Episode 164 - The Catskill 420 grid with Tad

[00:00:29] The bushwhacks were some of the worst days I've ever had in the mountains, or life really. Whereas Pantsy Mountain is totally opposite, it's a mountain on top of a crater. I think the weather challenges on this incident were particularly difficult. It is really the development of New York State. Catskills will respond to it.

[00:00:52] You've been listening to Inside The Line, the Catskill Mountains Podcast. Let's go, let's go. Things have been pretty nice, pretty beautiful. We had that crazy windstorm. How did you guys, what did you guys have down there?

[00:01:15] Uh, Sunday it was windy. I'll have to say it was also windy on Saturday when I was up in the Catskills, you know, hiking around. So, there definitely was some wind. Got cold down here. No snow. I did some yard work on Sunday, getting ready for spring and summer. Looking forward to it. A lot of people are, you know, I mean, the snow's kind of gone somewhat where we are, you know, up in the mountains.

[00:01:44] It's losing its integrity every day. And, you know, we're looking forward to it. We might have one mass burst, we don't know, but, you know, today it was 55 degrees and sunny up here. When you say the snow is losing its integrity, you almost make the snow sound like it's political, like a politician. It is. That snow has no integrity. It wants to keep its grip on everything. I'm never voting for that snow. Well, I don't know. You love snow.

[00:02:12] Yeah. I grew up in snow country. I know. I mean, we both did. I mean, times have changed. It's great, but we had a great year, you know, great year of snow, you know, tad you could have been out enjoying yourself skiing and stuff like that. I still might get out, you know, and, and get a day or two in before the season's over. But then I say that almost every year and I don't get out, especially if you read, read over those prices, you know, skiing at Wyndham.

[00:02:38] I, I can't afford that and pay you to be on the podcast at the same time. That's true. That's true. I, and I was thinking here, you're going to catch a ride from blaze all the way up to Wyndham and just ski down and just be like, you know, listen, I got my, my priorities straight. Now I'm taking a ride from blaze. Yeah. Maybe I can like double duty and I'll call in a DEC rescue. They'll come and get me with the helicopter. And then I'll just tell them, you know, look on your way out.

[00:03:05] Just drop me off at the top of Wyndham and I'll ski down. Wouldn't that be something else? I mean, that's the, that's why I think I would be a fun rescue is I would just be like, Hey, what, what peak are we going over? I need to finish this. That's like a new thing. We'll have people rate themselves on how fun of a rescue they would be. Well, if you had to rescue me, I, you know, I don't think I'd be such a good rescue myself. I don't know. Come on. I think you would be a good sport.

[00:03:33] Have you ever been hauled away in an ambulance? Yes. Okay. Several times to be honest. Yeah. It wasn't fun. I was, I was out of whack, but I was pretty funny. I've been, well, I, I guess when Jessica said that I went under amnesia one time that I was chained. I was chatting with my surgeon and stuff of who of my top five people that I could cheat on my wife with like celebrities and stuff. Like, you know, what do they call it? Uh, uh, passes.

[00:04:02] They call that a one way trip to divorce court. Of course. But it's like your pass, your free pass. And I, I checked with my surgeon. And when he came out, uh, I think it was for my, uh, my hernia when he, when I came out of it and stuff, he talked to Jessica and she's like, Oh yeah, we talk about that all the time. And I was just like, yeah. All right. Yeah. And he's like, it's Isla Fisher, Isla Fisher, the redhead from a. Don't know. Wedding Crashers. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I love her. Yeah.

[00:04:30] But, oh yeah, that's a weird, that took a weird turn. All right. So Ted, I just, it says breaking news, but not really, but it came out a couple of days ago, but this is pretty huge. I thought it was pretty huge, even though I'm not from the Hudson Valley area. Maybe it's breaking news because it's about break neck. Ridge. Break neck. Ridge may break next. Uh, yeah. Break neck rule. Uh, news. Yeah. Something. It's just news. So yeah.

