Catskill fire towers

I met up with Eric in Ludlow and we caught up as we drove a couple of hours to the first mountain of the day.  Our goal was to complete the Catskills Fire Tower Challenge.  We’d be aiming to run each of the six mountain (five really, one was essentially a drive-up) with two on Thursday, three on Friday, and the final climb on Sunday.

First up was Overlook Mountain in Woodstock NY.  We parked at the first small lot in the final spot.  We had a little confusion at the start as it looked like the trail was across the road at the

Karma Triyana Dharmachakra Tibetan Buddhist Monastery

 

We quickly turned around and headed Northeast in the Overlook Mountain forest.  The road was excellent, great footing and not too crazy grades.  We stopped for a few moments to check out the ruins of the old hotel (spooky) before continuing on to the summit.  It was a short 2.2 miles and we were at the tower in 30 minutes.  We both climbed and took in the view which included a nice perspective on the hotel ruins down the ridge.  I took a few moments to see if there was a trig marker on the summit (nope) and off we went.  We got a lot of encouragement from hikers as we took our time coming back down.  Quad soreness would be an issue on this trip and neither of us wanted to “hammer” down the mountain.  We were back in the parking lot in 4.4 miles and 53:42 after we’d started.  The weather was just about ideal with temps in the 50’s and sun and passing clouds.

 

We reached Tremper Mountain by 1:30 p.m. and off we went for mountain #2.  The first part included a super-steep climb.  We hadn’t even gone 2/10ths of a mile and we’d already gained 250’.  After that it moderated as we sort of contoured around and at 1/3^rd of a mile we connected with the “rugged trail” that ascended from Plank Road.  The climb was steady, steep, and quite rocky.  A bit of a shock after how pleasant Overlook had been…but typical of the Northeast.  We covered the 3 miles (and 2,072’ of climb) in 53 minutes.  A quick visit to the fire tower and we headed down for what we knew would be a rough (footing) descent.  Eric and I are both lousy descenders and our time down is almost always pretty close to the time up.  We were down in 47 minutes for a round trip of 1:40.

We headed off to Coxsackie for food and our hotel stay.