Catskills Backpacking Epilogue

Submitted by Roland Roberts on Tue, 10/14/2014 - 01:54


A quick group shot taken for us by fellow hikers.

The trip didn't exactly work out as planned but we did get in our 15 miles and do a lot of climbing. We started as planned from the Panther Mountain trailhead and hiked to the Giant Ledges for the night. Due to traffic delays getting to the trailhead, we finished the last half mile in the dark and didn't quite find the correct spot for the night, camping out on a flat area that turned out to be only 100 feet from the actual camp. Too bad for us, we missed using the fire pit. 

Day two we started out with a leisurely breakfast, a good hiking speed, and then a leisurely lunch. That leisure cost us the daylight hours we needed to get to the peaks of Wittenberg and Cornell, so we turned off to Terrace Mountain to spend the night. With the altered route, we had to pack back out the way we came in. Everyone came away with something...besides tired legs and smelly feet! The elevation gain between our low and high points was just under 2,000 feet, but there was a lot of up-and-down so the actual ascent was between 4,000-5,000 feet! Most of that was done on days two and three, so this was a big workout for everyone.