the other mountains off in the distance to get an idea of where you were. It also seemed like we walked forever before it started to look like we were actually doing any serious climbing. It was beautiful fairly open woods with no prickers or nettles, so that was nice. Finally we arrived almost to the summit just to the right of a huge rock outcropping. We just circled around until it was easy to climb up and we were on the summit which was like a garden of ferns. There was a herd path directly to the canister.
We decided that we had enough time to head over to Rocky since we had our headlights and should at least be on the river again before dark. There was a herd path in the right direction that petered out pretty quickly, but it wasn't a bad walk. We reached Rocky a little north of the summit area, climbed up a little pile of rocks and pretty quickly found the canister.
It's always interesting how different each mountain is. While Lone was ferns, Rocky was moss and fir. We headed down the mountain with Slide visible across the valley. At one point my husband stopped to point out something in the woods. I thought it was an animal and it looked like a bobcat, but it wasn't moving, but for a few seconds I could swear that I saw the fur and the little tufts on it's ears before I noticed that it wasn't moving at all and it was actually a dead tree branch pretending to be a bobcat.
It seemed like we reached the river pretty quickly and the fisherman's trail was really easy to follow. We had to cross the river at one point because the cliffs ran down into the water's edge. It wasn't really possible to keep your feet dry hopping on rocks, but you could step from rock to rock and not really have to wade across.
We reached the first of the campsites at dusk, but we didn't need the headlamps until we came to the scary bridge. It was actually a little difficult to follow the trail in the dark even with the lamps so it took a little longer to get back to the parking area. The yellow markers are almost impossible to see, but that trail is really wide and easy to follow. We saw a bunch of bats by the river.
Then we had the long drive back to 28 from Denning and finally some coffee and snacks in Olive and eventually cell phone reception near Woodstock so the kids won't worry and call the state police or something.
This was a really great day and I know that lots of people have climbed these mountains, but we still feel such a sense of accomplishment.
We met a ranger on the way in who gave us some good advice. We had thought just to explore the area since we hadn't been there before and possibly walk down the fisherman's trail and head up Friday Mountain, but it quickly became apparent that we would need more time to do that. We decided to turn around take a compass bearing from Donovan Brook and head up Lone.
I thought this mountain was difficult because you couldn't see it while you were climbing it and you couldn't see the other mountains off in the distance to get an idea of where you were. It also seemed like we walked forever before it started to look like we were actually doing any serious climbing. It was beautiful fairly open woods with no prickers or nettles, so that was nice. Finally we arrived almost to the summit just to the right of a huge rock outcropping. We just circled around until it was easy to climb up and we were on the summit which was like a garden of ferns. There was a herd path directly to the canister.
We decided that we had enough time to head over to Rocky since we had our headlights and should at least be on the river again before dark. There was a herd path in the right direction that petered out pretty quickly, but it wasn't a bad walk. We reached Rocky a little north of the summit area, climbed up a little pile of rocks and pretty quickly found the canister.
It's always interesting how different each mountain is. While Lone was ferns, Rocky was moss and fir. We headed down the mountain with Slide visible across the valley. At one point my husband stopped to point out something in the woods. I thought it was an animal and it looked like a bobcat, but it wasn't moving, but for a few seconds I could swear that I saw the fur and the little tufts on it's ears before I noticed that it wasn't moving at all and it was actually a dead tree branch pretending to be a bobcat.
It seemed like we reached the river pretty quickly and the fisherman's trail was really easy to follow. We had to cross the river at one point because the cliffs ran down into the water's edge. It wasn't really possible to keep your feet dry hopping on rocks, but you could step from rock to rock and not really have to wade across.
We reached the first of the campsites at dusk, but we didn't need the headlamps until we came to the scary bridge. It was actually a little difficult to follow the trail in the dark even with the lamps so it took a little longer to get back to the parking area. The yellow markers are almost impossible to see, but that trail is really wide and easy to follow. We saw a bunch of bats by the river.
Then we had the long drive back to 28 from Denning and finally some coffee and snacks in Olive and eventually cell phone reception near Woodstock so the kids won't worry and call the state police or something.
This was a really great day and I know that lots of people have climbed these mountains, but we still feel such a sense of accomplishment.
