Episode 143 - Hiking Overflow: New Trails or Maintain Trails?

[00:00:26] The bushwhacks were some of the worst days I've ever had in the mountains, or life, really.

[00:00:33] Whereas Pansom Mountain is totally opposite, it's a mountain on top of a crater.

[00:00:38] I think the weather challenges on this incident were particularly difficult.

[00:00:45] It is really the development of New York State. Catskills were responsive.

[00:00:50] It's been to Inside The Line, the Catskill Mountains Podcast.

[00:01:05] I think I got it. I think I got it.

[00:01:08] Alright, so, episode 143. How are you doing tonight, sir?

[00:01:13] I am doing okay.

[00:01:16] Can you hear me?

[00:01:18] I never hear you. I just kind of ad-lib. I lip-sync or read your lips and I go from that.

[00:01:25] Well, I can't read yours because yours is below the camera line, so...

[00:01:29] I'm just trying to be difficult.

[00:01:33] So, 143. So, Tad and I are just gonna not shoot the shit all night, but I had a big question in mind that I've wanted to talk to a while and it's kind of tough to talk about by myself back then.

[00:01:45] So, do we make new trails or do we improve trails with all this flow that we have coming to the Catskills and to hiking and such like that?

[00:01:54] So, it's a big question that we talked about before and we're gonna chat about it tonight and we're gonna chat about a lot of other stuff like full winter conditions, peak time in the Catskills going outrageously insane.

[00:02:08] You know, some news about the Aurora, the Great Aurora happening and then a big thing that Tad brought up last second about New York City.

[00:02:17] That is breaking fricking news.

[00:02:19] Breaking fricking news, actually. I just saw that probably like three minutes ago. Jesus.

[00:02:23] Because we're on top of it. This show is up to date.

[00:02:28] I like it. I think that's fantastic.

[00:02:30] Yeah, well, we have an excellent news department. We should give them credit, right?

[00:02:34] Yeah, that's human name.

[00:02:35] Fully staffed, yes. And they know what they're doing. They know how to Google.

[00:02:41] Yes, yes. So, let's talk about... We have full-on winter conditions.

[00:02:47] Now, this was a couple days ago that I saw this on Whiteface Mountain and Mount Washington. It's still going on.

[00:02:52] But today, today, Tuesday, October 15th, there are winter conditions in the Catskills.

[00:03:01] I have seen reports of snow happening on all Catskill high peaks. Did you hear about this, Tad? Are you...?

[00:03:07] No, no. That's why I put the over-under bet in, so...

[00:03:13] Yeah, I mean, I've seen... You're not on Facebook. A lot of people have posted to the Catskill Trail Conditions page.

[00:03:20] So, I'm going to go to the Inside the Line weather page right now.

[00:03:25] That's right.

[00:03:25] Because we have our weather stations strategically located throughout the High Peaks region in the Catskills.

[00:03:32] I'm booting the system. I'm entering the secret code, Mountain Lion, and it's coming up.

[00:03:40] Are you on the Facebook, Tad? Is that what you're trying to tell?

[00:03:43] No, I'm looking at color radar.

[00:03:45] Oh, yeah. So, we've had reports of winter conditions up high on the High Peaks.

[00:03:50] I've seen a lot of posts. Basically, I saw Friday Balsam Cap, Blackhead Slide.

[00:04:00] Shoken High Point had snow on it as well.

[00:04:03] And, you know, this is, of course, isn't significant snow, but it's snow to cover the trees and to cover part of the trail.

[00:04:10] And it makes you think, you know, once again, a couple things.

[00:04:15] Layers, layers, layers, layers.

[00:04:17] Shell to protect yourself against that cold snow and rain, hail, you might have.

[00:04:22] And then, you know, that thought, micro spikes.

[00:04:27] October, micro spikes.

[00:04:29] Throw them in the bag.

[00:04:31] Leave them there until spring.

[00:04:34] Yeah, I'm not seeing anything on the electronic data that shows flurries or snow activity.

[00:04:43] It's already happened.

[00:04:44] Yeah, well, I guess, you know, I was on top of the story with the DEP and you're on top of the story with the snowfall.

[00:04:52] So what the DEP didn't like, what is it? What do you mean?

[00:04:56] Oh, with the land acquisition.

[00:04:58] Oh, get into.

[00:04:59] Oh, okay.

[00:05:00] Yeah.

[00:05:00] So it's that that is a burning question.

[00:05:02] I know for this weekend and last I packed one of those ear warmer headband jobbies, some gloves, a little bit warmer, a wind shell.

[00:05:17] Cause you got to expect cooler at the start of the hike in the sixties.

[00:05:24] Yeah.

[00:05:24] And even cooler up top.

[00:05:26] Yeah.

[00:05:26] Yeah, definitely.

[00:05:27] Um, Danny and I on our hike this past weekend, uh, which if you saw my postings on Instagram was fabulous.

[00:05:34] Uh, there was, you know, we started off, it was cool, got warmer around 11, 1130.

[00:05:41] And then by the time we, we had summit, it was windy, but excellent.

[00:05:47] Cold.

[00:05:48] Like where you, did you feel cold up there with the wind?

[00:05:51] Uh, a little bit.

[00:05:53] Cooled you off and then you had to kind of layer up a little bit just to get warm to go back down.

[00:05:58] Well, yeah, I think we, we both put on our, um, windbreakers.

[00:06:02] We're old men and we just don't have the blood circulation that you young guys have.

[00:06:06] So.

[00:06:07] Yeah.

[00:06:07] Right.

[00:06:08] Yeah.

[00:06:08] Yeah.

[00:06:09] Under understandable.

[00:06:10] But yeah.

[00:06:10] So once again, full on winter conditions are happening in the Northeast.

[00:06:15] I would say if, if it's happening in white face in Washington and we hear reports of the Catskills, it's, it's coming.

[00:06:21] And you know, once again, you have rain down below, get up higher, hail sleet, and then it turns into snow.

[00:06:28] And people, once again, I've reported snow as of this day, which is a Tuesday, October 15th up in the high peaks of the Catskills.

[00:06:36] So pack for the weather.

[00:06:39] Yeah.

[00:06:40] Probably a good time of year.

[00:06:42] Start out with your rock spikes, you know, early season until you start to get some accumulation.

[00:06:49] Yeah.

[00:06:49] Dull, your dull, uh, micro spikes.

[00:06:52] Yeah.

[00:06:53] Last, last season's gear.

[00:06:55] Yeah.

[00:06:57] Stuff that's a few or a few years old.

[00:06:59] So you said you wanted to make a bet about the one inch accumulation?

[00:07:03] Yeah.

[00:07:04] I, I, um, I thought a fair break point would be Monday, November 18th, basically a month from today.

[00:07:14] Um, do you think by then we'll have an inch accumulation of snow or not?

[00:07:20] Like still on the ground?

[00:07:23] Well, yeah.

[00:07:24] I mean, during the course of the snowfall, will we get an inch of accumulation, whether it's at the top of slide, blackhead, black dome, caterskill, high peak, anywhere in the Catskills, an inch or more of snow accumulation.

[00:07:37] We'll, we'll accept a credible Facebook report.

[00:07:40] Hmm.

[00:07:41] That's a good question.

[00:07:42] Uh, you know, with, with, with global or not global climate change and stuff like that, you know, it is.

[00:07:50] It's, it is getting further and further into the season that we see more accumulation of snow.

[00:07:55] So yeah, that's a tough one, Ted.

[00:07:56] I, I mean, maybe if a breaker, you know, if we have like a major, once again, another major hurricane that hits and then comes up north to make it into cold and get a couple inches.

[00:08:07] I don't know, man.

[00:08:09] Yeah.

[00:08:09] Could be.

[00:08:09] I remember one year, uh, early November before the 18th, I was snowshoeing.

[00:08:16] We had like super cold weather, got up a little dump of snow about eight inches.

[00:08:22] That just, it lasted a day or two and then it started to melt, but it happened to be a day I was hiking and I hiked, uh, early November snowshoes on.

[00:08:34] Now with your early days of skiing as well, did you, you saw accumulations before that, of course, right?

[00:08:40] Oh yeah.

[00:08:40] When I was growing up in the seventies, it was customary to be skiing at least a week before Thanksgiving, if not two.

[00:08:49] And we'd skied a, the late part of April, um, was fairly common.

[00:08:56] Wow.

[00:08:57] Amazing.

[00:08:58] Yeah.

[00:08:58] The local ski area generally was open about 140 to 150 days a year.

[00:09:03] And believe it or not, it was not uncommon for somebody like me to ski about 120 days a season.

[00:09:10] Wow.

[00:09:11] So how much percentage wise of that 120, 150 days, how do you think it is now?

[00:09:18] Uh, I think they're hard pressed to get 90 to a hundred days in.

[00:09:22] Wow.

[00:09:23] That sucks.

[00:09:24] Yeah.

[00:09:24] And it's, it's manmade snow for the most part.

[00:09:27] It's crappy conditions.

[00:09:29] I mean, we, where I grew up south of Buffalo in the heart of the snow belt in New York, it was luscious ski.

[00:09:37] Uh, yeah.

[00:09:38] And, and Eastern powder from mid November through early, early March.

[00:09:46] I mean, we would, we would start to see some ebb and flow of thaw snow rain at the earliest late, late February.

[00:09:57] Um, but, but often that would be in, in sometime in March, it would hit.

[00:10:02] But like I said, we would get such an accumulation of snow out there that we could easily ski into mid April.

[00:10:09] No.

[00:10:10] My mother's birthday was April 20th and we'd ski all the time on our birthday.

[00:10:16] I'm, I'm sorry to say this is she still alive.

[00:10:19] No, no.

[00:10:21] Mom passed.

[00:10:21] Yeah.

[00:10:22] Mom passed away a few years ago, but you know, sorry to hear about that.

[00:10:25] Those ski days are still remembered.

[00:10:28] Did she celebrate that her birthday was on 420?

[00:10:32] Uh, I'm not gonna answer that.

[00:10:34] Yeah.

[00:10:35] Where, where we grew up.

[00:10:36] I don't think that was like a thing back then.

[00:10:37] Okay.

[00:10:38] You said you went to fricking Woodstock or your parents went to Woodstock and stuff like it.

[00:10:42] Come on.

[00:10:42] Well, no, my parents were hippies.

[00:10:44] I didn't say they went to Woodstock.

[00:10:46] My parents were like adult hippies.

[00:10:48] They were a few years older, but they were like, you know, the, the, the folks that the hippies used to hang out with.

[00:10:55] Oh, okay.

[00:10:56] Okay.

[00:10:56] They used to camp and, and grow stuff.

[00:10:59] I won't say what they grew, but they used to grow stuff on the family farm.

[00:11:03] So they're the true hippies instead of the wannabe hippies.

[00:11:07] Okay.

[00:11:08] Understandable.

[00:11:09] I grew up driving around in my mother's Volkswagen.

[00:11:12] Beast.

[00:11:13] Yeah.

[00:11:14] Wagons.

[00:11:14] The wagons are just like you, you, you should put a 350 in that and you can race that.

[00:11:19] And then it'd be this like praise all the time.

[00:11:22] Those things were beast.

[00:11:23] Yeah.

[00:11:24] I mean, yeah.

[00:11:24] You didn't even need a motor like that to go street racing.

[00:11:28] So also, you know, we're talking about, I mean, before winter, we had this awesome peak time this year, this year, you know, in the Catskills, it was a little bit, I would say mustardy that the leaves weren't as vibrant as they usually are, but it was still an amazing show.

[00:11:44] So for me up in the Northern part, the foils of the Catskills, I've had some absolutely stunning colors.

[00:11:51] Anything from hot pink to purple, to brown, to red.

[00:11:57] It's just been all over the place.

[00:11:58] But you know, with this, of course, this weekend was absolutely phenomenal.

[00:12:03] We had a Saturday that was beautiful.

[00:12:04] You know, Tad was out Saturday.

[00:12:06] So I heard reports from one of my friends that there was a two hour wait time for the ski lift to go up to Hunter Mountain to the Colonel's chair.

[00:12:16] So that is absolutely, I didn't hear anything about Bel Air or anything like that, but two hour wait time to get up there when at that time you could have taken one of the roads or even one of the ski lifts, even though it would have sucked because there's a lot of thorns and prickers on that.

[00:12:31] And you would have got up there faster.

[00:12:34] Well, you know, you wouldn't have gotten quite the view that you get when you're up on the lift.

[00:12:39] I mean, that's, that's kind of a, it's, it's a nice ride up.

[00:12:43] Um, it's pretty cool to particularly the lift at Hunter Mountain.

[00:12:47] That's fast and fun.

[00:12:49] You get up there quick.

[00:12:50] You can check stuff out.

[00:12:52] You can either ride down or walk down.

[00:12:54] But when you posted that, that it was about a two hour wait, I looked up the data on their CatterSkill flyer lift, which is a detachable.

[00:13:03] Eight person chairlift.

[00:13:06] And it can get 2,600 people up the mountain per hour.

[00:13:11] And they were selling tickets at $27 a pop.

[00:13:15] So that is, if you do the math as I did, that's $70,200 per hour, not, not including cider, cider donuts and other fall favorites.

[00:13:29] But, uh, and I also checked out that Bel Air is $7 cheaper at $20 a ride up.

[00:13:37] But both of them, I thought was interesting.

[00:13:39] Both of them said the 13th was their last day of operation for those rides.

[00:13:45] Wow.

[00:13:46] So everybody rushed up there to both.

[00:13:49] I didn't, I didn't hear anything about Bel Air, but I know Hunter is, is one of the more popular areas, one of the more well-known areas.

[00:13:56] And so $70,000 per hour.

[00:14:01] That's crazy.

[00:14:03] That's unbelievable.

[00:14:04] Mm-hmm.

[00:14:05] That's almost as much as, I don't know.

[00:14:07] I don't even want to say, but that's just $70,000 an hour.

[00:14:11] I don't even know.

[00:14:11] That's a ton of money, you know?

[00:14:13] And I mean, it's just one weekend though.

[00:14:16] And it happened because the weather was bad on Sunday that they probably didn't do any business or very modest business on Sunday.

[00:14:23] And I'm sure they didn't have a two hour wait the week before, but they generally a lot of green just giving out fall rides on that lift.

[00:14:32] Yeah.

[00:14:33] It's just, it blew my mind that there.

[00:14:36] And then the funny thing is I was asking my friend, I was like, why did you wait two hours?

[00:14:40] Why don't you just walk up the road to the right?

[00:14:42] I'm like, it's, it is a tough walk, you know, to go up that, that area, but you'll get up there eventually at the same amount of time.

[00:14:49] You wouldn't have to pay.

[00:14:51] I mean, I think that sometimes I think they stop, they, they stop you or something like that.

[00:14:57] But walking up the hill.

[00:14:59] I'm pretty sure.

[00:14:59] I'm pretty sure they, they try to, they try to stop you, but you could say like, you know, I'm a DEC official.

[00:15:05] I can do this.

[00:15:07] Or I'm, I'm just going up to do some graffiti on a local lean to.

[00:15:11] Hmm.

[00:15:12] Hmm.

[00:15:12] Good times.

[00:15:13] Yeah.

[00:15:14] Good times.

[00:15:15] I mean, I've done that.

[00:15:16] And you know, to, to be honest, Jessica and I had one of those lazy days where we did that had no wait times at all.

[00:15:22] And it was absolutely stunning.

[00:15:24] Uh, and this was like, God, I don't even know how full, like, like five, six years ago.

[00:15:29] It's before the pandemic.

[00:15:31] So nobody was up there and we got the whole, uh, chair actually.

[00:15:36] It was pretty funny.

[00:15:37] Cause we were sitting down and having lunch right at the base of where the chair meets up to the chair.

[00:15:43] Let's meets up to call Colonel's chair.

[00:15:45] And, uh, it stopped and people were panicking and we're just like, it's going to go like in a second.

[00:15:50] And eventually a minute later we were just laughing and we were just like, wow, but it is an incredible experience.

[00:15:55] So I'm not a skier, so I don't go up there.

[00:15:58] I don't get that stuff like you do.

[00:15:59] You know, when, when you were skiing up there and stuff.

[00:16:02] I remember when that was a two person fixed grip hall chair lift going up there, you know, probably had an uphill capacity of a hundred people an hour.

[00:16:17] Right.

[00:16:17] More than that.

[00:16:18] But I mean, it was like slow and you know, but that's back when skiing was great.

[00:16:22] Cause the hill wasn't getting skied up.

[00:16:24] You imagine 2,600 people per hour coming down that hill.

[00:16:28] Yeah.

[00:16:28] It really, it really tears it up fast.

[00:16:30] Packs it up and then it pushes people, push it to the side and then you get bare skin and stuff like that.

[00:16:35] Yeah.

[00:16:35] Scrapes it up.

[00:16:36] That sucks.

[00:16:37] So crazy stuff happening in the Catskills.

[00:16:39] Once again, it's speaking of crazy stuff, the Aurora Thursday night, last Thursday.

[00:16:45] So we're talking about a goddamn the dates November or October 10th.

[00:16:50] I heard multiple crazy reports that we're going to have a major.

[00:16:56] Uh, Aurora event on Thursday night.

[00:17:00] So, you know what I went and I got ready.

[00:17:02] And I went out at eight 30 at night, checked it.

[00:17:05] I had amazing cloud coverage, but every one of my friends around me up in Saratoga Springs down, uh, tad probably where you live.

[00:17:13] New Paltz over in Ashokan.

[00:17:15] Everybody had beautiful views and I was very ticked off.

[00:17:18] So what I did, I set my alarm clock on my phone to 1230.

[00:17:23] I went out, uh, you know, it's funny.

[00:17:25] I went to the bathroom.

[00:17:26] I took a pee in my bathroom and I can open up my window and look out to the South.

[00:17:31] You really need to know these details.

[00:17:32] You can just tell us you took a shot out the window.

[00:17:35] Okay.

[00:17:35] One hundred percent.

[00:17:36] I'm telling this because once again, this is, this podcast is real.

[00:17:40] It's real.

[00:17:41] So I look out, I'm all like explicit part.

