Mary Smith Trail and Pelnor Hollow Trail, Catskills

Date	Distance	Time	Elevation Gain	Average Moving Time	Year to Date Miles
9/7/2019	9.7	5 hours 42 minutes	1,753'	1.7 mph	418

Map: NYNJTC Catskill Trails Map 144
Parking: Berry Brook Road
Directions: Red blazed Mary Smith Trail west. Turn left onto blue blazed Pelnor Hollow Trail and take trail to end. Return back the same way.

We are working on redlining map 144 of the Catskills, so today we worked on the Mary Smith Trail and Pelnor Hollow Trail. This isn't one of my favorite hikes in the Catskills. There were sections that were very overgrown, so we were bushing thorny blackberry bushes out of our way. The trail is supposed to be popular with hunters, but it doesn't look well used. We wished we had a pair of loppers with us. We did throw some branches off the trail at least to do a small part of improving it.

We had read that there was no parking at the end of the Pelnor Hollow trail. We were unclear where the end was. The map shows the trail ending at a road. The road is a dirt road, and it looks the same as the dirt trail. We looked at our map and noticed the trail ends at the property line of wild forest & private property. So we hiked until we saw a house, and a sign that looked like it marked the boundary. I did practice my map and compass skills - I'm going to work hard in the next year to improve them through lots of practice.

We continued past this sign, down a dirt road, which is still the trail

Hiking down the dirt road up until the boundary

Very overgrown trail