Sometimes, I miss nature. Trees, especially. And not the kind that grow in man-made wooden boxes on the corner of Riverside Drive—I miss the tall, knobbly ones that grow in foggy thickets and look to be about 1,000 years old.
It feels good to get that off my chest. As a transplant New Yorker who hails from Northern California, I don't get to say it much. Tell most Manhattanites you're jonesing for a good hike, and they'll point you toward Central Park. I don't mean to sound whiny; I wasn't exactly complaining a few years ago when I got the opportunity to trade in fleecy layers for heeled booties. But sometimes, still, I miss nature.
So when my friend and neighbor Lauren—also a native Northern Californian—invited me to tag along on a trip up North, I couldn't zip up my Patagonia fast enough.
Photographs by Ella Quittner and the hiking crew.
Our group of five drove for about two hours to reach the trailhead at the North-South Lake State Campground. We made one stop along the way to pick up sandwiches at the Circle W Market in Palenville, NY. (N.B.: Sandwiches not pictured due to deliciousness, coupled with voracious hiking appetites.) From there, we drove up North Lake Road to a parking lot, which Sam—the Resident Mountain Man of the group—informed us shares a site with the old Catskill Mountain House, a formerly swanky hotel that the state's Conservation Department burned to the ground in 1963.
After Sam spent some time with the map, we set out to climb North Mountain, a peak that's part of the Catskill Escarpment.
We stopped off at this bluff, which looked exactly how I'd picture the edge of the Earth.
"Some of us" refused to get too close to its edge, for fear of heights—okay, it was just me—but the braver group members lay down on their bellies and inched forward until they could peer directly down the steep drop.
This part of the trail looked just like the Forbidden Forest in Harry Potter, minus the centaurs (I hope).
As we gained ground, the fog started to burn off, revealing brilliantly colored leaves still attached to tree branches. At this point in the season, it hadn't yet snowed, but the trail was muddy from rain. Lauren made up a perfect descriptor for the uphill portion: "scrambly."
The hike seemed to be segmented into distinct sections of totally different scenery. We stopped to catch our breath (and our balance!) for a moment under the shadow of this cave (R).
These big mossy boulders prompted a discussion about when the first known humans lived on earth. (For the record, my guess of "like 3000 B.C." was totally off base—Wikipedia says that the earliest documented members of the genus Homo evolved around 2.3 million years ago.)
By the time we made it to our destination, North Point, the sun had come out and the fog had totally cleared. North Point is a wide ledge about a half-mile below the mountain's summit. We stopped here to sit and stretch our legs—Sam did a shirtless lap around the ledge's circumference—before turning back the way we'd come. Photo by Daniel Case, from Wikimedia Commons.
On the way back down, we saw a tree that had split down its middle. Further investigation of why/how was quickly halted upon discovery that spiders had taken up residence inside the trunk.
We knew we'd made it back when Sam pointed out North Lake by the side of the trail. The hike was about three and a half hours total, including our sandwich break.
Above: Here, via Google Maps, is an overview of the high points of our hike (without the spiders).
On the way back to the city, we made a quick stop by the famous Kaaterskill Falls, the tallest two-tiered waterfall in the state of New York. Nate, the group's (self-appointed) Resident Ohio Resident, made me take this photo of a rock that he felt was shaped exactly like his home state, "only more crooked."
We followed a path for about half of a mile to get to Kaaterskill Falls from Route 23A. The falls were beautiful. Sam, his sister Ellie, and Lauren climbed up a steep trail to get behind the first tier, while I stayed behind with Nate to look for more state-shaped rocks.
I fell asleep on the drive back, but not before eating my bodyweight in the fudge we'd purchased in Palenville. When I awoke, Lauren told me we'd be back in Manhattan in a few minutes—just enough time to change out of muddy sneakers and back into booties.
(N.B.: For more, see "Hike of the Week: 7 Miles to Stinson Beach, CA" and "Hike of the Week: A Glimpse of Bob Hope's House in Palm Springs.")