[00:17:44] Yeah.

[00:17:45] I'm all like, like, oh man.

[00:17:46] And I see a like red and I'm like, that's not normal.

[00:17:51] So.

[00:17:52] You're talking about the sky now when you said you.

[00:17:55] Yes.

[00:17:55] I just want to be sure.

[00:17:58] That might be, that would have been horrible, but I was just like, okay, I'm going to go

[00:18:02] outside.

[00:18:03] I go over.

[00:18:04] I looked to my left, which is kind of like a, I would say Northwest and there's a faint

[00:18:09] of red over to the North is stunning green.

[00:18:13] And I'm like, oh crap.

[00:18:15] This is, this is it.

[00:18:16] So I go up and I try to wake Jessica up.

[00:18:18] She doesn't wake up.

[00:18:19] I like, I was like, Hey babe, the Aurora is happening.

[00:18:22] And she's like, yeah, whatever.

[00:18:24] And then she lays back asleep.

[00:18:25] I go downstairs, I take more pictures and then I go to Jessica.

[00:18:29] I'm like, Jessica, it's happening.

[00:18:30] I can see red and stuff.

[00:18:31] So she finally gets off after three tries.

[00:18:33] We check it out.

[00:18:34] I take pictures.

[00:18:36] Awesome time.

[00:18:37] You know, it wasn't like you think of in Iceland or up in Alaska and stuff like that, where you

[00:18:42] can see those waves happening, but it was something to be like, like Jessica and I, she

[00:18:49] was awake enough to notice that there was, it looked like pulses happening.

[00:18:53] You could see the green flowing and then coming back down and then flowing back up.

[00:18:59] There was a red, the red off to our left.

[00:19:01] I heard was a SAR belt, which is something of right where the belt of the Aurora is happening.

[00:19:08] So like it was reaching all over and I was blown away.

[00:19:12] Of course, the pictures, I got to admit, looking at it from here, you know, from where our standpoint

[00:19:20] is, it's not as vibrant as you think it is, as all the pictures people like, wow, I saw it.

[00:19:25] I saw green decent in a decent way and a red in a decent way, but the pictures made it

[00:19:31] way out of proportion.

[00:19:33] So like when people are going out there and being like, you know, like I saw this in Iceland,

[00:19:38] you're going to see a whole different story up in Iceland where there's no light pollution.

[00:19:41] And you're also like at 20 degrees, uh, on, on the, off the crater, you know, off the North pole.

[00:19:50] It's a whole different story, but I got to admit it was one of those experiences that I was just

[00:19:54] like, oh shit.

[00:19:55] And, uh, I took pictures and the morning I woke up at four o'clock for work.

[00:20:00] And you know what?

[00:20:01] I was like, screw work.

[00:20:03] I'm going to go to the reservoir and take more pictures where it's absolutely black.

[00:20:08] And I got some beautiful green pictures.

[00:20:10] I'm just like 45 minutes late for work, but you know, it was worth it.

[00:20:14] Take that time and go do it.

[00:20:16] So, so you're basically telling us that you're looking for a new job.

[00:20:21] I wish I had that job before.

[00:20:23] Oh, well, I, I tried that before a photography and stuff like that.

[00:20:27] It doesn't work out, but you weren't fired.

[00:20:29] Cause you were 45 minutes late.

[00:20:31] Oh yeah. Yeah. No, no.

[00:20:32] Okay.

[00:20:33] I have PTO, but Ted, you didn't see anything.

[00:20:36] I'm I didn't wake you.

[00:20:38] I should have sent you a message.

[00:20:39] No.

[00:20:40] Apparently it was quite vibrant and stunning.

[00:20:42] And all the local photos were really spectacular, but Thursday night, 830, my wife and I were watching

[00:20:48] wheel of fortune.

[00:20:50] What?

[00:20:51] So yeah.

[00:20:52] I like rerun.

[00:20:54] Yeah.

[00:20:54] Okay.

[00:20:55] It's yeah.

[00:20:56] It's exciting.

[00:20:57] It's really stunning to sit there and watch that.

[00:20:59] No, we weren't watching wheel of fortune, but we were also too lazy to go out and look at

[00:21:04] the, uh, the lights.

[00:21:05] We just kind of hung out.

[00:21:07] You just weren't on Facebook.

[00:21:08] I gotta, I gotta let you know about this stuff.

[00:21:10] Okay.

[00:21:11] Yes.

[00:21:11] Send me a letter or postcard when there's something exciting like that and boomer and

[00:21:17] I'll jump on it.

[00:21:19] Okay.

[00:21:20] Yeah.

[00:21:21] It was a fantastic.

[00:21:22] So I, I, you know, I'm on this, uh, this, this little page.

[00:21:26] If you're in, in New York state, uh, hold on, let me, it's a great page on Facebook.

[00:21:33] Uh, Aurora hunters, New York, check it out.

[00:21:36] I'll post their link really cool on Facebook.

[00:21:39] They, they, uh, everybody has a great discussion of where they're seeing it.

[00:21:42] You know what the KP index is, how the, the coronial mass ejection happens and stuff

[00:21:48] like that, what we're going to expect.

[00:21:49] So, and then people post pictures of all over the place of where they're seeing it.

[00:21:54] So basically you can get a, uh, kind of a hint of if you're going to see it or not.

[00:22:00] And that, that night, everybody was pushing pictures from everywhere.

[00:22:03] I had clouds.

[00:22:04] So I went out later and I got, I got really lucky.

[00:22:06] And it, it's one of those things that, that you are just like, I want to see in my lifetime.

[00:22:12] And I saw it, but I want to see more.

[00:22:14] I just want to go up North.

[00:22:16] I want to go to Alaska and stuff.

[00:22:17] I, I, I'm very jealous of Danny of what he probably sees up there is probably mind blowing.

[00:22:24] Yup.

[00:22:24] I would say so.

[00:22:26] He's everything in and out of the mountains with the Aurora, everything.

[00:22:30] Yeah.

[00:22:30] I mean, he, you know, he lives on a bay in Alaska and from his little village there,

[00:22:38] he can either go out and on the water or up into the mountains and be above tree line.

[00:22:43] Wow.

[00:22:44] It's very cool.

[00:22:45] Amazing.

[00:22:45] Amazing.

[00:22:46] So if you saw the Aurora, you know, post some pictures, let me know, tag, tag us in it.

[00:22:51] And, uh, you know, hope you had a good time.

[00:22:54] Watch out for the next one.

[00:22:55] It's going to be happening.

[00:22:56] So also, you know, I got some quick news from, from our friend, Yana, Yana, uh, online.

[00:23:01] She's been on here for, she's been on like two episodes and stuff.

[00:23:05] Uh, she's got great news for the Catskill hikers.

[00:23:07] She was in Briar's and Bramble's bookstore in Wyndham.

[00:23:10] And she found patches, uh, of individual Catskill mountains.

[00:23:15] So if you know, if you're hiking with your, your child or your family members, and they, you like the individual patches of each individual mountain, they have those.

[00:23:24] And, uh, she saw like every mountain available in the 3500 club that they had at Briar's and Bramble's book in Wyndham.

[00:23:34] Um, so I will post a link for that.

[00:23:36] That's pretty cool news.

[00:23:37] I got to admit, um, a lot of people go for those individual patches, uh, like patches, and then we'll put them in their shadow box and have a whole thing of 3500.

[00:23:47] I think that's pretty neat.

[00:23:48] I've only seen like slide and hunter.

[00:23:51] I'm pretty sure at other places, fire towers, such like that.

[00:23:55] So cool.

[00:23:57] Thank you, Yana.

[00:23:58] So I also have this thing of about, uh, you know, a huge misleading wording leads to a panic about a national park.

[00:24:07] So this said, uh, one popular national park will go car free for the season.

[00:24:12] That was our headline.

[00:24:14] So now everybody went insane and shared this.

[00:24:18] I can't even remember how many shares that I had before people started reading it.

[00:24:24] Now it doesn't mean what you think.

[00:24:27] Now it says we'll go car free, but they didn't say how long.

[00:24:31] So 4.1 million visitors traveled to Rocky mountain national park in 2023, making it one of the most visited in the country with the increased visitors numbers.

[00:24:40] Rocky mountain has also been dealing with the kinds of problems that any rural area, not designed to have millions of people passing through will come across with increased popularity.

[00:24:48] Of course that's crowding, degradation trails.

[00:24:50] Everybody has that.

[00:24:51] Now that's happening all over the United States, 2024.

[00:24:55] The national park service launched a seasonal slot system requiring vehicles coming in to register their visit.

[00:25:01] Now with the summer park visiting season now to an end, Rocky mountain is closing altogether.

[00:25:07] The main road leading through the park as it conducts a series of repairs.

[00:25:11] Now this, that, that, that was one of the sentences.

[00:25:14] Now it didn't go on to a little bit later.

[00:25:16] Now it's closed to cars, October eight to October 10th.

[00:25:22] That's it.

[00:25:24] Just two days.

[00:25:26] And then cyclists and visitors with pets on leashes will pass through the periodic tables throughout the fall, including the weekend of October 11th through eight to the 19th and the 30th.

[00:25:34] So that was it.

[00:25:37] It's all the fricking information.

[00:25:38] Once again, I'm sorry to say like a news people putting out this crap to cause a widespread panic.

[00:25:48] And then it's just saying that it's closed for two days for repairs.

[00:25:51] Then it goes on to give some somewhat contradictory information, talking about pedestrians and cyclists after that period being allowed through.

[00:26:03] Well, if the road closure for cars is only a few days, right?

[00:26:08] What's the big deal about cyclists and pedestrians?

[00:26:10] A few days later, if cars are going through then I don't get it.

[00:26:14] Yeah.

[00:26:14] Yeah.

[00:26:15] Poor reporting on the part of the street.

[00:26:19] The street.

[00:26:21] Yeah.

[00:26:21] I saw that once again, the one time it's just a headline that triggers you and all of a sudden everybody will post that I'm guessing all these people in the Canadian Rockies went insane and it was shared so many times.

[00:26:31] But isn't that a good idea to start to encourage people to use alternative means of transportation in these parks?

[00:26:42] It is.

[00:26:44] It is.

[00:26:45] It is.

[00:26:45] But also, you know, where are these alternative means of transportation?

[00:26:49] Well, you can have, I'm not going to say buses, but you know, you can have those.

[00:26:55] Shuttles?

[00:26:56] Yeah.

[00:26:57] Like electric shuttles, like open air shuttles to take people around like they have at amusement parks when you show up and they make you park two miles away and you hop on the shuttle to get to the amusement park entrance.

[00:27:09] That's really not a bad idea.

[00:27:11] And I see it down here in New Paltz and the gunks on weekends.

[00:27:15] It used to just be in the fall that the traffic was bad.

[00:27:20] Now it's pretty much all summer long on weekends.

[00:27:24] The traffic is pretty bad.

[00:27:27] I mean, you'll see cars at the end of the day coming out of the gunks and waiting 45, 50 minutes just to get through the first stoplight in New Paltz.

[00:27:35] Wow.

[00:27:36] So, and then you think about all the air pollution, the noise, the this and that, that's caused by all that traffic going through the gunks and through New Paltz.

[00:27:45] It'd just be a lot easier if they put a parking area at the throughway exit bigger than they have now and have a shuttle service no different than the trolley that runs up and down 23 from Tannersville to Palinville.

[00:28:02] You can do the same thing here in New Paltz, run it through New Paltz up into the gunks around the various parking lots and back.

[00:28:10] And when people come up here, they can just park their car and relax, hop on the, their local trolley and get shuttled around.

[00:28:18] How, how long of a ride do you think that is to the different places maximum?

[00:28:23] Well, if they were using a trolley, it'd be less than an hour.

[00:28:27] You would be from the throughway exit up to the Minnewasca parking lot proper.

[00:28:36] And well, depending on the number of stops and how long they waited other stops, but maybe 45 minutes.

[00:28:42] Wow.

[00:28:42] Maybe, maybe just a half an hour.

[00:28:44] Uh, but it's, it's a lot better than, you know, people, when they get out there, you got to worry about parking.

[00:28:51] The parking lots fill up, then people start parking on the road.

[00:28:54] They're walking on the road.

[00:28:55] There's cars everywhere.

[00:28:58] Tickets, towing, stuff like that.

[00:28:59] Yeah. Yeah.

[00:29:00] You know, um, I, I couldn't imagine, you know, driving up here two or three hours from Jersey or Long Island, wherever, getting up here.

[00:29:09] And then you get to the gunks and you can't find a parking place.

[00:29:14] Yeah.

[00:29:14] Right.

[00:29:15] That's awesome.

[00:29:16] You know, awesome.

[00:29:16] You spent all that time.

[00:29:18] You're looking forward to it.

[00:29:19] You have the kids in the car, you got your dog with you and you get to the parking lot and you just drive around and around and around.

[00:29:27] There's no place to park.

[00:29:28] It'll be, it, it leads to shoving matches in the parking lot.

[00:29:33] Like we saw on shut road a few weeks ago.

[00:29:37] So.

[00:29:38] And it leads to maybe, should we build new trails?

[00:29:41] Should we.

[00:29:42] Yeah.

[00:29:43] Tonight, tonight.

[00:29:44] There we go.

[00:29:45] Yeah.

[00:29:46] Well, we can do both in my opinion, maintain and build, build and maintain.

[00:29:52] Yeah.

[00:29:52] Let's do it all.

[00:29:54] Let's do it all.

[00:29:55] And you know, once again, you know, you have that down where you're located in the Hudson Valley, it's a little bit more congested.

[00:30:01] And of course there's more going on with the gunks and stuff like that, with people trying to get in from New York City, not wanting to travel so far up to Catskill.

[00:30:11] And, you know, it's always that, you know, question.

[00:30:15] What could we do better?

[00:30:15] Definitely a trolley system would absolutely phenomenal.

[00:30:18] You know, stop the trailhead from being this, this many people.

[00:30:23] So trolley people in force them be like, you can get a view.

[00:30:27] It's going to take you 45 minutes to get to the parking area, but this is, you're going to get that beautiful view that you've waited, you know, two hours that you've driven for.

[00:30:35] Yeah.

[00:30:36] And you're not going to be all riled up because of other people and their shenanigans cutting you off and doing whatever.

[00:30:45] You can just park your car, hop on the trolley, relax, maybe start sucking down some IPAs, you know.

[00:30:54] And that's a little bit too far.

[00:30:56] Yeah.

[00:30:56] Enjoying your time in the mountains.

[00:30:58] Yeah.

[00:30:58] And I, I've seen this when I went up to, well, before I went up to, after, sorry, after I went up to the Canadian Rockies, you know, Lake Louise and Moraine Lake has been in one of the most beautiful places in the world.

[00:31:12] Stunning, beautiful blue waters with majestic 14,000 foot mountains around you.

[00:31:18] And I fortunately got there in 2018 before there was a trolley or a parking permit system that they had.

[00:31:24] But I went into Moraine Lake and I got a parking spot right up front.

[00:31:28] And this was at 1030 in the morning.

[00:31:31] Now, nowadays that parking lot is closed to any civilians and they have to trolley in from three miles out to get into there.

[00:31:39] So, you know, it's, it's, I'm very grateful that that has happened in my, my life and I got to experience that.

[00:31:46] But, but, you know, you got to adapt and overcome and you got to let people see these amazing places because, you know, seeing the Canadian Rockies when I was there absolutely blew my mind away of what else there is out there.

[00:32:00] And what else we can explore.

[00:32:03] And I, I'm like, every person needs to see this in their life.

[00:32:06] I wish every person could to be blown away.

[00:32:08] Like I, I was at that time.

[00:32:11] So, whatever.

[00:32:12] Well, I'm not going to argue with that.

[00:32:15] Yeah.

[00:32:16] I, you can't because it's what we've seen.

[00:32:19] We, we, we've seen it, you know, we've seen that those, those viewpoints that blow us away and that's it.

[00:32:25] But, you know, Ted, this is, this is your next.

[00:32:29] Oh yeah.

[00:32:30] So I, I, I picked up on Google news at the end of my day and article from the Albany times union.

[00:32:39] It, the headline is New York city to stop most land purchases in the Catskills.

[00:32:45] And the article reads in part, the New York city department of environmental protection is set to end land purchases.

[00:32:54] And most of the Catskills winding down a decades long program that has protected the watershed of the city's upstate reservoirs while angering many residents and local officials.

[00:33:09] Since 1997, New York city has purchased more than 220 square miles in the Catskills to satisfy an agreement with the state department of health that allows the city to continue to use an unfiltered water system for the majority of its residents.

[00:33:31] And that is in part, what we discussed a few weeks ago with our guest from the Catskill watershed corporation and how the Catskill work watershed corporation was a by-product of the memorandum of agreement made with the city of New York and the local communities in the Catskills to help buffer the local impacts.

[00:33:57] That would result from the city of New York and the city of New York and the locals.

[00:34:26] And now the city is going to scale back substantially.

[00:34:34] So probably because they bought up 220 square miles, how much land is left for them to buy.

[00:34:42] Right. So I'm kind of wishing they would talk that into acres.

[00:34:46] Like, so hold on.

[00:34:49] So, Ted, can you, I'm going to say this in the office kind of way, explain that to me like I was five.

[00:34:56] Yes, Michael.

[00:34:59] It's, well, the, well, the no longer purchasing the land or how much land it is.

[00:35:05] Wow.

[00:35:06] Yeah.

[00:35:06] Let's, well, I'm going to do this right now.

[00:35:09] 220 square miles is 140,000 acres.

[00:35:12] Yeah.

[00:35:13] So that is literally almost a quarter to half of what the Catskills is.

[00:35:19] Right.

[00:35:19] It's a big area.

[00:35:20] So holy shit.

[00:35:21] That, yeah.

[00:35:21] Catskills are 370,000 acres.

[00:35:24] Yeah.

[00:35:25] 365, 370,000 acres.

[00:35:27] Wow.

[00:35:28] That brings it a little bit.

[00:35:31] People are like 200 square miles.

[00:35:32] That isn't that much.

[00:35:33] Well, so, and that's, that's just since 1997.

