Agile Trekker: Windham Mountain, Catskills

Date	Distance	Time	Elevation Gain	Average Moving Time	Year to Date Miles
5/13/2018	7.6 miles?

Map: NYNJTC Catskills, Map 141
Parking: Big Hollow Road
Directions: From parking area, turn left on the dirt road, and then right onto the trail. After 1 mile, turn left onto the Escarpment Trail and follow to Windham summit. Return back the same way you came.

Today is our first time this year we are back in the Catskills. It feels great to be back. I love how the Catskill trails feel unique. They look different than Harriman. They look different than the AT. We don't have to think about road crossings. We can let Trek off leash.

On our drive up, we noticed that the Kaaterskill Falls parking lot was pretty empty. Normally it is jam packed. This gave me an idea for later. We continued on, and our parking area for our hike was also fine. We thought this weekend might be a total washout due to rain, but the weather in the Catskills was actually pretty nice - cool, some sun, and little chance of rain. I was surprised at how few cars were in the lot.

The trail conditions were great as well. There was an occasional muddy patch, but in general the trails were dry. I over-dressed, which is pretty common. I would have been better off in a short sleeve shirt. I also wore gaiters, which were overkill since it was easy to go around all of the muddy areas. We saw a couple groups of hikers today, but it was really a quiet day in the Catskills. It was so nice to be out here again. We are really fortunate to have really great hiking areas within a 2 hour distance to us. Bugs were bad today. Glen pulled out his bug net. He is in love with his bug net. Probably his favorite new piece of gear in the last year. I made due with bug spray. Not a spec of snow today :) The trails were also lined with spring wildflowers - viburnum, trout lilies, violets, and a tiny purple veined white flower.

Trek was happy to be out again. Glen figured after hiking for 2 weeks in Pennsylvania, that Trek would be expecting to go hiking every day. We had a vet appointment after we got back, and while searching for a skin tab I had noticed, our vet noticed one of Trek's toes felt like it had a knot in it. He got his foot x-rayed, and it turns out he has arthritis in one of his toes. Our vet says it looks like he had an injury at some point which caused it. I wonder if its from one us of stepping on his foot accidentally. Luckily, it doesn't seem to affect him at this point - he has no limp. He also said Trek's eyes are starting to show a little clouding. He can't be getting old! He must live forever!

Although the Catskills certainly have rocks, they aren't Pennsylvania rocks. Thank goodness. My feet were fine today. And, my hip has finally recovered from Pennsylvania. So today's hike felt good. We probably had more elevation gain than our Pennsylvania hikes, but elevation gain is good training. We had nice views of East Durham on one side, and of Blackhead, Black Dome, and Thomas Cole on the other side. Although we have already completed all of the 3500 footers, I'm still keeping track of additional summits we do. Glen mentioned today it would be nice to do a round in each season. Ummm....he's not really fond of Catskills in the winter, so I doubt this will happen. We have too many hiking goals! We are currently working on hiking all of the AT (which will probably take us another 7 years), completing the Catskills all trail challenge, and doing a couple of state high points each year (one done so far for this year). Today's hike helped us knock off a piece of the Escarpment Trail we hadn't done before, plus get a 3500 footer summit. We forgot to take notes on what the actual summit looked like, so first we took a photo where we thought the high point was. Then we went back and took another at geodesic marker, and then another at another geodesic marker, lol. We didn't drop down to a view just past the summit as there was already a group hanging out there.

We finished reasonably early, so we decided to head over to the Kaaterskill Falls trail after this hike.