[00:04:58] So break neck Ridge trailhead and Wilkinson Memorial trailhead along the break neck Ridge train station are closing for approximately two years on April 21st. Now there is construction set to begin on the break neck, uh, connector and the bridge trail, which will make the area safer for hikers and motorists organized parking and bring much needed improvements such as restrooms and trash and recycling receptacles to the area for alternative hikes.

[00:05:24] And to learn more info about the project, it says view this place, but I'm going to say, cut that out and go to hike the Hudson, hike the Hudson Valley.com. That is where you want to go to get some good information. That's right. You can find out, uh, the best alternative hikes rated by cameras where you can go hiking for the next two years. Yeah. And some places not even see a soul. Yeah.

[00:05:53] So could you just imagine if we got a similar announcement that said that for the next two years, you can't hike giant legend Panther because they're doing some big improvement at the hairpin turn and down in five. Fox hollow. So that area is going to be closed. Yeah. One of the most. Yeah. You say, yeah. I'd say that sucks. What's Fox hollow is amazing. Well, I'm saying no, they closed both. They closed both.

[00:06:22] Oh, you can't hike Panther, uh, or giant ledge because you're doing a two year improvement project. Right. What if that was like your, you have a 16 year old kid and that was your hike to do like breakneck once a month. And now for the next two years, well, maybe then maybe that's just the train access. Maybe you can get like a Uber Uber to drive you, drop you off or ride your bike there or something. But I think two years is a long time for an improvement project like that. It is.

[00:06:51] And you know, I heard that you, you know, this was rumors that you could approach it from different areas. Breakneck Ridge. Yeah. Like you can, you can approach it from another area, even though it's, I wouldn't say it's significantly longer. Is it? Yeah. Well, we, we learned from Mike hike the Hudson Valley that it's like a directional trail. There's one way up multiple ways down, something like that. And then, um, I'm sure there's other ways to get there. Probably a good idea is to use one of those things.

[00:07:21] They call them, what are they with all the lines on them? You know, the paths that you can hike, they have other lines that show you how steep things get. What's that called? Oh man. Yeah. That's tough. Uh, I haven't used those in years. I've seen one of them. Yeah. I was almost going to buy one, one time. I think I got, I got one from SAR like a bunch of like times ago, but I've never looked at it. Yeah. A map. That's what it is. A map. That's right. That's what it is. That's. I never opened mine up because I didn't know where to put the batteries in or how to charge it.

[00:07:51] So I just tossed it. Um, I mean, so I was looking on Mike's, uh, the hike, the Hudson Valley.com to see if there's any other alternatives, uh, just to get around that area. And, uh, you know, it's from a lot of, you know, I, I got a lot of messages from, from like my friend, Todd bold from Henry de la Vega about this, this, this hike. And of course it's going to have a big impact.

[00:08:19] I mean, this is the, a lot of people said, this is the Mount Everest of New York city slash the East coast that just, there's a line waiting to get to the top on the weekends. Well, yeah. Can you imagine it's, it, it has a trade now it has like a makeshift train stop, you know, which apparently doesn't let enough trains, train cars sit along the platform for people to load and unload.

[00:08:44] And I think part of the project is to extend the platform so they can offload more people, but a hike that a train pulls right up to is going to see a ton of traffic. Yeah. It looks like, you know, definitely I'm looking at the maps and stuff like that. There's different areas you can approach it from, from beacon.

[00:09:10] I would say beacon is the only place that you can approach it from the other way, but it's, it makes it like two to three times longer with switchbacks, but you get on beacon mountain and a bunch of other places that you can, you could see a bunch of good, uh, areas, but, you know, once again, that requires further proof that either you gotta get off the train and then you gotta access the town of beacon and then walk up over there. So like, like you said, they know, it's just like, it's not like you're getting off of the

[00:09:40] train and then just hiking up. You gotta find alternative means to get to that trailhead on the other side of beacon and stuff like that. So that's, that's going to be a big impact, especially one of the most popular, probably the most popular trail in the Hudson Valley. Probably. Is this for the greater good? Do you, I mean, and this is for the greater good. I gotta admit just even hearing one of, one of the things I love to hear is trash cans and restrooms. So now people get off the train.