[00:35:37] Yeah.

[00:35:38] Now factor in the reservoir areas that have existed since the 1920s, that brings it up substantially.

[00:35:45] And so obviously, because I'm not a local, I don't live in a Catskill watershed community.

[00:35:52] I live further downstate.

[00:35:54] I benefit tremendously from the city of New York buying up all that land.

[00:35:58] And I really think it's terrific that you can sit on a, uh, a mountaintop in the Catskills and overlook into these valleys like Danny and I did into Woodland Valley this past weekend.

[00:36:10] And you don't see any condos.

[00:36:11] You don't see any townhouses.

[00:36:13] You don't see resort developments in that valley.

[00:36:17] You just see nothing but forest or forest trees, the canopy, the colors, all of that.

[00:36:26] And maybe not in Woodland Valley because it's been part of the park for a long time.

[00:36:31] But when you, you sit up on Friday and look out over Friday, balsam cap, the blacks, wherever, you don't see what you would see if this area had not been protected by both the state and the city of New York.

[00:36:45] Yeah.

[00:36:46] So, uh, you know, it's a benefit.

[00:36:48] Yeah.

[00:36:49] Well, you know, good, good, all good things they say come to an end, but is our guest from a few weeks ago pointed out the city of New York when it embarked on a plan to buy up land.

[00:37:02] So it wouldn't have to build the filtration plant had to, as part of that, enter into this memorandum of agreement, which would help fund local projects, local business development, local education programs, things of that nature, local septic cleaning and septic rebuilding and installation.

[00:37:25] Uh, they, they did have to do a lot for the local communities, but I'm sure is our guest pointed out.

[00:37:31] If you were a young person wanting to buy a starter home in the Catskills, it, it gets pretty expensive when nobody's coming up into the Catskills to build condos, townhouses, and other developments because the land just isn't there to do it.

[00:37:47] You have to buy it basically from, you know, maybe a farmer or a person that has been there for a long time and they don't, they don't want to sell their land.

[00:37:56] They, they're like, you know, screw you.

[00:37:58] I ain't selling this to a city person.

[00:38:00] Well, I'm sure that a farmer would for the right price sell their land.

[00:38:04] But one of the problem, one of the problems they run into is they would have to build a sewage treatment plant.

[00:38:10] You're not just going to be able to have an in-ground absorption system, you know, a traditional system for a 100 unit development.

[00:38:18] You know, the, the amount of rock and the soil and the Catskills is so abundant that you really can't percolate your sewage into the ground for a big system.

[00:38:29] So I don't want to bore people to death with that, but you would have, you'd have to build a, yeah, well, you'd have to build a sewage treatment plant that then would dump the effluent into a stream and the water in that stream would flow into a reservoir and the city of New York would shit.

[00:38:44] If, if, if all of a sudden you're, you're privately owned and maintained sewer treatment plant malfunctioned for a week, right?

[00:38:52] And nobody knew it for a whole week.

[00:38:54] You were pumping untreated sewage into the stream that flowed into the reservoir that went into a glass of water in somebody's drinking cup in New York city, you know, a couple of weeks later.

[00:39:07] So I don't know what the, uh, the, the, the rate of, you know, uh, saturation that they would need to have for that to be a problem, but I'm sure it's a big concern.

[00:39:17] And it explains why there's probably no large scale private systems in the Catskills.

[00:39:23] And that's, that's good.

[00:39:24] You know, and I've seen with my, my traveling around the Catskills that there are a lot of people building in the Catskills.

[00:39:32] You know, if you go up, uh, you know, I think it's 23 C, which goes up top of like Jewett and stuff like that.

[00:39:39] And airport road, you can see a lot of development.

[00:39:42] A lot of these expensive homes are being built.

[00:39:45] And of course, you know, people from, from the area of the Catskills and stuff are selling their, their land, their massive acres.

[00:39:54] And they're like, yeah, I'll, I'll give this to you for a substantial price.

[00:39:57] I gotta admit, I'm not, I'm not, you know, that's, that's smart.

[00:40:01] That is very smart.

[00:40:01] But, you know, then you see all these places being built and they're going to be, you know, built for $500,000 and sold for 1.2 million and 1.8 million.

[00:40:11] Stuff like that.

[00:40:12] You know, I saw that one place down in Hunter to right off of the turn going on to Hunter mountain.

[00:40:19] And it looks like a, I'm just a big, weird black box and it was being sold for $1.8 million, eight rooms, six bathrooms, 1.8 million.

[00:40:34] Cause that's the location.

[00:40:36] Yeah.

[00:40:36] And Stosh, because you're further upstate, that seems like a big number to you.

[00:40:41] It isn't.

[00:40:42] No, downstate 1.8 when you're like living in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Long Island, 1.8 is not such a big deal.

[00:40:54] That's a yikes to me.

[00:40:56] Yeah.

[00:40:56] It's crazy.

[00:40:57] You know, and that's where like a $27 for a seat to go up the Catterskill flyer at Hunter.

[00:41:04] That's cheap.

[00:41:05] You know, for city money, that's not cheap.

[00:41:07] When you have a husband and wife or a couple in the city who are making, you know, medium city money or more, they can afford these high dollar places.

[00:41:18] And frankly, you'll see a lot of these expensive homes being sold to enterprises that rent them out almost like timeshares where you'll get your week here and you'll get your week there.

[00:41:32] It's this up and coming enterprise.

[00:41:36] You know, we went through this Airbnb phase, which is very popular.

[00:41:40] Now we're seeing development where you buy into like an Airbnb club, if you will, and then you get to stay in these poshy places for a week wherever they have them.

[00:41:53] Yeah.

[00:41:53] Which on the one hand kind of makes it more affordable for you if you're making a million dollars a year to be a jet setter, right?

[00:42:03] On the other hand, it prices out of the local working population's affordability, the ability to live 15 to 20 minutes from where you work.

[00:42:17] Yeah.

[00:42:18] So that person that's working in the bookstore in Wyndham for maybe $20 an hour probably will never be able to own a single family home within 15, 20 minutes of where they work.

[00:42:31] Of course.

[00:42:32] It's horrible.

[00:42:34] Yeah.

[00:42:34] And then you're, you know, I mean, just to drive further down that road is the bigger problem is it is what this is.

[00:42:43] The locals are the ones who volunteer for your fire department, your ambulance corps, your local rescue.

[00:42:50] They're the ones you expect to be there during the week when something bad happens and to respond to the call.

[00:42:55] But there's nobody in your local community that volunteers like that because they're all working downstate.

[00:43:01] That's kind of an exaggeration, but that's a big concern about local communities is workforce housing becoming unaffordable.

[00:43:11] Yeah.

[00:43:12] And that's why you see all these volunteer signs all around and stuff like that when you're coming in to any of these small towns and stuff like that.

[00:43:19] And I totally understand living in, you know, I'm not saying I live in a small town, but when traveling through all these small towns that I've been through, I see it all the time.

[00:43:27] So, yeah.

[00:43:28] Wow.

[00:43:28] That's we've kind of hold down the road.

[00:43:31] Jesus.

[00:43:32] Yeah.

[00:43:32] Chris says that this is hyper local.

[00:43:34] This is what we just did.

[00:43:35] We just had like a hyper local rant here.

[00:43:39] So, yeah.

[00:43:39] Yeah.

[00:43:40] So, I mean, is that, you know, the whole, let's, let's wind this down.

[00:43:45] What are your thoughts?

[00:43:46] Is that good that they are stop most land purchasing or is that that bad?

[00:43:51] Like a bad, you say it's 50 50.

[00:43:53] Yeah.

[00:43:54] You know, there's good and bad reasons.

[00:43:55] And I think it comes down to particular parcels, you know, on a parcel by parcel basis, having the DEP acquire certain parcels would probably make sense.

[00:44:06] And leaving other land open for development in the future probably also makes sense.

[00:44:12] But in the main, once the city of New York acquires it, the likelihood of it being developed any further goes to almost to zero.

[00:44:21] And I do remember in the article, one of the things that pointed out, which has been a problem for the local communities is that when the DEP buys a parcel of land, most often you can't run any utilities through it.

[00:44:34] And apparently that's been a problem with getting a high speed data fiber.

[00:44:41] Yeah.

[00:44:42] Homes in the Catskills.

[00:44:44] Yep.

[00:44:44] You see those signs all over the place of like, hey, I know it sounds weird, but like Jim C high speed data, you know, or something like that.

[00:44:52] And I got to admit, you know, you see that up high, of course, towards slide and, you know, Peekamoo's area.

[00:44:58] Like they got to get satellites and stuff like that.

[00:45:01] And that costs a shitload of money.

[00:45:03] You know, you know, Jessica has her parents are not far from where I live.

[00:45:08] You know, they're like eight miles from the city, but they have to have like that huge satellite to get data.

[00:45:15] And, you know, you got to admit, you know, how much of your percentage wise of your stuff is played online?

[00:45:21] You know, 90%.

[00:45:22] Yeah.

[00:45:23] Well, you know, using a satellite for download is good, but I understand.

[00:45:29] I've never used a satellite for data, but I understand the upload is a lot slower.

[00:45:34] Yeah.

[00:45:34] So when you're doing like a video like us, I don't know how it impacts your ability to have a zoom or a video conference when you're on the satellite.

[00:45:46] True.

[00:45:46] True.

[00:45:47] Yeah.

[00:45:47] So crazy stuff.

[00:45:49] Once again, so long, so long as my GPS works, I don't care.

[00:45:53] Yeah.

[00:45:53] Right.

[00:45:54] The data, the data is that you already are on to do not disturb the whole fricking time.

[00:45:58] I just, I just let my wife know once in a while if I'm alive or not.

[00:46:02] So, so that's what I do.

[00:46:04] So awesome.

[00:46:06] Oh, so thanks, Tad, for that little bit of information.

[00:46:08] We'll see how that develops.

[00:46:10] We'll keep flowing with it as we go along to see, you know, what people think.

[00:46:14] And of course that just came out.

[00:46:16] So I'm curious of what locals and, you know, the non-locals think of that.

[00:46:21] So, so thank you to the monthly supporters, Darren White, Vicki Furrow, John, Mike Skolotowski, John C., Betsy A., Denise, Vanessa, Joseph, Jim C.,

[00:46:31] and Michael, thank you guys very much for reporting to the show.

[00:46:34] Love you guys.

[00:46:35] Can't thank you enough.

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[00:47:36] So also, copies and mentions.

[00:47:39] So mention the podcast on one of your hikes through social media and we'll chat about it on the show.

[00:47:43] So I don't know this guy.

[00:47:44] He's really weird.

[00:47:46] Scion 72, Sean 72, whatever.

[00:47:49] He's a really weird.

[00:47:51] And he said something about, I'll be your Huckleberry.

[00:47:55] Today Enzo, his dog, and I hiked the Huckleberry Loop went clockwise to get the Elevations feed out of the way first.

[00:48:02] Took the side trip to Drybrook Ridge Summit.

[00:48:04] But Enzo, who is the beautiful white lab dog, was not happy to do the lack of mud, but still had a good time.

[00:48:11] The weather was perfect and it was absolutely phenomenal and such like that.

[00:48:15] So Scion 72, Sean, I know you are.

[00:48:20] You're a pretty cool dude, but you're weird, man.

[00:48:23] Did you see his post?

[00:48:25] I believe I did.

[00:48:27] I did.

[00:48:28] He's a cool dude.

[00:48:29] He's actually really cool.

[00:48:30] Enzo is really neat.

[00:48:32] He's a beautiful dog.

[00:48:33] So I support anybody who takes their dogs out on a hike that are responsible to have them on a leash.

[00:48:39] So I guarantee he had them on a leash.

[00:48:41] So Todd Bolt said he was, it was a beautiful day.

[00:48:45] Where was that, Todd?

[00:48:46] It looks like Lake Minnewaska to me.

[00:48:49] Okay.

[00:48:49] I'm not familiar with that area.

[00:48:51] Yeah, it's in the Schwangunk Ridge.

[00:48:56] But tag us wherever you are.

[00:48:59] He says here in the location, Lake Minnewaska.

[00:49:01] So tag us wherever you are.

[00:49:02] The last photo in the series is what they call the Million Dollar View from Minnewaska.

[00:49:10] And the view is up to Catskill range.

[00:49:14] What can I, hold on, hold on.

[00:49:15] So I think I see slide.

[00:49:18] Yeah.

[00:49:19] Is that slide?

[00:49:20] You'll see slide, table, peek-a-moose.

[00:49:23] Over to the right, you see to the very right of the photo after the green, the tree with those, one of those green things, leaves.

[00:49:31] Leaves.

[00:49:31] With those green leaves.

[00:49:32] Yeah.

[00:49:33] That, I believe, I believe that's Samsung.

[00:49:36] Oh, wow.

[00:49:38] Yeah.

[00:49:39] Interesting.

[00:49:39] Isn't it amazing how Samsung looks higher than slide and such?

[00:49:44] Oh, yeah, because it's so much closer than slide.

[00:49:48] Amazing.

[00:49:49] So Todd, thank you very much.

[00:49:50] Todd, also Overlook Outdoors got me this awesome hat that I'm wearing right now, Catskills.

[00:49:56] Is that his business?

[00:49:58] I think that's his daughter's business.

[00:50:00] Awesome stuff.

[00:50:01] I got actually a shirt from that that says, it says hike, and it shows it kind of like an elevator step.

[00:50:06] It's really cool.

[00:50:08] So he's got, so Todd, Todd Bold has got some cool shots on his Instagram feed.

[00:50:14] He's checking out.

[00:50:15] He also loves hard cider.

[00:50:16] So I like, I like him a lot.

[00:50:18] We share our hard ciders, our hard cider, like differences and stuff like that.

[00:50:23] He's like, hey, check this out.

[00:50:25] I'm like, oh, I'll down that.

[00:50:27] That's good.

[00:50:28] I see on July 21, he was at Bannerman's Castle on the Hudson River.

[00:50:34] That's quite impressive.

[00:50:35] It was built as an armory for ammunitions.

[00:50:40] Oh, wow.

[00:50:41] And then it kind of fell into a state of disrepair.

[00:50:44] All right, let's move on.

[00:50:45] I can get it.

[00:50:46] We got it.

[00:50:46] I got to get down to the Hudson Valley, man.

[00:50:48] I got to get down there.

[00:50:49] It's a little bit of drive, but it looks to be awesome.

[00:50:53] So Pink Pony 818, Tracy Rankin mentioned us, of course, a magnificent day to be in the Cats.

[00:50:59] Took the Devil's Path up Plateau and back down.

[00:51:03] Weather was gorgeous.

[00:51:04] Super dry day out.

[00:51:06] Notch Lake was ugly dry.

[00:51:07] It's been a dry season.

[00:51:09] It's been ugly dry all year.

[00:51:11] She said, get out and see the foliage.

[00:51:13] Leaves are dropping fast.

[00:51:15] Stopped at her new favorite place in Tannersville, which is Pantry on Main, for a post-hike chai and dinner takeout.

[00:51:21] You said the last time she posted, it sounded expensive.

[00:51:24] This still sounds expensive, don't you think?

[00:51:27] Yeah.

[00:51:27] I mean, you know, chai, I'm not, just sounds like something that rich folks get.

[00:51:35] Is that hot, cold?

[00:51:38] I mean, is your chai, is it a drink?

[00:51:41] It sounds like a drink.

[00:51:42] It is.

[00:51:43] It's a tea.

[00:51:44] It's a tea.

[00:51:45] Haven't you been to South Korea?

[00:51:48] I drink Lipton tea.

[00:51:50] Is that like a chai?

[00:51:51] You don't drink Stash tea?

[00:51:53] Well, it's Stash.

[00:51:53] Stash?

[00:51:54] Stash?

[00:51:54] No.

[00:51:55] No.

[00:51:55] You don't see that?

[00:51:56] Go into your Hannaford.

[00:51:57] Yeah, well, that's how I get either the Lipton or Hannaford's brand tea.

[00:52:02] They have Stash.

[00:52:03] Get it.

[00:52:04] Yeah?

[00:52:04] Oh, really?

[00:52:05] It's going to be that much better?

[00:52:06] Yes.

[00:52:07] What's the alcohol content on that?

[00:52:10] I think it's zero.

[00:52:12] So we were talking about Hannaford at that time.

[00:52:16] So I ran into my friend, Dan, at Walmart, and he was just like, hey, you know, great job with the podcast.

[00:52:23] And I'm like, what?

[00:52:25] A local to my area listens to the podcast?

[00:52:28] And he's like, yeah.

[00:52:28] He's like, I love it.

[00:52:29] He's like, I listen to it all the time.

[00:52:31] I'm like, bullshit.

[00:52:33] Absolutely bullshit.

[00:52:33] So I ran into Dan in Hannaford, and he said, we're doing great with the podcast.

[00:52:39] He loves it.

[00:52:40] He's having a good time, and he's going to be doing the escarpment trail this weekend.

[00:52:44] So I think by the time of the release, so it's not this weekend, he'll be finishing the escarpment.

[00:52:49] So he's going to be going from Wyndham, of course, all the way to North Southlake.

[00:52:54] And he told me three days, it's going to be absolutely fantastic.

[00:52:58] And I told him three days is an absolute perfect time to do that.

[00:53:02] You know, enjoy the hike instead of rushing through it.

[00:53:06] Having those camping spots, water, you know, food, enjoying the views, really, like, makes it feel good instead of trying to rush that through two days and stuff like that and getting through the end of that.

[00:53:18] So Dan, thank you for listening to the show.

[00:53:21] Really appreciate that compliment in the middle of nowhere.

[00:53:24] You know, I don't expect any locals around my area to be listening to this, and especially, you know, the compliments really kind of feel good.

[00:53:32] It feels good that, you know, you get those compliments once in a while.

[00:53:35] So, which reminds me, two weeks ago on the Devil's Path, I ran into a fellow by the name of Lou.

[00:53:44] Lou Berrios?

[00:53:46] I think that's his last name.

[00:53:48] He's an eighth grade English teacher from your neck of the woods.

[00:53:54] No shit!

