Agile Trekker: Hunter Mountain, Catskills

Date	Distance	Time	Elevation Gain	Average Moving Time	Year to Date Miles
9/10/2017	9.1 miles

Map: NYNJTC Catskills Map #141

Parking: Route 214

Directions: Head to the left of the lake. Take red blazed Devil's Path. Turn right onto yellow blazed Hunter Mountain trail. Turn right onto blue blazed Becker Mountain trail. Turn left on yellow blazed trail. Arrive at summit. Explore fire tower. Head behind cabin and turn left of blue blazed? trail. At 4 way intersection, turn right onto yellow blazed spur trail to view. Return back to 4 way intersection. Turn right onto yellow blazed Hunter Mountain trail. Turn right onto Devil's Path. Pass Devil's Acre shelter. Arrive at herd path to Southwest Hunter Mountain, but didn't take it. Turned around. Followed Devil's Path back to Route 214.

I woke up 30 minutes earlier today than yesterday, knowing I wanted to get an early start. But, I was tired. I woke up with a tired body. Even though I got up early, we got out of the house later than yesterday. I just wasn't moving very fast. We had another challenging hike lined up for today. If it wasn't such a beautiful day, I would have been tempted to just spend it in bed. My legs still felt like mush. And even my arms were tired. This was our last hike we needed to finish the Devil's Path.

We started the hike and again, it just started climbing. It didn't feel as hard as yesterday's, but my body was tired. The beginning again was a steep climb uphill. It felt like there were more switchbacks than yesterday, and the occasional level section between steeper climbs. We turned onto the Hunter Mountain trail, which is a lovely hike. We hadn't studied our previous hikes enough, so we couldn't remember if we needed to do the small trail loop around Hunter Mountain. So we did it, just in case we hadn't before. We started steeply down the Belcher Trail. It's steep and slippery. We were glad when we turned left off of it and started climbing again. It was a pointless down & then up. We arrived at Hunter Mountain, which is one of my favorite summit areas. I just remember visiting it in winter on a 20 degree day with rime ice on all of the trees at the summit - a stunning site. There was another dog & 5 other people on the summit, so we kept Trek on leash. I was happy to sit down at the picnic table and give my legs a rest. We then each took turns climbing the fire tower. Climbing fire towers isn't my favorite thing, but its the only way to get a view. It's quite a view too! I forgot to bring my map & compass up. Oops. It would have been a perfect place to practice.

After resting, we continued on. We took a small side trail to an overlook. The woman with the dog who we had seen at the summit, warned us that we should put Trek on leash due to snakes at the overlook. We did put him on leash. It took us a while to find them, but there were indeed 2 snakes. One on the left side of the overlook (with a snakeskin next to it), and one on the right side of the overlook. They both watched us. Ugh. We tried to identify them. They didn't rattle. Glen googled and decided they didn't look like copperheads. They weren't black rat snakes. So, not sure what they were. They had a pattern on their backs, but based on their head shape, I didn't think they were copperheads. I still felt very uncomfortable there being watched by snakes. So, I didn't practice my map & compass skills there like I planned. We left.

We headed back the way we came. Glen was really happy. Hiking does that to you. The trail was easy and beautiful. We had a small section we had to finish on the Devil's Path up to the herdpath to Southwest Hunter Mountain, so we did that as well. We didn't have time to do the bushwhack up that mountain, and my legs were shot anyways. We found the trail up, and then promptly turned around. We did see a group of kids heading out for a backpack. Lucky them! We started heading down the steep section of the Devil's Path back to our car. This part again was slow and frustrating. My legs were so tired so I had to go very slow in order to be safe. I also developed groin pain on the way down - just a feeling like something in my hip was catching, which was very uncomfortable. It wasn't as slippery as yesterday, but I still managed to fall once or twice. Even though I enjoyed the hike, I was really happy to arrive back at the car and just get off my feet and stop irritating my hip. Back at home, this time I foam rolled and worked on releasing the tightness in my calves. Yeah!

View from the fire tower