[00:10:08] They have a place to go before they go out in the fricking wild and leave their trash and stuff like that. Yeah. But so are they going to get emptied? I hope, I mean, I would think so. The most popular trail in the Hudson Valley. Yeah. Well, you would hope so, but how often, like even in a shopping plaza, how often do you see trash cans overflowing and there's like staff there all the time to empty them yet. You've got overflowing trash cans, trash blowing around.

[00:10:34] Why don't we just encourage people to not only pack out what they pack in, just take the stuff home, take it home with you. True. I mean, it's they, I'm guessing they have trailhead stewards. They have stewards up there all throughout the thing. I mean. Well, so long as it's not a federal park, they'll have trailhead stewards. Yeah. True. Wow. That is a clear cut triggered.

[00:11:04] Triggered. Yeah. Speaking of triggered. Stosh Stosh is scrolling down to the next item. So I know how to get them to move along now. I just like, subtle, subtle political comment. Political. It's, it sucks. Cause you know, once again, the effing country is so goddamn divided right now and it, and it sucks, but I gotta admit, you know, having some of these, these areas just be demolished

[00:11:33] to make for, you know, mining or stuff like that. Short term gains. That's what it's all about. I mean, you look at mining, even if it's a 25 or 50 year mind, that's relatively short term compared to how long it take took for these places to become what they are now, how long it would take them to regenerate. And the fact that I was just bitching about a two year shutdown, a breakneck Ridge trailhead or the train stop, but you know, think of changing forever.

[00:12:00] These, you know, national park areas. Yeah. Because of what? Because we don't want to stop using fossil fuels because we don't want to look to alternative sources. That's, that's ridiculous. That's shameful. That's shameful. Ridiculous. And, you know, obviously Tad and I are on the same level. So, uh, hopefully nobody gets a little triggered by us, but Hey, we like our, our national monuments,

[00:12:29] our national places, our national beautiful places. So let's keep them that way. If you can fight in any way, you know, donate, there's this one, I think it's called NPS national park, national park services, some alt national park service, really cool place that they have like these stickers and stuff. And it has, uh, Smokey, the Baron, it says resist underneath it. Really fucking cool. I got to admit, I will post it in the, in the show notes.

[00:12:57] I got to write that down just so I remember. Um, and it's really cool. So speaking of that, so we have, uh, something that came out, uh, looks like, you know, four or five days ago, uh, today, somebody said, or the judge said today we celebrate because national service employee, national park service employees must be reinstated.

[00:13:22] So a federal judge in San Francisco had ordered the national park service and five other federal agencies to immediately reinstate, uh, employees were fired last month, ruling that the office of personal, excuse me, personal management had no legal authority to mandate their terminations. Uh, U.S. Dixter judge William Oslop, in scathing the rebuke of Donald trunk administration's actions,

[00:13:46] declared mass firings a violation of federal law and accused officials of using product loopholes to sidestep legal pro protections. And in addition to 1,000 employees who were terminated from the park service, his order affects employees of the departments of veteran affairs, agricultural defense energy, the interior treasury who are abruptly dismissed in February. So, uh, the judgment, it clear that while federal agencies can conduct layoffs, they must

[00:14:14] follow legally defined reduction in force procedures. Uh, as part of ruling, uh, as barred the office for issuing any further guidance on employee terminations and ordered federal agencies to report back to their compliance with their reinstatement order. He also with authorized depositions and further hearings to determine whether existing and

[00:14:43] administrating appeal channels remain variable or if they have been dismantled. Now this, uh, says for Sark for park service employees, the ruling represents hard won victory. Uh, what else? So Ted, what can you say about this? I mean, you are the smart one of this podcast. So what was that Stasha didn't hear what you said about me? You are the smart one. I'm the funny guy. You are the smart guy. That's I admit it. I will admit it. I don't know if I, I think I'd rather be known as the funny guy.