[00:53:54] Yeah, so we talked about Oneonta.

[00:53:58] We talked about the podcast.

[00:54:02] And what else?

[00:54:03] Oh, we talked about Sal's Pizza, right?

[00:54:08] Yeah, Dan knows Sal's Pizza.

[00:54:10] I mean, we've been there together.

[00:54:11] Dan and I have been there together.

[00:54:13] Oh, yeah.

[00:54:14] So apparently Sal's Pizza is better than okay.

[00:54:17] And Lou is an avid Catskill hiker.

[00:54:22] Knows Stosh.

[00:54:23] Had nice things to say about Stosh.

[00:54:25] And all of his volunteering, but he didn't have a clue who I was.

[00:54:30] And I was very sad that he didn't recognize me.

[00:54:33] So Lou is a very avid poster to the Catskill Trail conditions and stuff like that.

[00:54:39] And I haven't seen him in a while.

[00:54:40] I see his wife all the time where I work.

[00:54:44] And I say hi to her and I ask her how Lou's doing, of course.

[00:54:47] And I'm glad he's still hiking in the Catskill.

[00:54:49] So he's still ripping it up.

[00:54:51] Yeah, he's working on his 420.

[00:54:54] And I ran into him on Twin.

[00:54:58] Nice.

[00:54:58] Yeah.

[00:54:59] Nice.

[00:55:00] So thank you.

[00:55:01] Lou, if you still listen, thank you once again.

[00:55:04] Dan, I hope you've had incredible time on the Scarpment Trail.

[00:55:07] Once again, thank you to anyone who's listened to the show.

[00:55:10] It's really cool.

[00:55:11] If you listen to the show, rate the show.

[00:55:12] I don't know if that helps.

[00:55:14] I've heard a lot of people, different mixed reviews that it helps.

[00:55:19] And then, you know, just sharing it on your Facebook page or Instagram page helps even more.

[00:55:24] I don't freaking know.

[00:55:26] I mean, I like that we're at like 4.8 or 4.9.

[00:55:29] So just give us favorable ratings.

[00:55:34] Share it, whatever.

[00:55:36] Share it on all social media platforms.

[00:55:40] Buy Stosh, plenty of Ciders.

[00:55:42] Just do everything.

[00:55:43] When in doubt, just click every column multiple times.

[00:55:47] We'll be happy.

[00:55:48] Yeah.

[00:55:49] I mean, if you rate the show, once again, buy Insiders.

[00:55:52] You know, we'll just put your money back into the Catskills.

[00:55:55] That's what we do.

[00:55:56] We like to do that.

[00:55:59] And I appreciate it.

[00:56:00] I appreciate the compliments.

[00:56:02] And, you know, Tad appreciates the compliments as well.

[00:56:04] It's really cool to hear about it.

[00:56:06] And really cool that we're doing okay.

[00:56:09] I would say okay.

[00:56:11] Right now?

[00:56:12] I'm okay with okay.

[00:56:13] Yeah.

[00:56:14] I'm definitely okay with okay.

[00:56:16] So, Tad, I saw you drinking something.

[00:56:18] That was a little different than what you had last week.

[00:56:19] I'm not kidding.

[00:56:20] You weren't an alcoholic, were you?

[00:56:22] No.

[00:56:23] Okay, good.

[00:56:24] Good.

[00:56:24] Never had a issue with overindulgence with anything other than recreational and competitive

[00:56:36] activities.

[00:56:37] Right?

[00:56:37] As I've been told.

[00:56:39] Yeah.

[00:56:39] Yeah.

[00:56:39] So, you know, I, but I did take 25 years off from drinking, you know, when my wife and

[00:56:45] I were raising our children.

[00:56:47] And, well, last year when we went to Ireland, I started drinking Guinness beer again.

[00:56:53] And later somebody gave me an IPA to drink and I thought it was awful.

[00:56:58] And then I had another one right after that.

[00:57:00] Yeah.

[00:57:00] I had another one right after that and I thought it was even worse.

[00:57:02] So, I think after three IPAs last summer, I had convinced myself that this craze over

[00:57:10] IPAs was just so unjustified.

[00:57:15] And then for whatever reason, a couple weeks ago, I picked up this Bell's Two-Hearted IPA.

[00:57:23] And that's what I'm drinking tonight.

[00:57:25] And I'm telling you, it's really, really delicious.

[00:57:27] It's smooth.

[00:57:28] It doesn't have much bitterness.

[00:57:30] I mean, there's just a hint of bitterness to give it a little bitterness, but it goes

[00:57:35] down smooth.

[00:57:36] It's very tasty.

[00:57:38] It's kind of got a funky picture of a fish, like a trout or something on the front.

[00:57:43] But, hey, you don't have to look at the can when you're drinking it.

[00:57:47] So, that's what I got.

[00:57:48] Bell's Two-Hearted IPA, highly recommended from the guy who does not know IPAs.

[00:57:55] Not at all.

[00:57:57] It's the only one I've had I've ever liked.

[00:57:59] Well, that's good.

[00:58:00] I mean, is that local?

[00:58:02] Where is that out of?

[00:58:03] Oh, no.

[00:58:03] It's out of Kalamazoo, I believe.

[00:58:06] What the hell is that?

[00:58:08] Michigan.

[00:58:09] Oh, not bad.

[00:58:10] All right.

[00:58:10] Not bad.

[00:58:11] Not bad.

[00:58:11] Yeah.

[00:58:11] So, it's not local, but it's 7% alcohol.

[00:58:18] And Comstock, Michigan is where it's from.

[00:58:21] Okay.

[00:58:21] Yeah, they started off, you know, like all breweries started off as a little operation.

[00:58:26] And I think they've gotten quite large because they have a lot of product out there.

[00:58:29] But it's yummy.

[00:58:32] Nice.

[00:58:33] Well, good.

[00:58:33] I'm having, of course, a Awestruck Hometown Homicider.

[00:58:38] It's, of course, based on, you know, Halloween and such.

[00:58:43] I'm trying to think of what it has.

[00:58:45] It has a little pumpkin in it.

[00:58:47] And, uh, hold on.

[00:58:51] Let me see if I can get a bright light into this.

[00:58:56] Never mind.

[00:58:58] At home, uh, never mind.

[00:59:00] It doesn't say anything.

[00:59:01] Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait.

[00:59:04] Uh, never mind.

[00:59:07] It doesn't say the creek.

[00:59:09] But Hometown Homicider, you can say that's pumpkin-based.

[00:59:12] So, I'm one of those people, I guess.

[00:59:16] So, previous hikes.

[00:59:17] Tad, what do you got for us?

[00:59:18] I know you've got some good stuff.

[00:59:20] Oh, yeah.

[00:59:20] I mean, how much time do I have?

[00:59:23] Do you want the one-minute version or the five-hour version?

[00:59:27] What about a ten-minute version?

[00:59:31] No, I can't do ten minutes.

[00:59:32] I mean, it's...

[00:59:33] No, so, I...

[00:59:34] Danny Davis was up in Alaska for a few weeks, came home this past week.

[00:59:39] He and I hooked up on Saturday to go out.

[00:59:44] Hiking in the Catskill.

[00:59:46] So, we started off early in Woodland Valley and started hiking out of Woodland Valley.

[00:59:53] And we hiked up the valley.

[00:59:55] It's just tremendous this time of year with all the leaves having turned colors, the sun coming in low just over the mountaintop, shooting in under the canopy.

[01:00:06] It just creates this really, really vibrant atmosphere under there.

[01:00:11] And we hiked up a dry stream bed.

[01:00:16] And so, Danny Davis's job entails analyzing and studying stream beds for the City of New York, DEP.

[01:00:29] So, he knows his stuff with respect to that.

[01:00:32] And I just remember, we hit this one stretch.

[01:00:35] It was about a thousand vertical feet of climbing up the stream bed.

[01:00:43] And it was just amazing to do it with him.

[01:00:46] And so, Stash, you'll appreciate this because a few weeks ago, months ago maybe, we had the woman from the Elboa Forest, Fossil Forest Museum.

[01:00:57] Elboa, yeah.

[01:00:58] Yeah.

[01:00:59] Elboa, yeah.

[01:01:00] And so, we reached this section where I pointed out what I thought was this interesting rock along the exposed stream bed.

[01:01:09] And Danny then explains to me that that's the band of rock where the Gilboa fossils are commonly found.

[01:01:19] So, there you have like this virgin untouched, yeah.

[01:01:23] I mean, just this cut along the side of the stream bed of it.

[01:01:27] And you could literally break off this stone with your hand and then expose stone that had not seen light for like 300 plus million years.

[01:01:40] Wow.

[01:01:40] Yeah, it was really neat.

[01:01:42] And so, we kept, as you were climbing up, you would go through the different layers, hard, soft, hard, soft, different colors, different amount of oxygen in the atmosphere.

[01:01:51] Danny's pointing out all this stuff.

[01:01:52] And it's really funny.

[01:01:53] Danny, he was checking out this one band of rock at a certain elevation.

[01:02:00] And I hiked up past him and I came to this area that was just totally blown out from erosion.

[01:02:08] And I knew when Danny got up there, it'd be like a 20-minute geological survey for him.

[01:02:14] So, I just like literally took stuff out of my pack and I'm just like sitting there like just watching him going around, checking out all this stuff.

[01:02:23] And that was kind of like at the headwater of this stream.

[01:02:27] And I'm going to say it was at about 3,000, 3,100 feet, maybe 32.

[01:02:33] And from there up, the gnarly bushwhack started.

[01:02:39] And, you know, the cool thing about bushwhacking in that area is you just come across one viewpoint after another.

[01:02:48] So, I snapped on Saturday a bunch of really cool shots of Woodland Valley that I posted on Instagram.

[01:02:59] And then when we finally got up to the top of the mountain, we cracked open some Westkill beers.

[01:03:06] And I decided I'm going to have a new segment.

[01:03:12] Summit Views and Brews is the new segment.

[01:03:15] So, if you're going to tag the show, why don't you tag the show with the Summit View and Brew in the Catskills?

[01:03:24] All right.

[01:03:25] All right.

[01:03:25] Interesting.

[01:03:26] Yeah.

[01:03:27] It was a fun hike.

[01:03:28] Yeah.

[01:03:30] You know, I know you don't want to give this away, but what drainage did you take?

[01:03:34] Cornell or Wittenberg?

[01:03:36] Come on.

[01:03:37] Just do it.

[01:03:38] Nobody's going to freaking do it.

[01:03:40] Yeah.

[01:03:40] Well, so we're probably at this.

[01:03:41] We've been into this for over an hour.

[01:03:43] I think we're down to like two listeners now.

[01:03:46] Your mother and Sean.

[01:03:50] Darren.

[01:03:51] Darren's the one that listens to this the more.

[01:03:53] He loves this section.

[01:03:54] By the way, he loves when we talk about our hikes.

[01:03:57] Yeah.

[01:03:58] So, I think one of the interesting parts of this story is Danny Davis has hiked up.

[01:04:06] The Burroughs range more than anyone I know.

[01:04:11] And I don't know what percentage, but an alarming number of his hikes have been off trail.

[01:04:16] And there's an area.

[01:04:17] There's at least I didn't think there was an area that he hadn't hiked up.

[01:04:20] So, this whole hike that we did last Saturday started off with me asking him what I would get into if I hiked up this drainage.

[01:04:30] What should I expect going solo, going up it?

[01:04:34] And I didn't expect him to be around because he was in Alaska.

[01:04:36] And he's like, hey, wait for me until I get back.

[01:04:38] I've never been up there.

[01:04:40] Oh, wow.

[01:04:41] Yeah.

[01:04:41] So, we hiked up just one of the streams coming out of Woodland Valley.

[01:04:44] There's many of them.

[01:04:46] Yeah.

[01:04:47] Summer steep.

[01:04:47] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:04:48] Whatever.

[01:04:48] Which one?

[01:04:50] I'll send you tracks.

[01:04:51] And I'll tell you there's a lot of interesting stuff about what we hiked up.

[01:04:56] As an example, ready for this?

[01:05:00] This is a totally off-the-map area.

[01:05:07] Somebody maintains that stream.

[01:05:10] Somebody goes up there with a chainsaw and clears fall down over it.

[01:05:17] How far up?

[01:05:18] Oh, pretty far up.

[01:05:20] Oh, wow, nice.

[01:05:21] Yeah, let me tell you.

[01:05:22] Whoever goes up there and does this, and we have a pretty good idea who it is.

[01:05:27] They're lugging a chainsaw pretty far up there to do this work.

[01:05:31] But it's interesting.

[01:05:33] Is that what it is?

[01:05:34] Alien?

[01:05:35] Oh, yeah, yeah.

[01:05:36] Good for them.

[01:05:37] Good for them.

[01:05:37] Yeah, sure.

[01:05:38] But I'll tell you, look at those photos.

[01:05:41] It's a remarkable stream bed.

[01:05:43] Because there's no rock boulders in it for long stretches.

[01:05:51] I mean, to go up there after a significant rain event, the thing has to be raging.

[01:05:56] Yeah.

[01:05:57] It's got to be crazy.

[01:05:58] So there's obviously several waterfalls, which, you know, it was dry when we went up it.

[01:06:03] So we were able to get up and over these waterfalls.

[01:06:06] But it's not for the faint of heart.

[01:06:09] I mean, the further we got up, the more interesting it became.

[01:06:15] And then you just hit the balsam firs near the top.

[01:06:18] And I hate that.

[01:06:19] So you're leaving me to after this podcast to think of where you're going.

[01:06:23] I think I have a clue of where you're going.

[01:06:24] Well, it's, you know, there's, I imagine that most of them along that ridge are like this, but not maintained.

[01:06:32] Which is what made this fairly interesting.

[01:06:35] You look at some of those photos I posted, and you'll see there's no boulders as far as the eye can see in this riverbed.

[01:06:42] So it was very unique.

[01:06:45] Interesting.

[01:06:46] So if you want to know where it is, send me $25.

[01:06:51] I'll send you my tracks.

[01:06:52] Give us a, give us a, what is it, five hard siders and then we'll be fine.

[01:06:56] Yeah, that's it.

[01:06:58] Yeah, I can't say that I have done everything.

[01:07:00] I haven't.

[01:07:01] I forgot what I did this last Sunday.

[01:07:05] I didn't do anything.

[01:07:06] It was raining.

[01:07:07] No, you posted some pictures.

[01:07:08] You were out someplace on Sunday.

[01:07:10] Was I?

[01:07:10] Yeah, you and Jessica.

[01:07:12] Oh, I mean, well, that was the last Sunday where we were at Platico.

[01:07:16] Oh, okay.

[01:07:17] And then I went to, and then I went to Twin the next day.

[01:07:21] But it was like, I didn't, this last Sunday, it was Minster Bowl.

[01:07:25] We went out with the guys group and we did some pumpkin carving.

[01:07:29] So for the season, you know, and I went to hockey.

[01:07:34] Hockey started back up.

[01:07:35] So we had some hockey games.

[01:07:37] So didn't have much to do, but I look to get out this next Tuesday.

[01:07:42] Oh, this Sunday, I'm getting out with another summit.

[01:07:45] We're going to do a climb of Red Hill.

[01:07:48] So if you're a veteran or first responder, check out another summit and we'll climb Red Hill for your fire tower challenge.

[01:07:57] On the 20th?

[01:08:01] Yeah, the 20th.

[01:08:01] Sunday, the 20th.

[01:08:02] So sign up ASAP.

[01:08:05] That's about it.

[01:08:07] So Catskill News.

[01:08:09] Volunteer 3500 Club has just ended their season as Trailhead stewards.

[01:08:15] Awesome, successful seasons.

[01:08:17] They had, once again, Saturday.

[01:08:19] You know, Ted, I don't know if you ran into anybody at Woodland Valley, but the slide in Woodland Valley had a substantial amount of people with their area.

[01:08:30] I saw reports saying that a lot of people were looking for the Hunter Mountain ski lift at slide.

[01:08:38] So that was a little crazy.

[01:08:40] Oh, yeah.

[01:08:41] That's funny.

[01:08:42] Yeah.

[01:08:42] And, you know, they had a lot of people at both of those places.

[01:08:47] And, you know, I don't blame them.

[01:08:48] It was absolutely stunning time to see them.

[01:08:51] Hopefully, once again, these people that visit the area that are new get acquainted with the Trailhead stewards and get the information that they need.

[01:09:00] And they get influenced to get back into the hiking community and want to pursue this in a good way.

[01:09:08] Yeah.

[01:09:09] So I'll say when Danny and I got to Woodland Valley, there may have been about five or six cars in the parking area.

[01:09:18] And we got back fairly late.

[01:09:21] I'm going to say we got back after four o'clock.

[01:09:23] Oh, wow.

[01:09:24] Yeah.

[01:09:25] Once we hit the trail, there was a ton of people on trail.

[01:09:29] I mean, it was crazy.

[01:09:30] But everybody was, you know, well-equipped, having a good time, friendly.

[01:09:37] And, you know, we were very social once we hit the trail.

[01:09:42] Except for Danny.

[01:09:44] Danny?

[01:09:44] No, Danny was social.

[01:09:45] I was the only social one.

[01:09:46] He didn't, like when we were at the Trailhead stewards, he was just like avoiding me at all costs.

[01:09:51] Come on.

[01:09:51] Well, because you just come across as very aggressive.

[01:09:54] What?

[01:09:55] Yeah.

[01:09:56] Just, I mean, you just, you have that air to you that's like, you know, you're like at a mega death concert or something.

[01:10:03] It's the tattoos, isn't it?

[01:10:05] I don't know.

[01:10:06] And the piercing.

[01:10:07] Oh, Danny, I love that guy.

[01:10:08] Yeah, he's, I told Danny, he's like my straight man when I'm on the trail.

[01:10:12] I started, we, so literally, this is me, folks.

[01:10:15] If you were on Wittenberg on Saturday and all of a sudden out of the fucking woods comes this guy and says, where's the fire tower?

[01:10:26] And people, people are looking at me like, what the fuck?

[01:10:29] And I said, yeah, isn't this Hunter Mountain?

