Hell Freezes Over—A Winter Weekend on the Devil’s Path!
We enjoyed a second consecutive weekend on the always beautiful Devil’s Path, though it appears that Hell has indeed frozen over during this epic winter!
On Saturday, we climbed Twin Mountain from the Roaring Kill trailhead, our route taking us through Dibble’s Quarry and up to Pecoy Notch before summiting Twin Mountain, where the views didn’t disappoint!
We descended to a sheltered valley near one of the largest beaver-impounded ponds in the Catskills where our basecamp team had a fire roaring, soup simmering & Mountain Mocha steaming in no time! Warmed up and well-fed, our day hikers returned to NYC. While in camp...
Our intrepid group of overnight adventurers built—and slept in!—cozy snow shelters
.And enjoyed an awesome moonlit night in camp around a roaring fire
On Sunday morning, our overnighters emerged from their shelters and enjoyed Mountain Mocha and oatmeal around a morning fire under slate grey skies that promised snow. With no tents to strike—or carry!—we made quick time of breaking camp! We hiked out to meet Sunday’s group of day hikers at the trailhead (and drop heavy packs!) for our climb of Plateau Mountain.
Before long, as we were breaking trail on the lesser used, but gorgeous, route up to Mink Hollow the grey clouds delivered on their promise of snow
We rested in the Mink Hollow shelter and enjoyed a hot lunch; with a fire, too—big thanks to Ted & Breanna! By the time we’d finished eating lunch, the storm had intensified and looked even worse at high elevation. Remembering that caution is the better part of valor (and that Hickory BBQ awaited us) we decided to hike down to Mink Hollow and enjoyed a leisurely walk along country roads back to Big Blue and onto BBQ!