[00:15:14] So maybe our listeners are the smart ones. So we're just, we're just two crazy guys with microphones. Um, what do I think about this? Well, first, the first thing I think is, man, I really feel for these folks that work for NPS. I feel for all federal employees that without really much warning and without apparently any valid reason under law, according to this judge got terminated.

[00:15:42] And I would imagine a lot of these folks are no different than many people in our country. They live paycheck to paycheck and they want some level of job security and you know, a study job because they have financial obligations that are, you know, pinned to how much money they make. And then next thing, you know, without cause there begin given the acts.

[00:16:08] And then if this judge hadn't done what he done, you know, imagine this coming summer, these parks, which are presumably, you know, understaffed as it is, but without any staffing, what would come of them? You know, graffiti, vandalism, destruction, you know, people abusing things, you know, people hiking in sensitive areas where they shouldn't be. I mean, who knows what level of destruction would occur as a result.

[00:16:37] And, you know, these parks are national treasures. Um, and had they not been set aside and preserved over a hundred years ago, what would we have today? Right? Yeah. Sorry, I have these areas. So my dog was going crazy, you know, and you know, Theodore Roosevelt brought this back. Uh, you know, I'm trying to think of, I don't, once again, I don't know the exact dates, but you know, he brought it back to the national park service, national park monuments, stuff

[00:17:05] that we treasure here. Of course. I mean, mostly it's, uh, the, the West coast is more of this, this area that is more protected and stuff. And then, you know, being that, but why is, but why is that? Why is it the West coast and not here? The East coast. And then I do wonder that as well. I bet I have to say that it's, it's because when the settlers came here, well, the settlers came here, they came on the East coast first.

[00:17:30] And so without any really local government, I mean, we were a colony to start the, the crown had no incentive to preserve, you know, lands, natural landscape and resources and things like that. They came here to take whatever they could take back, you know, um, and export things. That was the big industry. So there was nothing set aside for preservation.

[00:17:57] And it wasn't until, you know, the time of Teddy Roosevelt that our government was firmly established and we were advancing westward that somebody like Teddy Roosevelt with that forethought said, Hey, you know, let's protect these areas because they're unique. And if we don't do it now, when will we have this opportunity?

[00:18:19] So from 1901 to 1909, he signed the national park service legislation. Yeah. And then it's only expanded beyond that. And now it's just like, Hey, let's not do this, you know, and being the person that I've, I've been to several of those national parks over on the West coast and the national parks, you know, up here and you know, the whites and stuff like that.

[00:18:45] And like, a lot of those places see so much activity like Zion national park, even where I went out to the wave, you know, I didn't go to the wave, but I went to a place right outside of the wave that that was the buckskin gulch. Went on seven mile hike through the biggest gully in the world. And just seeing the, the amount of people go out there. And now of course, social media, it's just, I mean, I hate to say, I mean, this is this, I would say this is social media.

[00:19:15] So it's fucking stuff up. But like when people try to be cool and graffiti something or etch their name and something, it's just, it's just absolutely ridiculous. And we've learned from that. And you know, what's crazy is I visited a place. We'll talk about this later that has etchings in the rock of almost hundreds, a hundred years ago, which is, is insane. And now we've, we've learned from that because we don't want to do that. We don't want to etch ourself in a great arch that goes over Utah.

[00:19:46] That'd be like, Hey, Stosh was here in 2024. Like it's just going to ruin it. And I don't know. I think that'd be cool if I was out West and I saw you had etched something or tag something. Hey, my buddy Stosh was here. So, so according to a Google AI, the national parks have a significant economic impact generating billions in revenue and supporting jobs.

[00:20:12] And so, in the main, I'm suspecting a lot of that money went into local mom and pop businesses. Mm-hmm .

