We camped in woodland valley. We had planned (back in march and april) to go on the burrough's traverse, and all my friends had said they would go. However it turns out that none of them actually reserved a site, and last minute we found out that no one was going! People agreed to go with us well in advance, however they only 1/2 agree and don't fully commit just incase "something better" comes along. I just love the Facebook generation...(sarcasm).
Anyways so we went with just the family and my Brother in law (frank) came too. We didn't get up until late on Friday, and it was already dark so I didn't take many photos. We setup our tents and I found a nice large fallen tree I could saw up and we had a fire. I had some journal writing to do for my internship and I did that while we plotted our hiking adventure for the following day.
I had wanted to hike up Panther from this side, however we went over to the trailhead and saw it would be a longer full day hike. I would have had no problem leaving the girls if there were other people from our group who actually showed up, however it was just her and we didn't want to leave them all day. We decided against that and I told frank that Wittenberg isn't too long, and we could probably hike it in 4-5 hours. If we started at like 8 or 9 we could get back by lunch. Well we didn't really get on the trail that early, we maybe started out by like 10.
The girls having breakfast
Woodland Valley Creek.
This is the "break rock" like after the registration box, you make that first hard push/climb up to the first hemlock grove, and there is this large flat rock which I always like to take a small break on. Well now it's got a giant Hemlock laying on it! Seems the wooly adelgid insects have been busy and this forest is doomed! All along the trail we saw giants, could be 50-100 years old just snapped like twigs.
starting to climb the steep parts.
The 3500 sign is still on the ground (maybe been there a year now?) I can't believe it hasn't been washed off the mountain!
View from the top was spectucular. There was a thick haze on saturday, and I could cut it a bit with the circular polarizer filter. There still wasn't maximum visibilty. However the contrast with the clouds was amazing, and I love some of these shots.
Devil's Path
The Ashokan Reservoir
Breakfast on Sunday while we packed up the car
