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Table-Peekamoose-Lone-Rocky

Balsam Cap, Breath, Cornell, Cross, East Wildcat, Friday, Garfield, Giant Ledge, Hanover, Lone, Panther, Peekamoose, Pleasant, Rocky, Romer, Samuals Point, Slide, Table, Terrace, Van Wyck, Wittenberg, Wildcat, Woodhull
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Jon
Posts: 324
Joined: Tue Dec 20, 2011 9:43 pm
Location: Bangor, PA

Table-Peekamoose-Lone-Rocky

Unread post by Jon »

I got back from teaching assistant-ship on month-long geology field camp and decided that I hadn't done enough hiking. So on July 9 I took a hike with my buddy Chris from NJ who needed these last 4 peaks for his 3500 club membership. Congrats dude!
It was a nice day, not too hot or too cold. We started out at the Denning trailhead and hiked it up Table mountain first. Then we dropped our packs at the summit and headed over to Peekamoose. We got back to our packs and started the bushwack.

Surprisingly I don't ever remember finding a trail down Table mountain on this bushwack. This time we followed a trail almost 95% of the way over to Lone mountain. I was in shock because it was so easy to follow.

We signed into the Summit canister and were the first people that day to visit the top.
Chris said, "i'm going to look for the viewpoint".
I said, "I've never seen a viewpoint on Lone mtn. There's no point!"
Within 2 minutes he found the viewpoint and he called me over. I begrudgingly followed his voice and was amazed at this view that I hadn't seen in the other times I had been on the summit. It was a pretty good view!

We had a bit of a snack and then started out toward Rocky. Again I found a herd-path that headed down toward the col. Eventually though the herdpath kept pushing toward the north, but the true col was further to the south east. We got down to the elevation of the col and completely lost the herdpath. I thought I could make it out but it was just some divots and things I couldn't seem to see how it went.

Does anyone know about where that path goes (the one that is just north of the col) does this head down and then up again to rocky summit? Am I missing something?

I found that we were about .25 miles north west of the col, so instead of trying to find where that path was I just put the GPS cursor on the col and headed straight through the thick balsams. It was tough going, so silent. I fell into a few of those holes formed by decades of fallen balsams. It was a tough maze to get through with the downed trees.

Also I lost my knife! I had my green Morakniv Kansbol in my pocket and it somehow worked its way out! So if someone is heading over that way, it's somewhere west of Rocky summit. Finders keepers I guess!

It seemed to take so long to get from where that herdpath left us off to the col between lone and Rocky. Once we started gaining elevation I think we picked up a herdpath again, but It didn't seem to come from the north (where I believe it may connect to that other herdpath). We signed in at the summit canister and my buddy Chris did a celebration for signing in to his final canister on his 39th climb for the 3500 club! After a few pictures my camera had malfunctioned (kept saying memory card was corrupted...blech!).

From this point he said he was going to look for another viewpoint. I told him again, that I had never seen a viewpoint from this mountain. Within a minute he found it. I felt so ashamed! Well now I know there are two great views from these mountains! Learn something new everyday I guess?

Another fellow showed up, he seemed to be very severely scratched up because he had worn shorts. He said he was heading northwest from the canister down the stream's path to the Neversink. We decided to take the 'high road' and head along the spine of the ridge that goes directly north from the summit. After about 5 minutes of walking I whipped out my compass and saw we were not heading north, but directly east! I re-routed us and it seemed no matter how many times I got us back on track to a northern azimuth, after I put the compass away and took out the GPS we wound up heading more to the east. I decided against the GPS and just got the compass out after a while and followed that down to the Neversink. I took a nasty spill on the way down on one of those slanted rocks that drops off into a bottomless pit. I basically did a double tombraider slide (no flip in the air) and landed on my shin. I could walk but I was black-and-blue for a couple weeks after that. I wondered how the other guy faired (the one who followed the stream down).

We got down to the Neversink river and followed the fisherman's "path". We hiked along this for quite a while, crossing the stream a lot and trying to stay on the higher ground above the stream instead of right on the rocks in the stream. Luckily I remembered the last time I was in this spot (2011) and how thirsty I was. So I had my backpacking water filter along and we filled up the water bottles and hydrated for the hike back. I remember though debating about filling the water bottles and when we should do it. Eventually we got to a part where the southern side was very swampy (IIRC it was just north-northwest of the Lone summit). I was thinking to myself OK wonder why it's getting so swampy here. Then I saw that that a little further down there was a big old beaver dam on the tributary to the Neversink. This was causing the swampiness upstream, and I decided to filter the water upstream from where the dam is to reduce the possibility of diseases being in my water. I don't have exact coordinates but it seemed to be flooding a pretty good sized area.

It was a few hours before we saw our first person. There were some kids napping along the stream. It was another 30-45 minutes until we made it back to the bridges and the trail. We were thankful that we no longer had to path-find along the stream. We hiked out the last bit of trail to the car and Chris un-officially ascended into 3500 membership.

Photo album Hit the "i" in the top right for my captions (note: First few pics are not from Catskills but PA and western NJ)

-jon
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mike
Posts: 1442
Joined: Sun Aug 09, 2009 9:20 pm
Location: Ravena, NY

Re: Table-Peekamoose-Lone-Rocky

Unread post by mike »

It was a great weekend to hike. The weather was awesome. Rocky can be difficult if you drop off one of the herd paths, or take the wrong one.
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