[01:10:32] And this guy's like, no, man, this isn't Hunter.

[01:10:34] And then I look at Danny.

[01:10:35] I'm like, Danny, you said this was Hunter Mountain.

[01:10:37] And Danny looks at you like, why are you embarrassing me?

[01:10:40] Yeah, he's like, he wants to run back down the mountain.

[01:10:43] And he will.

[01:10:44] He'll jump off of the mountain and finish.

[01:10:47] Yeah.

[01:10:48] So we had, we had a good time with all the, the other hikers.

[01:10:50] Once we, we spent our, I'm going to say that bushwhack took us about four hours, but at least an hour.

[01:10:57] Yeah.

[01:10:58] An hour, hour and a half of it was educational.

[01:11:01] Wow.

[01:11:02] I got to get out there.

[01:11:04] Yeah.

[01:11:04] And then we hit the, the, the band at like 3,200 feet that most of those mountains have that took a little while to get over, but we made it.

[01:11:14] Yeah.

[01:11:15] I mean, you know, if you're, if I, I, I presume you're growing up, of course, Wittenberg and Cornell has that amazing band that just goes absolute steep vertical.

[01:11:26] And, but, you know, I'm glad that you hit positive people and stuff like that.

[01:11:32] And people respecting the trails and stuff like that.

[01:11:35] You know, it, it's good to hear that.

[01:11:37] It's good to the, the education is getting out there.

[01:11:39] You know, I, I wouldn't say that we're doing what we should be doing, but education is key.

[01:11:45] The trailhead stewards, the mountain clubs, Catskill Visitor Center, we're all combining together to create this certain vibe that respects the mountains.

[01:11:56] Yeah.

[01:11:57] But it is, it is kind of weird that you, you spend four hours bushwhacking, particularly the last hour and some pretty gnarly stuff.

[01:12:05] And so literally when I stepped on the trail, there were parts of my body, particularly my arms that had fresh blood on them.

[01:12:13] And you look, you look around the summit and there's literally people that look like they were, you know, going to the tennis court.

[01:12:19] And here you are with like, you know, uh, sticks in your hair, blood on your arms, you know, dirt on your clothes.

[01:12:28] It looks like you crawled your way up the mountain.

[01:12:30] You haven't even said the best part.

[01:12:33] What's that?

[01:12:34] The stick I got in my eye, I couldn't mention that.

[01:12:37] No, the pine needles coming out of your ass.

[01:12:39] No, no, that's not me, Stosh.

[01:12:41] What?

[01:12:42] I don't, I don't.

[01:12:43] You're not a true bushwhacker.

[01:12:45] Well, what do you, what do you slide on your butt uphill?

[01:12:48] Is that how you do it?

[01:12:48] I don't see it.

[01:12:49] It's just a cloud through everything and it falls down in your butt crack.

[01:12:52] Come on.

[01:12:53] Oh, I don't have that problem.

[01:12:54] You're taking a shower later.

[01:12:55] You gotta, you gotta see that.

[01:12:57] You're like, oh man.

[01:12:57] Is it, isn't that what gators are for?

[01:12:59] You put them around your waistband?

[01:13:03] You gotta ask Jana on that.

[01:13:05] Jana loves the gators.

[01:13:08] So once again, let me know if you need stickers.

[01:13:11] Also go to Camp Catskill.

[01:13:13] I went there actually before to drop off stickers, but fortunately they weren't open.

[01:13:17] So I will drop off more stickers.

[01:13:20] So let's check out the weather forecast.

[01:13:24] I gotta get a new weather thing for this, like a little segment of something.

[01:13:31] It's like weather forecast.

[01:13:33] We're going to go to slide.

[01:13:35] Let's check out slide this weekend.

[01:13:36] What do we got?

[01:13:37] You know, Ted, I remember you saying something.

[01:13:39] We got some weird stuff going on.

[01:13:42] Oh, wow.

[01:13:43] Well, it looks like, it looks like tonight and tomorrow, uh, the 16th, the 15th and the

[01:13:48] 16th, you're going to have wind chills below 20 degrees, but then it warms back up by the

[01:13:54] weekend.

[01:13:55] Yeah.

[01:13:55] So, uh, looks like, uh, Friday, Saturday and Sunday looks, I mean, this is, once again,

[01:14:02] this is a Tuesday, so we could be screwing it up, but even in the Monday clear, uh, a

[01:14:09] low of the whole weekend, 34 at night, 48 during the day.

[01:14:15] And then a high of 57 low of maybe 50 at night.

[01:14:19] So this looks like the absolute amazing weekend to get out.

[01:14:23] You might not have foliage views, but you're going to have that time of where your extra

[01:14:30] layers, uh, at the top, because of course, wind chill and stuff like that, but you're

[01:14:35] going to get those views that you've always wanted at top of these peaks and, uh, enjoy

[01:14:42] it.

[01:14:42] Once again, that's all I got to say is that embrace what you have in front of you because

[01:14:49] the Catskills offer it all, you know, screw the Adirondacks.

[01:14:53] Yeah.

[01:14:54] This, this is likely to be the, the, the last, uh, significant fall foliage weekend will be

[01:15:02] this weekend.

[01:15:02] And then the mountain tops are going to start losing color going forward.

[01:15:08] It'll be deep in the valley, but not at the tops of the mountains anymore.

[01:15:12] Correct.

[01:15:12] Correct.

[01:15:12] That's my forecast.

[01:15:14] I like it.

[01:15:15] I like it.

[01:15:15] So once again, start packing, start packing for colder weather.

[01:15:19] Uh, maybe throw those micro spikes in there because you know what a pound, a pound and

[01:15:25] a half will not kill you.

[01:15:26] So just be serious.

[01:15:29] It will not fricking kill you.

[01:15:31] Yeah.

[01:15:31] Now's the time of year to also make sure you've got a working headlamp or two because it's,

[01:15:38] it's getting darker earlier.

[01:15:41] And if it's getting cold at night, your battery won't last as long.

[01:15:45] So bring a spare.

[01:15:47] Correct.

[01:15:47] Nice.

[01:15:48] Nice.

[01:15:48] So replace your batteries because they probably worn out over time as in the summer that you

[01:15:53] haven't used them.

[01:15:55] I don't know.

[01:15:55] Whatever batteries you use or charge your, uh, your, uh, headlamps that you could be USB

[01:16:01] charged.

[01:16:01] Cause it's what I do every good.

[01:16:03] I don't, I wouldn't say like three to four weeks, but I do it every three to four weeks

[01:16:08] and my headlamp will goddamn reach from fricking windham mountain all the way down to New York

[01:16:13] city.

[01:16:14] I will guarantee that my, my headlamp is.

[01:16:18] Phoenix headlamp.

[01:16:19] I forgot how many fricking Lubin's it is, but it is a, it is absolutely insane.

[01:16:23] So you just bring the one or you have two.

[01:16:26] I have two.

[01:16:27] I have one that has batteries and then I have one that's rechargeable.

[01:16:30] So the batteries one, I will give to someone who needs it to rechargeable.

[01:16:34] I will say, screw you.

[01:16:35] You're not getting this because it was a lot of money and that's for SAR.

[01:16:41] So, yeah.

[01:16:42] So Ted, let's break into Catskill mountain history.

[01:16:45] Okay.

[01:16:48] So you inspired me on this one.

[01:16:51] You got, God bless me.

[01:16:53] I'm good for something.

[01:16:54] So let's go after a Rusk mountain.

[01:16:57] I think, you know, we should break this up into the next couple of times of different mountains

[01:17:02] and their history.

[01:17:03] How about that?

[01:17:04] How does that sound?

[01:17:04] Two mountains per episode.

[01:17:07] We only have one tonight.

[01:17:09] Do we?

[01:17:09] I thought I got Hunter in there.

[01:17:12] Really?

[01:17:12] Where's Hunter?

[01:17:13] I don't see Hunter.

[01:17:13] Nevermind.

[01:17:14] I think we have something interesting though with Mr. Rusk.

[01:17:18] All right.

[01:17:19] So let's go with Rusk mountain this time.

[01:17:20] So maybe one to two mountains per time.

[01:17:23] Yeah.

[01:17:24] So to all of our avid Catskill hikers, when we cue this up with Rusk mountain, it kind of

[01:17:29] sounds ho-hum, doesn't it?

[01:17:32] Right.

[01:17:33] All right.

[01:17:34] But let's do it.

[01:17:34] We're going to make Rusk mountain interesting.

[01:17:36] So everybody knows Rusk mountain.

[01:17:40] It's a little quick hike, stuff like that.

[01:17:42] But it's got some pretty good history.

[01:17:44] So Rusk was named by Henry Giot, who named after Samuel Rusk, who was assisted with the

[01:17:52] Princeton geology professor of what would be the first accurate survey of the Catskills

[01:17:57] in the 1870s and 1880s.

[01:18:00] Now there is somewhat evidence, however, that Giot meant to name that today as East Rusk

[01:18:06] after Rusk to save the Evergreen for today's Rusk.

[01:18:09] So when we know that Evergreen, if you are a frequent bushwhacker or a Catskill 67 or stuff

[01:18:15] like that, you would know that Evergreen was pushed a little bit towards the west.

[01:18:19] And now Evergreen is over towards the west.

[01:18:22] A little bump in the Rusk is now the higher peak, of course.

[01:18:25] But Giot made his probability with the first recorded ascent of the mountain during the survey.

[01:18:30] But it is definitely unknown whether anyone else had to come first.

[01:18:34] So the big question is, who is Samuel Rusk?

[01:18:38] Rusk, Samuel, along with his brother John Rusk, has a prominent landscape photographer

[01:18:43] operated Russ Photo Factory, a well-known portrait studio in Haynes Falls.

[01:18:47] Now Haynes Falls, we all know, is towards Palemville area.

[01:18:51] It was located across the Catterscale area, more known with its hotels and such like that.

[01:18:59] We all know that Haynes Falls, the beautiful falls that is off limits to us,

[01:19:03] which you have shown to me in Rusk's report.

[01:19:07] So let's talk about his illustrated guide to the Catskill Mountains.

[01:19:11] Ted, please take it on from here.

[01:19:13] You did this, all this research.

[01:19:14] I'm going to let you go.

[01:19:16] All right.

[01:19:16] Is that okay?

[01:19:17] Is that okay?

[01:19:18] Well, I'll just deal with it.

[01:19:20] Deal with it.

[01:19:21] Yes.

[01:19:21] In 1879, Rusk published a book known as Rusk's Illustrated Guide to the Catskill Mountains.

[01:19:31] It's a 156-page hiker's guide to many of the hikes in the north-south lake region of the Catskill Mountains.

[01:19:42] At the time, it was considered the cornerstone of the hiking world.

[01:19:47] And all other guides and maps still refer to his extensive guide to learn about the region.

[01:19:54] The guide contained information about hikes to overlook mountain, hunter mountain, and other locations in the Catskills.

[01:20:05] Now, what I found interesting is the entire Rusk's illustrated guide is available as a PDF on the internet.

[01:20:17] And so Stosh is going to presumably post a link to that with the show notes for this episode.

[01:20:24] And the map, there's an 1879 map of the Catskill Mountains.

[01:20:31] It's in the guide, but the resolution is not high enough to really make it usable online.

[01:20:37] When you read through it, if you do read through it, you'll see that it gives detailed listings for local hotels, outfitters, and other suppliers.

[01:20:47] It even gives travel routes to the Catskills, which would include steamship timetables, because you would have to take a steamship up the Hudson River to a landing.

[01:21:01] And then when you got to the landing, a stagecoach or something else to get up into the mountains.

[01:21:05] So in the Rusk guide, that necessary information was made available because at the time, the World Wide Web had not come to the Catskills.

[01:21:20] So I browsed through the book, and I found just a couple interesting tidbits.

[01:21:27] Stosh, if you scroll down a little bit.

[01:21:29] Yeah, and I got to admit, you know, with this bit of information that you've shown, he also listed prices.

[01:21:36] Yeah.

[01:21:37] And such a, every, like, kind of Catskill Hotel.

[01:21:40] And it was, I got to admit, to look at this back then, it was absolutely insane to see the prices and stuff.

[01:21:46] So amazing bit of research, Ted.

[01:21:48] Yeah.

[01:21:49] So, you know, all of the, like, the hotels, boarding houses, and resorts that were in the Catskills.

[01:21:56] He gives the room availability, you know, how many rooms they had, the cost, the services provided, lists them by region.

[01:22:05] So, you know, back in the 1880s, if you wanted to come up to the Catskills, you would need something like his guide to plan your trip in terms of steamboats, stagecoaches, places to stay.

[01:22:20] And, of course, back then, they didn't even have telephones to use.

[01:22:23] Right?

[01:22:24] So, you would presumably, what do you do?

[01:22:26] You could go down and buy your Steamship ticket for the day, but, you know, what do you do?

[01:22:32] Write away, send a letter or a postcard to a boarding house up here, you know, like a month before your trip and ask them if they have a room.

[01:22:42] I'm going to arrive here then.

[01:22:43] Yeah.

[01:22:44] No, but that's literally, that's what they would do, you know.

[01:22:46] And then, one of the fun things I do when I, like, don't have anything else to do, go to eBay and start Googling for postcards or searching for postcards that are for sale.

[01:22:57] And then, they'll post the front picture of the scenery or whatever the postcard is of.

[01:23:03] And then, on the back, oftentimes, these are used postcards.

[01:23:07] And then, it'll have the person's, like, note to whomever they were writing it to.

[01:23:10] And sometimes, it'll be something like, arrived at such and such three days ago, staying at such and such, you know.

[01:23:17] It's like, back in the day, that was, like, their way of posting on social media was to send around these postcards.

[01:23:24] Okay.

[01:23:24] So, I'm scrolling through Rusk's book published in 1879, and he gives a list of the mountains in the Catskills that are over 3,500 feet.

[01:23:41] And what's crazy is the list is only 12 mountains.

[01:23:47] Right?

[01:23:48] Where's the other 23?

[01:23:51] Yeah.

[01:23:52] And there you go.

[01:23:53] What happened?

[01:23:54] Were they not mountains?

[01:23:56] Did they come after?

[01:23:57] You know.

[01:23:58] So, that shows you that even though, at the time, this book was considered to be the, you know, the cat's meow in terms of finding out intel.

[01:24:09] Yeah.

[01:24:10] It only had 12 of the mountains, because the rest of them weren't really known.

[01:24:14] They weren't mapped.

[01:24:15] The elevations hadn't been computed.

[01:24:17] Yeah.

[01:24:18] I mean, this was really, really a frontier.

[01:24:21] It's like the guy who, you know, surveyed the mountains and gave the elevations, you know, is given the credit for doing the first known ascent of Rusk Mountain.

[01:24:33] So, that's like in the 1870s.

[01:24:36] Somebody goes up Rusk Mountain for the first time.

[01:24:38] You have like all those other mountains further deeper in the Catskills that nobody's really gotten to yet.

[01:24:45] Okay?

[01:24:46] Yeah.

[01:24:46] So, it's a real frontier.

[01:24:47] All right.

[01:24:47] So, 12 mountains over 3,500 feet in this book.

[01:24:54] And it was considered at the time to be the gospel in terms of Catskill Mountain information.

[01:25:01] Then I scrolled through the list.

[01:25:04] And they have like Stony Mountain, 3,844 feet.

[01:25:10] Stony Mountain?

[01:25:11] I know what that is because I'm a history bluffer.

[01:25:14] Bluffer.

[01:25:15] Okay.

[01:25:15] All right.

[01:25:16] So, tell us.

[01:25:16] Stony Mountain.

[01:25:17] What is it known as today?

[01:25:19] Slide, right?

[01:25:20] No.

[01:25:21] It's not slide.

[01:25:22] He actually talks about slide in the book.

[01:25:25] So, Stony Mountain wasn't slide.

[01:25:27] Wait a minute.

[01:25:28] Wait a minute.

[01:25:28] Yeah.

[01:25:29] If that elevation.

[01:25:30] I know what Nick Mountain is.

[01:25:31] Stony Mountain, 38, 44.

[01:25:36] Westkill?

[01:25:36] I don't know.

[01:25:37] I'd look through the list and see if he's got Westkill or not.

[01:25:40] 38 is Westkill.

[01:25:41] Westkill is 38.

[01:25:42] Yeah, but he might have changed the elevation afterwards because a lot of his elevations weren't correct.

[01:25:48] I mean, remember, it wasn't until recently that Rocky was discovered or realized to be less than 3,500 feet.

[01:26:02] Okay?

[01:26:03] It took Rocky to suck it because it was below 3,500 feet.

[01:26:06] You can't do that.

[01:26:07] Yeah.

[01:26:07] Yeah.

[01:26:08] Well, so now all these aspirants, I hope all these aspirants realize if you hike Rocky and you want to be a member of the club, you need to bring a stepladder, right?

[01:26:16] Right?

[01:26:16] You have to log up here as part of the requirements.

[01:26:18] It's in the fine print.

[01:26:19] And if you don't use a stepladder, you're really not a club member.

[01:26:22] So, Stony Mountain, would that be associated with Stony Mountain clove area?

[01:26:27] No.

[01:26:27] I didn't dive into that.

[01:26:29] I didn't either.

[01:26:30] I didn't either.

[01:26:31] I saw that and I didn't dive.

[01:26:32] Yeah.

[01:26:33] So, what about Mink Mountain?

[01:26:35] Oh, that was Plateau.

[01:26:37] That's Plateau?

[01:26:38] Oh, yeah.

[01:26:38] I wonder why the name Mink.

[01:26:40] Well, it came from Mink Hollow.

[01:26:42] Yeah.

[01:26:43] Coming from the south.

[01:26:45] I know that.

[01:26:46] I know that area.

[01:26:47] But that's Stony Mountain.

[01:26:50] Wow, you got me 3844.

[01:26:53] Yeah.

[01:26:54] I can pull up the list here.

[01:26:56] Yeah.

[01:26:56] Everybody who's really into the Catskills has got to check this out because you talk about stepping back in time.

[01:27:03] Yeah, right?

[01:27:04] Yeah.