[00:20:41] Whether they're, you know, a bed and breakfasts, restaurants, outfitters, guides, things like that. People that with, you know, out having to invest, you know, hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars to get a business going, being near one of these national parks and providing a service that a tourist or a traveler would use or need. You know, you can get a business going.

[00:21:07] So there's definite, uh, significant economic impact, positive impact from that. Yeah. It's a, I remember, I don't know where I read it, but I remember seeing how much is put back in the economy with these national parks. And then how much we pay to employ these people that are in these national parks. And it's a huge, like, of course, it's a significant amount like that.

[00:21:33] We, we get from the revenue, but then we pay people to protect these areas. And it's just, it's not, it's not worth it to cut these people. And then of course have vandalism or people leaving trash. And then, you know, once again, like I don't want to go to Buckskin Gulch and come back maybe again and travel even further than I did last time.

[00:21:55] If there's going to be garbage everywhere, if there's not a steward taking care of it or stuff like that, or go to the wave when they have a permit system going on to where I can be alone with my wife in there and take beautiful pictures and enjoy it. When there's going to be thousands and thousands of people like a fricking, you know, catarscale falls or something. So, I mean, I, I understand. I don't, I don't, I don't understand with this because, you know, Theodore Roosevelt did this to protect the beauty that we have in America.

[00:22:24] And I got to admit the beauty we have here is a vast variety of like, but you're like, everything is, is so much different than a lot of other places. You know, we have Utah, then going over to California, then going up to like, you know, Oregon, Washington, then over to New York state. Like everything we have is such a desert to high Sierra to, it's just crazy where, you know, out west, you know, or over in like Europe and stuff.

[00:22:52] We have like Sweden, which is known for its big mountains and its massive valley, but you can't go from a desert in Sweden to the 12,000 foot mountains like you can in Utah. So it's, it's crazy. It's so there's, there's a lot of interesting stuff on this topic and on the internet, but I'm only going to share this one detail with you or ask you this one question.

[00:23:18] Because I know, or I have a reasonable degree of certainty that you are going to get this wrong. Which national park is the park where visitors in 2023 spent the most money? Which national park is where visitors spent the most money in 2023? Stosh has, Stosh has got his, uh, his, uh, elbow on the desk.

[00:23:47] He's, uh, putting his, his index finger under his mouth. He's thinking now he's picking his nose. Oh my God. That's gross. All right. So which is it? Which is it? Which national parks? I'm going to guess. Arcadia. Wrong. Ah, cause I thought, come on another one. You're going to get it wrong. It's going to be the last, last spot. It's not even on the top of your mind. It's probably going to be like somewhere in Texas. Wrong. Nothing in Texas. Last down to your, your last final guest.

[00:24:16] We're going to have to terminate you. Which park in 2023 did visitors spend the most money? I need to. That skills. It's not a national park. True. You said park. You didn't say national park. Yeah. National park. Okay. I don't know. So 2023, $2.2 billion was spent in the great smoky mountain national park.

[00:24:45] See, it's not even on the West coast or in the Rockies. It's right here on the East coast. And we, I started off by saying there's nothing here on the East coast. Great smoky, most profitable national park out there. So. Wow. Well, there you go. There you go. National parks everywhere. They're a good thing to have. Yeah. So that's why we got to protect it. And now this judge is, is doing the right thing. So let's. Yeah. So we'll, we'll find out this, like this judge is like an epic outdoors person.

[00:25:16] Yeah. Right. Triple crown. Yeah. He does all the 14,000 footers. Yeah. Hey, as a big, as a big RV. Good for them. Good for them. So hopefully everybody, you know, that listens to the podcast is supporting this judge and supporting the, the reinstatement of the park employees that, that we need, of course, to help these areas. And we all know we'll hike in the Catskills hike in the Hudson Valley, but these stewards are very helpful, very profitable.

[00:25:43] They, they help keep the nature aspect going. And that we can just, we can feel like we're, we're away from the city. We're away from our, our normal life because we don't see litter everywhere and stuff like that. And, and they're, they're a good time. I've never met an employee or a steward or a volunteer that I haven't been like, man, that person was a bad, bad influence. So yeah. So everybody get on the same page.

