Colonel's Chair, Catskills

Date	Distance	Time	Elevation Gain	Average Moving Time	Year to Date Miles
11/28/2015	7.1 miles	3 hours 19 minute	1,910'	2.5 mph	733.9

Trail Map (141)
Parking: Spruceton Road at Spruceton Trail

Hike directions: 
Follow blue blazed Spruceton Trail for 2.4 miles.
Turn left onto yellow blazed Colonel's Chair Trail and follow to ski lift area.
Retrace steps.

Notes:
Today was a day where we were searching around to see what state had the best weather, because it seemed to be raining everywhere. We got lucky and it stopped raining just before we arrived at our trailhead. It was a very foggy day with limited visibility when hiking. Sometimes we couldn't see more than 200 feet in front of us. This meant that we would be missing out on any views today, but it made the trails look enjoyably spooky. We usually avoid the Catskills during hunting season, but we decided to give it a go. There were many cars at the trailhead -no trucks, so we figured that was a good sign.

This is our first hike on our redlining the Catskills project. Adding the Colonel's Chair Trail to our list of completed trails. We didn't have enough daylight in order to add 2 more miles in to finish the Spruceton Trail and hike up to Hunter Mountain.

The Spruceton Trail is a wide woods road. The footing was easy! No tripping or falling for me today! I could have gotten away with sneakers instead of boots. Spruceton Trail started out with a steady ascent, and then at times got quite steep. But the easy footing helped us maintain a steady pace. This hike is weird in that once we got to the Colonel's Chair Trail, we started descending to our destination. How often does that happen? The beginning of the Colonel's Chair Trail is a real trail, but eventually also turns into a woods road. We hiked to the chairlifts for the Hunter Mountain ski area. We saw snow at the second chairlift! We walked around a bit, but because of the fog there was absolutely no view. Apparently this area has very nice views. We'll have to try it again sometime in clearer weather.

Easy terrain on the Spruceton Trail

A horse hitching post. The Spruceton Trail is also a horse trail.

I'm wondering if there is cross country skiing on the yellow trail?

Trek found some stairs on the side of the trail

First ski lift

Second ski lift. As you can see - no views at all today.

On our return trip on the Colonel's Chair Trail, we saw a sign for a Rip Van Winkle sculpture just off the trail.
This is pretty amazing - carved out of bluestone.