[01:27:04] Westkill is 38-something.

[01:27:07] And then it...

[01:27:08] Just a fair to Catskill, $1.

[01:27:12] And then it's like from Leeds, you know, it's another...

[01:27:14] It's a buck 25, Oak Hill, $2.

[01:27:17] Wyndham.

[01:27:18] It cost you $2.50.

[01:27:20] They had that transportation back then.

[01:27:22] Why can't we do it now?

[01:27:23] Yeah.

[01:27:23] See?

[01:27:24] And you were complaining earlier about shutting down the parks to vehicle traffic.

[01:27:30] Well, back in the day, you had to take like a stagecoach to go hiking.

[01:27:37] You had to bring a bale of hay.

[01:27:39] Yeah, right?

[01:27:40] They got to feed the freaking horses going up.

[01:27:43] So he's...

[01:27:44] But he's got on the list a big Westkill Mountain at 3896.

[01:27:48] Oh, wow.

[01:27:49] Yeah.

[01:27:50] He has Stony Mountain East End, 3844.

[01:27:55] Mink Mountain, 3807.

[01:27:57] High Peak is 3644.

[01:28:02] So...

[01:28:03] That's tough to...

[01:28:04] Yeah, that's a tough one.

[01:28:07] Yeah.

[01:28:07] He doesn't have...

[01:28:08] Thomas Cole is not here.

[01:28:10] Now, was that because they didn't consider Thomas Cole to be its own mountain or peak?

[01:28:17] I don't know.

[01:28:18] Windham is on here.

[01:28:19] Round Top is on here.

[01:28:22] North Mountain.

[01:28:23] North Mountain, he has a West Peak, East Peak, and then the Outlook on North Mountain.

[01:28:29] I think...

[01:28:30] I saw that.

[01:28:30] He had like a...

[01:28:31] Like that was 3,400 feet.

[01:28:33] Was that Stopple?

[01:28:35] 30...

[01:28:36] Like 3,400 feet.

[01:28:38] That's significant.

[01:28:39] Stopple was only like 32, maybe 31.

[01:28:42] Yeah, but these guys, you know, for the day...

[01:28:44] Yeah, they were guessing.

[01:28:45] Yeah, well, they thought they had scientific instruments for the day, but they...

[01:28:51] Not by today's standards on the one hand.

[01:28:53] But on the other hand, look at how long it took them to figure out that Rocky wasn't even 3,500.

[01:28:57] Now, Rocky's not on the list.

[01:29:00] Table Plateau were not on the list.

[01:29:01] They hadn't even gotten over there yet.

[01:29:04] We also know that they thought was Cattarskill High Peak was the highest peak.

[01:29:08] Yeah, but he points out here that Hunter, he gives it 4,040 feet.

[01:29:17] Later on, he does talk about...

[01:29:21] He says...

[01:29:22] This is what he says about Slide.

[01:29:24] This is very interesting.

[01:29:26] Hunter Mountain is the highest point in the Catskills.

[01:29:30] In the South Catskills, it's one mountain higher, Slide Mountain, reaching 4205.

[01:29:39] So what is it with that?

[01:29:41] Hunter Mountain in the Catskills proper, and then the South Catskills, he gives us being something different.

[01:29:49] Yeah.

[01:29:51] It's just...

[01:29:52] I don't know.

[01:29:52] It's interesting reading, and it kind of really gives you...

[01:29:55] 3844, though.

[01:29:56] That seems like Westkill.

[01:29:58] Westkill is...

[01:29:59] I mean, once again, this is 1870s.

[01:30:02] This is grading on you.

[01:30:03] I can tell.

[01:30:04] You're conflicted here.

[01:30:05] It kills me.

[01:30:06] It kills me to be like, you know, what was he thinking of?

[01:30:11] You know, Stony...

[01:30:11] It's Stony Clove.

[01:30:13] But Mick Mountain was referred to as Plateau.

[01:30:17] I know that 100% of fact.

[01:30:19] But Stony Mountain, like, it could either be Hunter or Westkill, because that's what I know of history, you know, with Kudish and, you know, Giat and stuff like that.

[01:30:34] What was that?

[01:30:35] Because 3,800 feet is...

[01:30:37] I can only think of Westkill, and then higher above that is, you know, Blackhead, Black Dome, Thomas Cole.

[01:30:46] Yeah.

[01:30:47] So Westkill is 3980 today's measurement.

[01:30:52] Wow.

[01:30:53] Yeah.

[01:30:54] So we have, like, near where...

[01:30:56] I mean, Plateau is 3840.

[01:31:00] Sugarloaf is 3800.

[01:31:03] So that might have been Sugarloaf.

[01:31:05] Which would make sense, because, number one, when they say the Catskills, we know that they're thinking of that immediate area, because Slide is in the South Catskills.

[01:31:14] Yeah.

[01:31:15] But, yeah, it's just...

[01:31:16] It might be that area, you know?

[01:31:18] Maybe Sugarloaf.

[01:31:19] Yeah.

[01:31:20] It'd be nice if you could actually get a version of his map with enough resolution that you could actually decipher it.

[01:31:31] And I gotta admit, this was a great...

[01:31:34] Once again, that you brought this up, because it's a great piece of Catskill Mountain history that you can look at and just indulge yourself.

[01:31:42] Yeah.

[01:31:42] So if you want a real fun exercise, try to plan your next Catskill trip using Rusk's guide.

[01:31:52] Right?

[01:31:53] How am I gonna get up here?

[01:31:54] What am I gonna...

[01:31:55] Where am I gonna stay?

[01:31:57] You know, where am I gonna board my horse if I ride up on horseback?

[01:32:02] Yeah, right?

[01:32:03] Should I take the expensive train ride up to Catskill Mountain House or not?

[01:32:08] Yeah.

[01:32:08] There's no...

[01:32:09] And there's no phone numbers.

[01:32:10] You go through here, there's not a sync, because there's no telephones.

[01:32:13] Right?

[01:32:13] You can't send an email.

[01:32:15] There's no instant messaging.

[01:32:17] Right?

[01:32:18] Jesus Christ.

[01:32:19] Wow.

[01:32:20] It's crazy.

[01:32:21] An hour and 40 minutes into this.

[01:32:23] Shit.

[01:32:24] All right.

[01:32:25] Well, we'll move along then.

[01:32:27] Crazy.

[01:32:27] That's the signal to...

[01:32:28] Yeah.

[01:32:29] So check out...

[01:32:30] I will post that in there, of course.

[01:32:31] Ruts Mountain Guide.

[01:32:32] We'll post that in the show notes.

[01:32:34] Also, discover Camp Catskill in Tannersville, your ultimate hiking store.

[01:32:39] Find top quality gear, apparel, and accessories for all your outdoor adventures.

[01:32:44] Our expert staff is to help every hiker from beginner to seasoned pros.

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[01:32:52] Visit us online at CampCatskill.co or at the store and enjoy your next journey.

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[01:33:01] Also, discover the beauty Catskills Adirondacks and Hudson Valley with scenic route guiding.

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[01:33:24] Check them out on our social media and platforms.

[01:33:27] Also, if you mention the podcast, you can get 10% off.

[01:33:30] Use the code MOUNTAINLION.

[01:33:32] Sarah was recently talked about on a Green County newsletter.

[01:33:39] I'll have to post that in the show notes, so check it out.

[01:33:43] Sarah and Yana were also on that, and Michelle, so check it out.

[01:33:48] Also, embark on a transformative journey with another summit.

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[01:34:13] Apply to another summit.org.

[01:34:16] I will be there this weekend on the 20th doing Red Hill.

[01:34:21] So, Tad, if you want to join from Denning on Sunday, you can just show up and you can enjoy us with Commodery.

[01:34:30] Yeah.

[01:34:31] All right.

[01:34:31] So, I'm pleased to report the Yanks are up 3-0 in Game 2 against the Guardians.

[01:34:39] For those of you...

[01:34:41] Is that hockey?

[01:34:41] Is that hockey?

[01:34:42] I don't know.

[01:34:43] Yes, it's hockey.

[01:34:44] Somebody for the Yankees got a hat trick.

[01:34:47] You can follow more hockey.

[01:34:49] All right.

[01:34:49] So, let's get on to the topic of the night that we're going to go really quickly through because we are already a hour and 42 minutes in it.

[01:34:56] Let's go!

[01:34:59] So, with the influx to the Catskills, do we improve trails or build new trails?

[01:35:05] This has been a big question that I've had ever since I've started this podcast.

[01:35:09] And now that Tad is here, you know, I could chat with someone about this.

[01:35:14] So, we have a lot of new flow into the Catskills since, of course, the pandemic area.

[01:35:21] You know, also social media has brought a new influx to the Hudson Valley, Catskills, Adirondacks, wherever, any place that has offers hiking.

[01:35:31] So, what do we do?

[01:35:32] Do we improve the trails that we have, which is what we're already doing somewhat?

[01:35:37] Or do we build new trails to bring an influx of those peoples away from the more known trails?

[01:35:45] So, do we blame them for wanting to enjoy the Catskills and the views and the summits and stuff like that?

[01:35:54] Like, you can't say no, like, because...

[01:36:00] We do that.

[01:36:01] You and I both do that.

[01:36:03] Well, I mean, we...

[01:36:05] I think we have much more of an issue or concern about those folks who come up here and don't have the education and the sensitivities to go out and hike in a manner which is respectful of others

[01:36:25] and respectful of the environment that they're hiking in.

[01:36:30] And, you know, with some of these areas, it's...

[01:36:35] It's, you know, people come up here and...

[01:36:38] They're really not connected with their surroundings, and that's a shame because part of going out into nature is getting connected with your surroundings.

[01:36:47] And that kind of brings about that euphoric state that you can have, you know, when you reach the summit of a mountain or come around the corner and you see this vista or waterfall, whatever it is.

[01:37:00] Or, you know, for somebody like me, it's just another tree ahead of me is something that I get excited over, right?

[01:37:06] So, yeah, you know, I think the state is acting reasonably well and some things, of course, we're going to disagree with.

[01:37:16] And presumably they'll have some way of deciding which trails they spend money on maintaining and improving and also at the same time building additional trails.

[01:37:26] It's not like they haven't been doing both.

[01:37:28] I mean, Red Hill is an example of an instance where they built a new trail that was built in what we can call modern standards, you know.

[01:37:40] So it's easier to maintain and is not as susceptible to stormwater erosion as the older trails, like the ones that we're making now when we go up Lone and Fur.

[01:37:53] You know, people are just going straight up and that just invites downhill rainwater erosion, which is not good.

[01:38:01] Yeah.

[01:38:02] And great, great example, of course, you know, Red Hill is one of the, it's actually the shortest fire tower that you can get up to.

[01:38:12] And it offers an absolute phenomenal view of the boroughs range.

[01:38:19] And, of course, to the south, once again, I'm going to, it's not Montauk.

[01:38:25] Why do I always say that?

[01:38:27] Because I've been watching Roll Pains.

[01:38:30] Have you really?

[01:38:31] I have been.

[01:38:32] I have been.

[01:38:32] I love that show.

[01:38:33] Oh, God.

[01:38:34] My wife and I are like on episode or no, season eight.

[01:38:37] I'm embarrassed to say.

[01:38:39] Oh, it's season six.

[01:38:40] I'm on season six.

[01:38:41] So you're behind us.

[01:38:42] You've got a long way to go, buddy.

[01:38:44] So sad.

[01:38:44] But do you know Montauk?

[01:38:46] What is it?

[01:38:48] Montauk.

[01:38:49] Yeah.

[01:38:49] Montauk.

[01:38:50] Montauk.

[01:38:50] The area, you know.

[01:38:51] The Hamptons.

[01:38:52] And, you know, Red Hill offers phenomenal views.

[01:38:55] And it's got a very, I got to admit, one of the most unique summits in the Catskills with the ferns, the grass.

[01:39:03] Somebody may ensay it, of course, from the area.

[01:39:05] And it offers one of the most pleasurable areas that you can watch, of course, a sunset sunrise.

[01:39:15] And, you know, with that one area that they had with the parking is, you can only allow probably like, God, not even like eight to ten cars.

[01:39:24] And then it was overflowing on the weekends.

[01:39:28] It's just crazy.

[01:39:29] Yeah.

[01:39:29] You know, on a Tuesday, I got there with like three cars.

[01:39:33] And then there was also like 12, 15 cars there on Tuesday.

[01:39:36] So, on weekends, I couldn't imagine.

[01:39:38] So, great for the state to build another trail.

[01:39:42] And like you said, Tad, it has, of course, switchbacks that offer less erosion, you know, less blowdown, stuff like that, that can be maintained easily.

[01:39:53] It's a little bit, tiny, tiny bit longer, a little bit more elevation gain.

[01:39:59] But I'll admit, it's absolutely worth it.

[01:40:03] And it's a great idea.

[01:40:05] Yeah.

[01:40:05] And we did misspeak when we just said Montauk.

[01:40:09] It's Minnewasca that you're going to see.

[01:40:10] Minnewasca.

[01:40:11] God damn, I hate that.

[01:40:12] I'm sorry.

[01:40:13] Yeah, and the gunks.

[01:40:13] Yeah, and the gunks over to the east of the Red Hill Fire Tower.

[01:40:18] I've actually never been up there.

[01:40:20] It's, you know, part of the all trails list.

[01:40:21] I got to hit it.

[01:40:23] Maybe I can get my wife to do it.

[01:40:26] And then afterwards, we can hit, I think it's called, what, the Russian Mule?

[01:40:29] The local brewery?

[01:40:31] Yeah.

[01:40:32] So, you guys should do that.

[01:40:33] Why don't you do it this weekend?

[01:40:34] Yeah, maybe I'll talk her into it.

[01:40:36] I'll see.

[01:40:37] Maybe I'll have to do the post-hype credit card swipe.

[01:40:41] Oh, my God.

[01:40:42] It's an inducement to get her to go.

[01:40:44] Yikes.

[01:40:45] Yeah.

[01:40:45] So, you know, that's a great, once again, talk about the budget and stuff like that that we can do.

[01:40:52] That we improved the new trail.

[01:40:55] We made a new trail up to Red Hill.

[01:40:58] And that diverted people, of course, coming from kind of the north area and, you know, to the south area that wanted to make a new trail up to a certain kind of peak that draws a lot of attention.

[01:41:14] Because it's short, you know, I mean, it's like round trip from the parking lot is around like 2.6 to 3 miles.

[01:41:23] Yeah, it's a good look.

[01:41:24] It's a good starter hike for people coming up here.

[01:41:27] And you get a big reward at the top by going up the fire tower and getting what I'm told is a spectacular view.

[01:41:35] Oh, man.

[01:41:36] I'm so sad that you haven't enjoyed that.

[01:41:38] So, go there for a sunset.

[01:41:40] Oh, it's absolutely phenomenal.

[01:41:43] So, now we talk about people coming to the Catskills.

[01:41:48] Of course, New York State has a budget that we need to overview.

[01:41:54] So, the DEC had an annual budget last year of $2.5 million for the federal year of 2024 and employs roughly 3,000 people across New York State and manages over 4 million acres, which is, what, 2.6 million in the Adirondacks?

[01:42:16] Right?

[01:42:17] 2.6 million in the Adirondacks, and 91 or 9,110 acres of privately owned land, which it holds conservation easements.

[01:42:27] Now, licensing and permitting fees provide the DEC with the majority of its operating revenue, which is at about 58%.

[01:42:34] Now, let's note this, that Ted noted this, that there is no fee for hiking.

[01:42:41] So, direct funding from the state contributes to 24%, and federal programs grant make up a 70% difference.

[01:42:48] Now, where does that funding come from, Ted?

[01:42:50] Do you know her?

[01:42:51] The funding for the DEC budget?

[01:42:54] Yep.

[01:42:55] Yeah.

[01:42:55] Well, according to this, 58% comes from permitting fees, presumably hunting license.

[01:43:03] Correct.

[01:43:04] Fishing licenses.

[01:43:06] It's somewhat ambiguous.

[01:43:08] It might include fees for private sewer systems, fees for stormwater erosion permits.

[01:43:18] It's just kind of, it lumps together everything in fees.

[01:43:20] And the budget is, you said 2.5 million.

[01:43:24] It's, I think, 2.5 billion.

[01:43:27] They said?

[01:43:28] Yeah, you said million.

[01:43:30] I mean, for 2.5 million, they really get a lot done.

[01:43:34] But it's, no, it's their budget's 2.5 billion dollars.

[01:43:38] And then to expect that 60% or 58% of that comes from fees is remarkable.

[01:43:44] So more than half of what the DEC does with its money comes from not taxes collected, but from fees they collect for people that use things that the DEC does, excluding the hiking, snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, those kinds of recreational activities.

[01:44:07] Wow.

[01:44:08] So basically, when we hike, we don't have to pay anything.

[01:44:13] Yeah.

[01:44:13] Do you find that a little odd?

[01:44:16] Kind of like, you know, New Hampshire provides that hiker safeguard and stuff like that.

[01:44:21] Does that help?

[01:44:21] That helps them.

[01:44:22] That helps the...

[01:44:24] Yeah.

[01:44:25] Look, I can open up right now.

[01:44:26] I've got my Mohonk Preserve annual registration here, and they want me to renew.

[01:44:35] So it is for, right?

[01:44:37] I've got it.

[01:44:38] I've got the thing right here.

[01:44:39] So for the basic plan, it's $70 per adult.

[01:44:46] It's yearly?

[01:44:47] Yeah.

[01:44:47] It's annual.

[01:44:48] And if you want to do rock climbing, which, you know, I have to buy my daughter for rock climbing.

[01:44:52] So that's like another $45.

[01:44:56] If you want to do bike riding there, that's another $45.

[01:45:01] So I typically spend about $250 a year on our two memberships for the Mohonk Preserve, which is part of the Schwangunk Range.

[01:45:12] It's the privately owned part of it.

[01:45:16] And when you go over there, it's apparent that they collect a lot of money for trail maintenance because their trails are maintained, you know, in pristine conditions.

[01:45:27] When our trails are, I mean, our trails are, once again, pristine additions, but we also don't get paid for it.