[00:26:12] Let's do this. So had fires last year, statewide residential brush burning provision starts March 16th. I think it ends sometime in April, but I highly doubt that's going to happen because even though we got a great amount of snow, we are still dry all over the place. And it's, it's crazy to think I look at my backyard.

[00:26:36] I'm like, God damn, even though I got, you know, over, I would say a total of 50, 60 inches of snow here, uh, that it's still pretty dry. Yeah. Well, I, I got a pile I'd love to burn, but I guess I won't this year. Same. I wanted to go out the other day, like even just to have a, uh, a bonfire, like a small bonfire in my backyard. And that's just, I think there's a burn ban, right? Yeah.

[00:27:02] I got a bunch of old tires, you know, some interiors I pulled out of cars, you know, some highly toxic stuff. I'm just kidding. I was going to say, do you live where I live? That's a joke. No. Like everybody where I live lights their like old houses on fire and then. Yeah. Like, oh damn. Was that a rocket going up there? No, it was. I grew up in a community where most people in their backyard had a burn barrel. I mean, yeah, that's, but that's a small burn barrel. I'm talking about like, like houses.

[00:27:32] Yeah. Well, some, some times that's like, you'll see the local volunteer fire company will, you know, take on a, a demo job where they'll set the house on fire and use it for training. And that's fun. That's cool to watch. That's the end. And you know, if you're a small community, if they make that like kind of like event and everybody attends. Yeah. So if there's any suspicious, if there's any suspicious fires in Oneonta, we have to check Stosh's whereabouts.

[00:28:00] Cause you had to see the smile he had on his face when I'm talking about, you know, fires, house fires and putting them out. Back when I was a kid, we had a house across from my friend's house that was like deteriorated and they thought it was a great idea to, to like, you know, have a, like a, a little test and burn. Uh, what did you call it again? Sorry. Like a, uh, training, training.

[00:28:26] So they, they, you know, set it a fire and we had our, everybody, I was a kid. We had all like the whole community came out to watch the fire department control. And it was just, it was one of those times of when you're like, wow, these guys are like really good. They know what they're doing. They all work together. And it was a good time. It was a fun time. That's a tough job being a fireman. Yeah. You know, you're always every day. It's could be another day. You got to run into a burning building to save someone. Another day.

[00:28:53] If you're even a volunteer, you could be, you know, at work and all of a sudden you get a call of saying, Hey, there's a house fire. Two people. Yeah. Well, one of the interesting things out where I am, we have a lot of firemen from New York city live around here. And it's interesting to see how many of them are local volunteers. These guys go down to the city and are paid firemen down there. And then when they're up here, you know, at home, they're on the local volunteer company.

[00:29:23] Wow. So yeah, it's a lot of dedication there. Cheers to them. Yeah. Yeah. So that's, that's about it for shooting the shit. So don't have any more. We got a, the DEC report, but it wasn't nothing around here. Really. It was a more of up north up, of course, in the Adirondacks. And, uh, there was one, uh, rescue that happened over in the finger lakes that I've actually bet. I've been to that place. It was in conking gully. They had to do a rescue out of the middle of a gully.

[00:29:53] That was like a 400 foot cliff. And they did one of those tri point rescues of where they had to use ropes and harnesses and stuff where they had a, it's, I forgot what they actually call it. It's like a tripod of where I, do you know what it's called Ted? I mean, you're, you're a rope guy with, with your, with your, um, your sailing and stuff like that. Well, we don't set up rigs like that on a sailboat. Okay. I didn't know. So you know the term, but yeah, it was phenomenal.

[00:30:18] It's kind of what they described to us is that they did over by the, um, Catskill mountain house when that woman fell off the cliff there this past summer. Yeah. I'll have to, I'll have to post that story a little bit later. Cause it was pretty neat. And being in one of those gullies, you know, I've hiked in those gullies before we actually did a backpacking trip of two days over through there and just, you know, you're in this little bowl that's maybe like 200 feet wide, but it's 500 feet tall.