[01:45:34] Yeah, there's a lot of volunteer work that occurs in the Catskills.

[01:45:38] And I also, I like to hike in the Catskills because I don't necessarily need or want to hike on maintained trails like they are in Mohonk, Minnewasca, and, you know, in general areas of the Gunks.

[01:45:53] I go for more of that rugged feel.

[01:45:55] Some people don't like that or can't do that.

[01:45:57] And that's understandable, but I don't think it's unreasonable for the DEC to ask or require.

[01:46:10] I mean, if they're requiring a hunter to buy a license and if they're requiring somebody who's going to go out fishing to buy a license.

[01:46:17] And I was hunting or fishing in New York State and had to buy a license, and then I found out that people that are hiking get to do it for free, particularly when I'm a hunter.

[01:46:28] And what is the DEC doing to maintain where I hunt?

[01:46:32] Probably nothing, but I still have to buy a license.

[01:46:36] Right, but the DEC is, according to Stosh, supposed to maintain and build new hiking trails for the hikers.

[01:46:44] Why aren't the hikers paying something?

[01:46:45] It seems like they should, right?

[01:46:48] So I don't really think it's all that unreasonable, particularly when a fair percentage of the trail use in the state of New York is from folks out of state who aren't paying New York State taxes.

[01:47:02] So should you be required to spend $50 or $100 or $150 to go hiking?

[01:47:09] Well, there's a lot of reasons to say that it would be fair to have you do it on the one hand.

[01:47:14] But then on the other hand, to a lot of folks, it would be a barrier to entry, a barrier to go out and enjoy the outdoors by having them pay that type of fee, whether it's $10, $20 for one time or a weekend.

[01:47:32] So you could go back and forth.

[01:47:34] And maybe then the fairest way to do it is as it's been done, where the DEC hires outside contractors to do certain trail maintenance.

[01:47:46] There's a pretty robust base of volunteers that go out and do that work.

[01:47:53] Like I mentioned a few weeks ago, I went out with Matt and his Catskill Trail Maintenance crew.

[01:47:59] And I had a really, really fun time hanging out with him and his crew for the day doing trail maintenance.

[01:48:07] And so instead of requiring people to buy a license or a permit to hike, you know, people should go out and help maintain.

[01:48:19] And maybe if it was a real issue where we needed more maintainers and we wanted to have some way where people could get a permit without paying for it, well, then go out and work six hours and you get your permit for, you know, time served, so to speak.

[01:48:37] I mean, you know, the one thing that I was thinking about is maybe the DEC should check how much of the Catskills is maintained by volunteers versus the DEC.

[01:48:51] I'm sure they know.

[01:48:53] Yeah, of course.

[01:48:54] Yeah.

[01:48:55] But then charge, you know, maybe, I mean, it's probably a very, very small amount of volunteers versus DEC and maybe like 8%, you know, like.

[01:49:07] Like a $10 a year fee.

[01:49:10] Yeah.

[01:49:10] Because I got to admit, you know, I maintain a trail only a mile long, but, you know, it's one of the best trails in the Catskills.

[01:49:18] I know everybody along that escarpment trail maintains it for free.

[01:49:24] Mm-hmm.

[01:49:25] But, you know, the big blowdowns happen, of course.

[01:49:28] We need maybe paid people, but I know volunteers go out there that have Sawyer.

[01:49:34] Sure.

[01:49:35] Things that go out there.

[01:49:36] So maybe it's tough to say, you know, because that's, once again.

[01:49:44] Well, all things considered, for example, your experience a week ago hiking down from Jimmy Dolan Notch, and you came through that area where that trail crew, a paid trail crew.

[01:49:56] You did too as well.

[01:49:57] Yeah.

[01:49:58] I mean, it's, and I, you know, communicated with a few other people that do a lot of Catskill hiking who have gone through there, and it's really fantastic now what's been done along that segment of trail.

[01:50:10] And we're all giving it rave reviews, and none of us have hiked it in the mud yet, which is one of the really.

[01:50:16] Oh, I did.

[01:50:17] Was it muddy?

[01:50:18] Yeah.

[01:50:18] Yeah, because that's what it was absolutely horrible.

[01:50:21] Yeah.

[01:50:21] And so what they've done is now made it such that you don't have to deal with the mud like you used to, which is terrific.

[01:50:28] So I think that, you know, look, in terms of trail maintenance and creating trails, the DEC is doing a good job, and kudos to them that they're covering 58% of their annual budget through use fees and permitting.

[01:50:45] And then the question is whether or not they should be doing more and in part subsidizing that with more fees.

[01:50:52] Yeah.

[01:50:53] Maybe we should say, no, we should be against fees because eventually there's a fee associated with everything, and then what do you get to do for free?

[01:51:00] Nothing.

[01:51:01] Yeah.

[01:51:03] Which would not be good.

[01:51:04] Good.

[01:51:05] So this goes into the question of do we maintain the trails that we have better, or do we build, like, more trails to attract the number of visitors that visit our area?

[01:51:23] That's a big question.

[01:51:25] And now you, Tad, we both visited this area that we've seen Tahawas that has built kind of like enhanced the old trail that has made this kind of, I got to admit, pleasurable and made it more enjoyable to go up that area.

[01:51:43] Do we keep doing that, or do we build another trail that offers kind of like a viewpoint to get up to the next part of the trail?

[01:51:53] Now that's a tough question.

[01:51:55] Is that just me that is thinking that's a tough question or no?

[01:51:59] Well, I, you know, look, you can debate all of these topics, uh, till the cows come home.

[01:52:06] And I think it's more than just, uh, to build or not build more trails because one of the problems when you start building more trails is what do you do about parking?

[01:52:19] Yeah.

[01:52:20] Are you going to be using the same parking area?

[01:52:22] Uh, that's probably not good because these parking areas are starting to fill up earlier.

[01:52:29] Like when Danny Davis and I came back from our hike on Saturday, it was evident that there was a lot of parking down the road on Woodland Valley because the parking lot at some point filled up during the day.

[01:52:41] So if you're, if you're going to start building more trails, you've got to figure out where do we start these trails to disperse the parking and not, you know, put ourselves in a position where we have to build bigger parking areas.

[01:52:55] Because most of these parking areas are on dead end roads.

[01:52:59] Yeah.

[01:52:59] They're, they're near streams.

[01:53:01] Um, you know, then in the winter, you've got to deal with the plowing issue.

[01:53:05] Uh, you know, I guess there's just a whole lot of dynamics in terms of which, which is the best route, but certainly the work that was done on the, uh, the, uh, Jimmy Dolan trail.

[01:53:18] Recently is good work because it allows that trail trail to sustain a higher, uh, foot traffic load because the, the problem with the mud is people tend to disperse when they hit the mud and then widen the trail.

[01:53:34] And it never, ever makes the, uh, muddy area less muddy.

[01:53:41] It just makes it a bigger muddy area.

[01:53:44] Yeah.

[01:53:44] And then it gets bigger and bigger and bigger and none of us want that.

[01:53:49] So the work that they did there is, is good and valuable work.

[01:53:52] And obviously there's just a lot of areas in the Catskills that need that level of attention, but it would also be really, really cool to have some other fun trails with some neat viewpoints, you know?

[01:54:04] Yeah.

[01:54:04] Um, and that's where it looked for me.

[01:54:06] That's where the bushwhacking comes in.

[01:54:07] I just, you know, I go wherever I want.

[01:54:10] Uh, so long as I'm not on private property.

[01:54:14] I just, you know, figure out how I'm going to make my loop and do it.

[01:54:18] Yeah.

[01:54:19] And that's, you know, once again, what we have to think about, like where can be a new trail be built?

[01:54:26] Once again, like you said, with the parking area and that could help the, the overflow of people that could maybe draw their attention to this area.

[01:54:37] And we, we do have a bunch of new spots kind of like to, to help that, you know, uh, Shokin High Point has a, a nice, well-built parking area to, to help that flow.

[01:54:49] So, of course, that, that, that hike is a little bit long to get up to the area, but it offers a beautiful area that you can just walk through and enjoy.

[01:54:59] Uh, nonetheless of just being in nature.

[01:55:03] Tysteniuk is a very, uh, I think well-built trail that, uh, that I helped, uh, back in, I forgot what it was, like 2020 to build.

[01:55:14] That offers a great view of the borough's range right outside of Woodstock.

[01:55:19] And the parking area is not that big.

[01:55:21] I got to admit, they should have built the parking area a little bit bigger for such a short hike.

[01:55:26] Uh, have you ever been there?

[01:55:28] Uh, I haven't been there, but I, I want to get over there and.

[01:55:33] I don't understand why the trail isn't longer and loops around to the Western view that shown on the map for that mountain.

[01:55:44] Isn't that the Western view?

[01:55:46] It's the Eastern view you're talking about.

[01:55:47] Uh, they, on my map, they, they label it the Western.

[01:55:52] Well, the view is to the West according to the map.

[01:55:55] So it is on the Eastern side of the mountain or summit.

[01:56:00] Yep.

[01:56:00] And then, but the trail only goes up to like the Western Ridge of it.

[01:56:06] And then they show that there's an unmaintained trail going towards the Boyceville overlook.

[01:56:13] So that's, that's an area that they have the land.

[01:56:19] They already have the parking in place.

[01:56:21] They have a short stub trail and they can arguably do a more of a loop trail down into.

[01:56:29] Uh, well, around that mountain and maybe going down into Boyceville if they want.

[01:56:35] So yeah, it's more, more can be done there.

[01:56:39] Yes.

[01:56:39] And you know, I gotta admit that when we did that, we had a great amount of volunteers.

[01:56:44] We had like eight to 10 volunteers to maintain that easy trail.

[01:56:50] That was all like kind of, it was kind of like a, I wouldn't say a dream trail, but it was a well-maintained trail up to the, to the viewpoint.

[01:57:01] And it took minimal amount of effort to, to, to, to maintain it, to, to market, to, you know, properly main, maintain the area.

[01:57:13] Only take out a few blowdowns, uh, maybe took four or five hours, but small areas like that could offer, you know, if, if they promote it could offer a total.

[01:57:28] Like diversion from the other trails to that, especially around the Woodstock area.

[01:57:33] Cause you know, that is a congested area.

[01:57:36] And, you know, and, and so it's, uh, close to the conveniences of Boyceville and it's going to give folks a view of the upper Ashokan reservoir as well as a view over towards, um, Ashokan high point Rocky slide.

[01:57:57] Et cetera.

[01:57:58] Samuel's point.

[01:57:59] I mean, you know, it, it has, it's just, you know, ready to explode with potential there.

[01:58:07] And it's like you said, looking closely at the map, um, you can see that there's what they call unmaintained trails already up there.

[01:58:17] Um, presumably from when the area was logged or barked, uh, years and years ago.

[01:58:25] So I had, I had planned cause I have to do that one stub trail, the 1.4 miles to finish off the all trails and heading over there just to do that kind of is boring for me.

[01:58:38] So I, yeah, I, well, I had a planned, you know, like a bush bushwhack starting from the lake going up over the Western view, exploring around the summit area and then just coming down the trail, you know, at the end of the day.

[01:58:54] Sounds good.

[01:58:55] Yeah.

[01:58:55] Yeah.

[01:58:55] Try to make more of a full day out of it than just a 1.4 mile up and down and then head home or somewhere else.

[01:59:03] Yeah.

[01:59:04] So, you know, we'll talk about new trails.

[01:59:07] So, well, I mean the Tystenic trail, uh, but where else?

[01:59:12] Like, you know, it's, it's tough to, to talk about that because, you know, we have certain areas that are protected by the DEC and then there are certain private areas that you can't get to.

[01:59:25] And, you know, I, I, I came up with this, this, this funny little, little, little path that you could go, uh, up Becker Hollow kind of from the Becker Hollow parking area up to Orchard Point.

[01:59:39] I mean, that was a steep climb going up to Becker Hollow is a steep climb itself, but this is still a steep climb as well.

[01:59:46] But it gives you the, the advantage of having a viewpoint and then going over to Summit Plateau as well.

[01:59:53] But where else?

[01:59:55] It's, it's tough to think.

[01:59:56] There are actually, you know, if you, if you're people like me and Ted who look like to look at DEC and DEP properties, you can approach the summits of the Catskill Mountain peaks from several different ways.

[02:00:10] Uh, not just from the area that the, uh, later.

[02:00:16] Well, in, in part the, my all trails endeavor has been entailing bushwhacking to the end of the trail that I would do as an out and back and then hiking the trail back.

[02:00:28] I, I make loops up all the time by incorporating bushwhacks into it.

[02:00:35] You know, the, the, and there's, I don't know if you want to go over any of these other, uh, ones that we have on the list or not.

[02:00:41] Um, you would, you would put down Van Wick.

[02:00:45] I mean, that's an awesome hike.

[02:00:47] Yeah.

[02:00:48] So out of, out of Picomos, uh, Blue Hole, there already is, uh, some established routes, old logging roads that go up that area.

[02:00:59] Mm-hmm.

[02:00:59] And it's, it's a pretty unique and interesting area.

[02:01:03] And frankly, there's some on Van Wick, there are some really, really neat rock features when you get up there.

[02:01:10] And then the hike over to, uh, Table is pretty cool.

[02:01:15] It's beautiful.

[02:01:16] Yeah.

[02:01:16] Make a nice loop hike to be able to go up from the, the Picomoose side.

[02:01:21] I don't know if you were planning on Picomoose or a, a harder approach, longer approach would be coming in from Denning.

[02:01:30] Yeah.

[02:01:30] If that was on your mind.

[02:01:32] It's, well, it's tough to go over there.

[02:01:34] There's a lot of private property over there towards, I mean, it's funny how that little section of the parking area is private, but then, or, or public.

[02:01:45] And then like that little section going over is, is, is, it's private.

[02:01:49] I think we have a right of easement going along that area.

[02:01:53] So it's tough.

[02:01:54] In Denning?

[02:01:55] Yeah.

[02:01:56] Yeah.

[02:01:57] Yeah.

[02:01:57] I mean, and that's, that's what would make it, uh, logistically a more difficult hike to get in.

[02:02:03] Um, and my thought, if you did that approach, you'd, uh, you know, hike, hike up to the bridge over the East branch, start out on the existing trail.

[02:02:15] And then once you get, yeah, once you get more into the, the state land, then you'd branch off to the, uh, the South.

[02:02:23] Hmm.

[02:02:24] And yeah.

[02:02:25] Go over Van Wick and up the table.

[02:02:27] Yeah.

[02:02:28] And, and yeah.

[02:02:29] And so, and that, and going up that way of Van Wick is not as steep and challenging as, uh, coming up from the Pekamu side.

[02:02:39] Oh yeah.

[02:02:40] But you still get one of the, one of the best views in the Catskills is on that.

[02:02:43] I know.

[02:02:44] That, yeah, they, they hear, they show, uh, my, mine shows it as view, view to the South.

[02:02:49] And that's the, the view I'm speaking of is towards table and Pekamoose.

[02:02:54] It's, it's like, it's, it's the, the, the whole Pekamoose table view.

[02:02:59] It's just, it's just so crazy how flat Pekamoose is.

[02:03:03] And then table is just right there.

[02:03:05] It's like a little, it's like a little asterisk I would say.

[02:03:09] And then, you know, that, and that, that once again, Pekamoose is well established now they've done a lot of work over there.

[02:03:17] So would you, I mean, it's, it's one of those cherished areas of like people like you and me that like the bushwhack and, uh, you know, going over from Van Wick to table is an absolute phenomenal experience.

[02:03:31] This offers everything with thick brush.

[02:03:33] You got some ledges, you got some fricking, uh, crazy whiplings, whiplads, stuff like that.

[02:03:40] But it offers one of those experience that when you get in Australia, I kill you.

[02:03:44] I'm on a trail, but then you've got the descent going down Pekamoose.

[02:03:47] That is absolutely.

[02:03:50] Uh, just the longest hack.

[02:03:52] So yeah.

[02:03:53] Yeah.

[02:03:53] It's not bad though.

[02:03:55] You know, it's not bad.

[02:03:56] It is.

[02:03:57] It, you feel, you feel phenomenal and accomplished after that.

[02:04:00] Yeah.

[02:04:01] Well, you got some good viewpoints along the way heading down, but it is after a while, you know, it becomes kind of ho hum at right around 2,400 feet or so.

[02:04:11] It's.

[02:04:12] You're just like, God damn.

[02:04:14] Yeah.

[02:04:15] You feel like a 747 coming into Newark airport.

[02:04:18] You're just like on the glide path coming down, you know, you're meant mentally.

[02:04:23] You can check out as far as you want and just, you know, so walk back in, but you know, there's, there's look, that's.

[02:04:30] Yeah.

[02:04:30] On, on my list over there is, you know, I've, I've bushwhacked, uh, Van Wook several times, but on my list, maybe as a good winter hike.

[02:04:47] Yeah.

[02:04:51] Yeah.

[02:04:54] Yeah.

[02:04:56] So, you know, there's two places in the Catskills that you find loose white quartz pebbles.

[02:05:03] Mm.

[02:05:04] You know what I'm talking about?

[02:05:06] Yeah.

[02:05:07] Almost like a slide, right?

[02:05:09] Precisely.

[02:05:10] It's the only two spots, the only two spots that you can pick them up by the handful.

[02:05:15] Mm.

[02:05:15] Mm.

[02:05:16] And why, and why, why is that?

[02:05:18] We're gonna cut.

[02:05:19] We're gonna cut this place out.

[02:05:20] Yeah.

[02:05:20] No, we're not gonna talk about this.

[02:05:22] That's all right.

[02:05:23] You can't talk about this.

[02:05:24] That is just up amongst us bushwhackers.

[02:05:27] Yeah.

[02:05:28] Um, so, you know, let's, I'm gonna fly through this.

[02:05:31] We're already two hours and 15 minutes into this.

[02:05:33] So, like, what about Colgate, uh, Lake to Blackhead or Black Dome?

[02:05:37] What'd you think about that?

[02:05:39] Uh, I've done it.

[02:05:40] It's, it's enjoyable.

[02:05:41] It's, you know, it's a nice ridge to hike up.

[02:05:43] Um, I've actually, I, I've run into some old vehicles over there, a couple of pickup trucks,

[02:05:50] uh, some of all things, like a couple of rowboats in there.

[02:05:54] Yeah.

[02:05:54] It was actually one time I was, after I ran into the one pickup truck, I was, the next thing

[02:05:57] I was expecting is like some old distillery or something like that.

[02:06:01] Yeah.

[02:06:01] Over there.

[02:06:02] Westkill.

[02:06:03] Yeah.

[02:06:04] Right.

[02:06:04] Yeah.

[02:06:04] Westkill over there.

[02:06:06] But, uh, yeah, I mean, that's, that makes sense.

[02:06:09] And plus there's the parking there to start off with, you know?

[02:06:13] Um, and that just, you know, those are the Blackhead range is a great range.

[02:06:19] I mean, they're for the Catskills are pretty tall and being able to, to hit them up from

[02:06:25] the Colgate Lake area is, is, would be a good thing.

[02:06:30] West people because they wouldn't take a local gap because it's shorter or it's longer from,

[02:06:36] from Colgate Lake, more elevation gain.

[02:06:40] Um, I mean, it's, it's, it's, yeah, let's, let's, let's talk about the real benefit of

[02:06:46] doing that.

[02:06:46] The real benefit of doing that.

[02:06:48] If I was the DEC, what would sell me on building a couple trails to hit a black dome black head

[02:06:57] from the South is parking.

[02:07:01] I can, I can put a lot of parking in at Colgate Lake.

[02:07:05] And right now at the end of big hollow road, I just have limited parking.

[02:07:10] Oh God.

[02:07:11] What's this like?

[02:07:12] 12 spaces.

[02:07:13] Yeah.

[02:07:14] And then, and then people start parking down the road.

[02:07:16] The neighbors get upset about it.

[02:07:18] It, you know, presents an issue if you have to mobilize an emergency response out there.

[02:07:23] But when you think about the logistics of putting trails in, um, you got a lot of area around Colgate

[02:07:33] Lake.

[02:07:34] You already have that one red loop trail.

[02:07:37] And so you could put some parking in that would serve not only these trails, but the lake.

[02:07:43] And you would take some of the pressure off of the parking at the end of big hollow, which is popular

[02:07:49] because, you know, there's a, there's a lot of good stuff going out on at the end of big hollow road.

[02:07:55] So that's, that's something that the DEC, you know, ought to put on their list and maybe try to get into the top,

[02:08:01] top, top 10 is Stosh's, you know, hike up to, uh, the black dome range trail.

[02:08:09] So.

[02:08:09] I mean, maybe they, they might listen to the podcast.

[02:08:12] They're probably one of the people that rated the podcast like three.

[02:08:16] So, so, uh, you know, let's, we'll, we'll go quickly over this.

[02:08:22] What is your thoughts about turning herd paths and trails?

[02:08:27] Uh, I, I think it's inevitable, you know, it is, it is.

[02:08:31] It's, but you gotta like redirect a little bit, you know, we're talking about if anybody's

[02:08:35] ever been a pocket with the trails, it's absolutely insane.

[02:08:39] Same thing with Rusk.

[02:08:40] Yeah.

[02:08:43] I don't think Hawkett is, is, and I don't think Rosk is all that bad.

[02:08:48] I think the, the worst one out there is probably fur and then loan.

[02:08:55] I think those are the ones that you just have basically a straight shot for much of the way

[02:09:02] up or down.

[02:09:03] And that's not good because once the stormwater gets in there, it just really starts eroding.

[02:09:10] That surface starts developing, you know, a notch.

[02:09:14] It watches, washes away all the fine soil.

[02:09:17] We've the rocks behind.

[02:09:19] And, you know, then we're hiking up basically a riverbed, this green bread.

[02:09:24] I mean, I feel, I feel that about, uh, like, uh, pocket and Rusk, like it just towards the

[02:09:32] end of a pocket, you just go straight up and it's a riverbed and it's horrible, but you

[02:09:38] know, just a little bit of redirecting zigzagging.

[02:09:42] Of course, uh, we're talking about switchbacks could make that an enjoyable area.

[02:09:48] You walk along that stream bed, you know, walk around, uh, of course the native American

[02:09:54] monuments that most people don't see.

[02:09:57] Yeah.

[02:09:57] So yeah, that's, it's a, that's pretty cool through there, but I'm going to tell you,

[02:10:02] um, if you're working on the four seasons or the grid and you haven't hiked, hawk it from

[02:10:10] the, uh, shaft parking lot to the south up that long ridge, you're, you've missed out

[02:10:19] a great way to do hawk it because it's a really nice height going up through there.

[02:10:24] It, and it makes it, you know, instead of a short huff and puff from the parking lot

[02:10:29] on 42, when you come in from shaft road, once you cross the road, you have to get across

[02:10:38] the stream.

[02:10:38] Most times it's not that hard.

[02:10:40] And then it's a little steep getting up to the ridge line, but once you make the ridge,

[02:10:44] it's just a pleasant walk up to the summit of a hawk it.

[02:10:49] And then you can go like I do.

[02:10:50] I would go down the herd path and, uh, that's where I would have spotted the Jeep and I'd

[02:10:56] take the bike.

[02:10:57] Yeah.

[02:10:57] I'd take the bike down to shaft road or one time I, uh, I parked, um, the, the Jeep at 42,

[02:11:05] rode the bike out to the end of Sprucedon and did, uh, West kill North dome.

[02:11:12] Um, share nice.

[02:11:13] That's insane.

[02:11:14] Yeah.

[02:11:14] It was fun.

[02:11:16] It was a fun day.

[02:11:18] So you wanted to talk about your Tads cats, go loop real quick.

[02:11:24] What is the, what does that involve?

[02:11:26] Like if you want the quick fly over there is already more or less 85 miles of continuous

[02:11:37] hiking in the hike, uh, the cats skills, but it's not a loop.

[02:11:41] You stop, you start out at Hunter's field where the long path out in that kind of Northwestern

[02:11:48] area too.

[02:11:50] Yeah.

[02:11:50] You start out there, you hike Hunter's field to the escarpment long path, devil's path.

[02:11:56] You, uh, hook up with the, the burrows range, uh, Romer mountain, you know, out of Phoenicia,

[02:12:04] get over to slide down to the parking area.

[02:12:07] And then you pick up the West, uh, branch pine Hill trail, um, either by going down the,

[02:12:12] the frost Valley road or bushwhacking up to, um, spruce mountain, Hemlock and then spruce.

[02:12:22] Then you go out the, uh, West branch pine Hill trail.

[02:12:26] And that's about 85 miles, 2400 vertic climbing, uh, which is a good hike.

[02:12:31] But if you, once you get to pine Hill, you continue over to, uh, Rochester hollow.

[02:12:37] And then if you have some way of, uh, getting to Rose mountain and or Birch Creek, then over

[02:12:44] to Hawkett going over South of lie, uh, then fly bear pen round top over to the scohary reservoir

[02:12:53] via either the West scohary unit or dog Hill that gets you back to the long path hunters,

[02:13:02] uh, field unit.

[02:13:04] So there's a lot of already DEC DEP land and that stretch kind of in the West central part

[02:13:14] of the Catskills, uh, from Rochester hollow back up to hunters field.

[02:13:18] But if you through easements and or eminent domain, get the ability to build a trail through

[02:13:28] that area before you know it, you've got a 140 to 150 mile loop in the Catskills.

[02:13:37] Right.

[02:13:38] And so if you want to talk about something that would be appealing for, yeah, for backpackers,

[02:13:44] you know, to do some over multi-day overnighting and you could, you can start that loop anywhere

[02:13:49] along the loop, right?

[02:13:51] Whether it's Palinville, um, Phoenicia, slide mountain.

[02:13:57] Right.

[02:13:58] And you can, you just hop on the loop.

[02:14:00] You do the loop, 140, 150 miles.

[02:14:03] You know, you can do it in a week.

[02:14:05] You can do it in two weeks.

[02:14:07] So you want to talk about something that would attract people to the Catskills.

[02:14:11] You know, you put it on a challenge.

[02:14:14] You know, if you're like a really bad-ass individual, you make it into an ultra.

[02:14:19] I, you know, you know, there's people out there that would literally run 140 miles, you

[02:14:25] know, we just talked to them.

[02:14:26] Yeah.

[02:14:26] I mean, you know, these, there's people out there that seem to thrive on that type of suffering.

[02:14:31] Um, right.

[02:14:32] So, uh, but I think that would be really cool.

[02:14:35] So, you know, there's a lot of other trails and interesting things to do in the Catskills,

[02:14:39] but I really think the DEC ought to make it, uh, a mission to create a big loop in the Catskills.

[02:14:47] And that's just one of them, you know, then we can do another one that it would intersect with that.

[02:14:53] And you could literally have a figure eight if you now incorporate Dry Book Ridge and the Western Catskills out there.

[02:15:01] Um, it would be really interesting in my mind.

[02:15:05] So, I mean, that's, that's my big loop concept.

[02:15:09] Map this stuff, but the, you know, map this, we'll put it on there and we'll, we'll advertise this as Tad's loop.

[02:15:16] Yeah.

[02:15:17] And then start, just start sending, uh, donations.

[02:15:19] Uh, if you want, uh, you can contact our, our lawyers.

[02:15:23] Do we hike more and how make a patch?

[02:15:26] Yeah.

[02:15:26] Well, no, well, it will, our, uh, lawyers will do some estate planning for you.

[02:15:30] And so you can leave your entire estate to our foundation to establish this hiking loop.

[02:15:38] Right.

[02:15:38] I think it'd be worthwhile.

[02:15:40] So the one thing that's worthwhile that I think that the DEC should involve was, was your greatest, uh, debate that we've ever had.

[02:15:51] What is that, Tad?

[02:15:53] My great debate.

[02:15:54] What is that?

[02:15:54] Oh, the bridge.

[02:15:55] The bridge.

[02:15:56] The bridge.

[02:15:57] Over the West Branch.

[02:15:58] Yeah.

[02:15:58] Oh God.

[02:15:59] That's the thing you talk about the most every episode.

[02:16:02] Yeah.

[02:16:03] I'm going to actually, so there was somebody who annihilated the Via Frittata on twin.

[02:16:11] Right.

[02:16:12] Remember that?

[02:16:13] Oh yeah.

[02:16:14] Yeah.

[02:16:14] Right.

[02:16:14] I'm going to, I'm going to find out who that person is because they obviously have steel working skills and know how.

[02:16:20] And I'm going to commission them to at night help erect a steel structure over the West Branch of the network structure.

[02:16:30] And I'm also, I'm also, I'm going to get at the same time.

[02:16:32] I'm going to get those dudes that what was it last year, the year before that built the Adirondack trails on slide.

[02:16:38] They're going to do like the wood decking on my bridge.

[02:16:41] Yeah.

[02:16:41] I'm going to get, then I'm going to get the graffiti artist from Brooklyn to come up and spray paint it.

[02:16:46] Right.

[02:16:47] So it's clearly visible.

[02:16:48] No, I'm going to get them to do it in camo.

[02:16:51] Oh.

[02:16:51] So only the people we, only our listeners will know what's there.

[02:16:55] Oh, wow.

[02:16:56] There you go.

[02:16:57] See, it's what Chris, it's been a long night.

[02:16:58] It's been a long night and we've had a few too many IPAs here in the Peekamoo studio.

[02:17:04] Yeah.

[02:17:05] I, I totally got to agree that they, they built that, that, that one bridge that goes over the Wyndham kind of area going over Elm Ridge.

[02:17:13] They built that in like five days, but they can't.

[02:17:17] Oh yeah.

[02:17:18] Yeah.

[02:17:18] That, that one, they got washed away from one of the floods and they can't build the bridge going over the East branch of the never sink up the one of the most popular trails.

[02:17:26] Yeah.

[02:17:27] And the cats go, they could literally put all of the materials on the back of a couple pickup trucks.

[02:17:33] It's right there.

[02:17:34] It's eight feet away.

[02:17:35] Yeah.

[02:17:36] Back, back them into the parking places.

[02:17:39] Right.

[02:17:39] And, and offload all the material in a morning.

[02:17:43] Right.

[02:17:43] And over the course of a few days, you know, erect a bridge over the West branch.

[02:17:49] And that looks just like that beautiful bridge that goes over the, the never sink.

[02:17:55] Yeah.

[02:17:56] That we have to travel over to the Lone and Rocky table in Peekamoo.

[02:17:59] Yeah.

[02:17:59] I don't think it needs to be even that big.

[02:18:01] Right.

[02:18:01] That's beautiful though.

[02:18:02] That's, it's a great bridge.

[02:18:04] Yeah.

[02:18:04] They must've flown in the, the supports for that.

[02:18:07] Right.

[02:18:07] That's a mile and a half death March that you have to go in and out to get to there is absolutely insane.

[02:18:15] And then.

[02:18:16] But they also have plenty of clear area, you know, to, to drop that stuff in with the helicopter.

[02:18:22] Right.

[02:18:22] You wouldn't, you wouldn't be able to do that on the West side, but you don't need it.

[02:18:26] You can just, everything you need, you can just with a pickup truck, you could bring it in.

[02:18:30] If I had a pickup truck, I'd be building the bridge now on my own.

[02:18:33] Right.

[02:18:33] That's, I don't know, but you, I gotta admit, how do you do that on the table Peekamoo area, but you can't do that 18 feet away from a parking area?

[02:18:45] Well, it is a more substantial water course.

[02:18:48] They have to cross over there.

[02:18:49] True.

[02:18:50] True.

[02:18:51] No, no.

[02:18:51] So you, you'll be hiking out of the, the Balsam Lake side of Balsam Lake mountain.

[02:18:59] Right.

[02:19:00] And the, the Hardenburg trail that heads north.

[02:19:03] You have to go over right.

[02:19:04] Oh, hollow.

[02:19:05] Yeah.

[02:19:05] And you go, so you're like miles in and you, you're going over this little stream and they have a bridge out there.

[02:19:12] Why?

[02:19:13] Yeah.

[02:19:14] There's some, there's so many other streams you cross without bridges and the Catskills.

[02:19:19] And here, like a mile from nowhere over a little stream, there's a, a real bridge that they built.

[02:19:26] It's probably a half the size of the bridge they would need over the West Branch.

[02:19:30] And then, and then when you come back around that loop over right.

[02:19:35] Oh, hollow, you have to cross a log that you have to use your poles and stuff to get to lean to that's already flooded.

[02:19:45] God, it's crazy.

[02:19:46] It is.

[02:19:47] So, all right.

[02:19:47] So that ends our discussion tonight about building new trails building.

[02:19:54] We have so much more to talk about.

[02:19:55] So, post hike, Bruising Bytes and Tad, did you do anything after, uh, Woodenburg or whatever you did?

[02:20:02] Not afterwards, but we did do a little pregame at, uh, Bread Alone.

[02:20:09] Oh, nice.

[02:20:10] Yeah.

[02:20:11] Rendezvous spot.

[02:20:12] So, uh, you can call in your order in advance, run in, pick it up.

[02:20:17] Ooh.

[02:20:17] Yeah.

[02:20:17] So you can, you can pick up, you know, some, some good stuff there to either start your hike off with or to pack in and eat along the way.

[02:20:26] And the thing that's really cool about Bread Alone is I think they get 100% of their power off the grid.

[02:20:38] Boom.

[02:20:40] Yeah.

[02:20:40] They don't charge electric vehicles because nobody likes electric vehicles.

[02:20:44] Yeah.

[02:20:46] Correct.

[02:20:47] All right.

[02:20:47] So, yeah, I didn't have a post hike Bruising Bytes.

[02:20:50] Uh, no, wait, we went to Oakley's.

[02:20:51] That wasn't bad.

[02:20:52] That wasn't bad.

[02:20:53] Yes.

[02:20:54] That wasn't bad.

[02:20:55] That sounds like a heartfelt endorsement of Oakley's.

[02:20:58] And where's that's in, in, uh, Arcville?

[02:21:01] Arcville.

[02:21:01] Arcville.

[02:21:02] What'd you have?

[02:21:04] Uh, burger, straight up burger.

[02:21:06] Always do.

[02:21:07] And then we had some pizza that, uh, was okay.

[02:21:13] Just okay.

[02:21:13] Well, just okay.

[02:21:14] Pizza is not okay.

[02:21:15] It's gotta be better than okay.

[02:21:17] It's not Sal's.

[02:21:18] It wasn't Sal's.

[02:21:20] And Lou told you that.

[02:21:21] So it wasn't Sal's.

[02:21:22] Yeah.

[02:21:22] Lou said Sal's is okay.

[02:21:24] Yeah.

[02:21:24] So, so once again, thank you to the monthly supporters and monthly sponsors.

[02:21:29] Really appreciate you guys.

[02:21:30] Uh, once again, donating to the show is really phenomenal and keeping us going after a hundred.

[02:21:36] Forty three episodes.

[02:21:37] Uh, thank you to everyone who is still listening.

[02:21:40] Uh, crazy that, uh, we have about four or five listeners per episode.

[02:21:44] It's really appreciated, especially this deep into it.

[02:21:47] Two hours and 30 something minutes into it.

[02:21:51] Insane.

[02:21:51] So, uh, so Tad, have a good night.

[02:21:56] Yeah.

[02:21:56] You as well Stash.

[02:21:57] If you're not doing anything this weekend, uh, join us on Red Hole from Denning's side.

[02:22:02] Uh, we'll be doing some stuff.

[02:22:05] All right.

[02:22:06] Signing off.

[02:22:07] All right.

[02:22:07] Have a good night, man.

[02:22:09] You as well, bud.

[02:22:10] Bye-bye.

[02:22:10] Bye.

[02:22:11] Bye.

[02:22:30] Bye.

[02:22:37] Better now.

[02:22:43] Bye.

[02:22:43] Bye.

[02:22:44] You gotta just keep on living in the Catskills, man.

[02:22:49] L-I-V-I-N

[02:22:52] Wicked, wicked, wicked, wicked.