[00:30:46] And you're just like, what the actual, and I can't think of why a person would, would want to try to get themselves in a situation of where they can't be rescued out of there. They have to be rescued by rope and harness. That's just insane. But. Oh, I, I understand why people go explore those gullies. So it's amazing. Yeah. But really not surprising. And it's very, you know, uh, in the Finger Lakes region, the central part of New York state, those are quite common.

[00:31:15] And you have, you, you lived up near there. Did you go explore there when you were a kid? Uh, I didn't explore there when I was a kid. A good friend of mine lived in Ithaca for maybe six years. So, you know, I spent a lot of time going out, visiting him, walking in some of those, uh, gullies and gorges and whatnot. Ithaca is what? Ithaca. Yeah. What do you call it? Oh, I don't know. What do you, you got? Ithaca is gorgeous instead of gorgeous. And that's what they say. I gotcha. So lame. Yeah.

[00:31:45] But cool. Well, you gotta go back. So Ted, how about me and you and the wives hook up? They go in and drink at the wineries and then we'll go explore all those gorges. All right. Yeah. Sounds phenomenal. We can do that. Yeah. I've done some trips in, in the finger lakes region. It's a phenomenal area. Yeah. I've also done a lot of sailing there and, uh, and I've hit the wineries. What about the sailing?

[00:32:12] So you've been on like, probably I'm guessing Seneca late because it's the longest straightest. Uh, I, I know I've been in Cooca Lake, Seneca Lake, and I think another. Cayuga. Maybe Cayuga. Yeah. Nice. Wow. Good. Glad, glad you're getting other places other than the Catskills. That's great to hear. Well, it was a few decades ago. So it's probably a big difference when I was a young person. So, yeah.

[00:32:38] So thank you once again to the monthly supporters, Chris Garbian, Jeff Jotz, Vicki Ferrer, Mike S, John Comiskey, Summit Seekers, Desert City Radio, Betsy A, Denise W, Tom H, and Vanessa. Thank you guys so much for supporting the show. Really appreciate it. Thank you for still listening to the show. Hope you still believe in us because we're having a good time and we're having a good time talking about the Catskills. Once again, thank you to our great sponsors. So, Outdoor Chronicles Photography.

[00:33:08] You can capture your love story against breathtaking backdrops with Outdoor Chronicles Photography. Molly specializes in adventure-couple photography and she'll immortalize your moments amidst the stunning landscapes of the Catskills, Adirondacks, and White Mountains. She'll craft timeless images that reflect a unique bond in nature's grandeur. Embark on an unforgettable photographic journey with Outdoor Chronicles Photography. Don't hesitate to get a hold of Molly on all platforms.

[00:33:35] Also, you can discover the wilderness with Trailbound Project. Our expert-led hiking and backpacking education programs offer unparalleled outdoor experiences. Whether you're a beginner or seasoned pro, join us to learn essential skills to explore studying trails and connect with nature. Start your journey today with Trailbound Project and unlock the great wonders of the outdoors. So, Trailbound Project has some stuff going on.

[00:34:04] It looks like March 26th, they have Women's Hiking and Safety Prep webinar. March 26th, 7th to 9pm. It's a Zoom. Check them out on trailboundproject.com. Bear Encounters and Hiking Workshop on March 29th. That'll be interesting. Map and Compact Navigation on April 12th, 9am to 5pm. That's a good one. Definitely.

[00:34:30] And Hiking Gear Essentials on April 13th as well. They definitely got a lot going on within the next couple months. So, check them out. If you need any information, stuff like that, get a hold of me. Get a hold of Trailbound Project. If you want to get a hold of Tad, go ahead. He'll just divert it over to me. So, yeah. Tad, Hardsiders Mentions. Mention the podcast on one of your hikes through social media. We'll chat about it on the show.

[00:34:58] Tag us by typing, at ITLCatskillspodcast on your post. You know what? I kind of screwed up. Yeah. Where's all the mentions? Where's all the mentions? What the hell? I mean, what's going on here? What kind of host does this? Yeah. Good Lord. All right. So, give me a second. Sorry. We had a last minute cancellation. So, Tad and I are going through this. I got to admit, we're pretty good at this. We're just winging it. Don't compliment yourself.

[00:35:28] Leave that up to the listeners to give us five-star reviews. That's true. Or no reviews. I mean. Yeah. I got to admit, like, you know, it's tough to wing it like this, especially. Once again. So, mentions. We've got a lot of mentions this week. It's pretty good. Awesome. Danny, we talked about him previously. Mighty Mischievous went to Hunter. Hunter.

[00:35:53] So, he got back out on the trails and it looked like he had a great time on Hunter Mountain. Beautiful views. So, snow and ice everywhere. Uh, didn't tell me. He just tagged us. So, he didn't tell me what he was wearing. Snow shoes or, or spikes and stuff. You know. He said he did the full loop. So, I'm guessing it was just spikes the whole time. Um, but who knows. We'll hear your experience on the same area. Of course, this, this coming thing. So, also, Sean, AKA Long Island Hiker did Lone and Rocky.

[00:36:24] Great accomplishment to do that by yourself in the winter. Yeah. Of course, these times especially. This was recently, so it was probably mushy times. Uh, I would, if you do tag the show, tell us about your, your adventure because I'd love to talk about it. Because during these times, even, even during the, the summer and stuff like that, just to chat about it, to, to get a feel of what you've done, you know, Lone and Rocky during these times is, is a phenomenal experience. Yeah.

[00:36:52] At the very, at the very least we can make fun of you. So. Outrageous. I'm only kidding. We would never do that. We're above that. Yeah. So T J I underscore 72 on Instagram, uh, was somewhere at a waterfall. I, I, I sent a, I, I kind of put it over a stories and see what, what anybody could think of it. Uh, and I couldn't tell where, where he was.

[00:37:19] So let me know where you were at T J I think I have a thought of who that is. It's Tony. Tony. I is what he has hiking, camping, snowshoeing, bushwhacking, land surveying, canoeing, kayaking, art music, wandering New York. Oh, yeah. Could you see his, uh, his, his, hold on. And then we'll see like what you can think because I, I, I couldn't tell where, where they were. Yeah.

[00:37:49] Well, let's see. It doesn't give a date on this waterfall post, but this, this looks like central New York to me. Okay. So. I mean, it's, well, I'm, I mean, what I'm looking at actually doesn't even look like this year. I mean, there's leaves and greenery on everything. So. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Is that what you saw? No, I'll, I'll, let me forward it really, really quick. Oh, then here's one, two days to go. Catskill mountains. Yeah. It's, it's, it's tough. The story's on a bit.

[00:38:16] He's got a little Catskill or cascading fall there. Yeah. Looks nice. It's, it's, it's tough to determine where, where he was. So. Yeah. That's okay. He tagged us and that's all that matters. You could be like on the beach in Miami tag us. Yeah. We love it. We, we dig that stuff. So who else would tag us other than Tom who's outdoors? So was that Raymond's kill cliffs for the worm moon? I guess that's what it's called.

[00:38:45] My wife said it was the blood moon, but that was because of the eclipse and then went to twin also for his 25th of a 33 winter hikes. So Tom was recently at where I was a week before him. And it looks like he had a beautiful day to explore those areas, different conditions. I'm guessing. But I mean, he also went out and, and got the, the full lunar eclipse. Like I did. And I enjoyed it very thoroughly.

[00:39:11] Even though I was up for only like 25 minutes and I went back to bed and then woke up at 25 minutes later. I don't know why I went back to fricking bed, but Tom was, was out, uh, doing the worm moon on Wayman's kill cliffs down in the Delaware water gap. And then went up to twin and then had the lunar eclipse. Did you catch any of that, Tad? Or is that too early for you? Uh, I didn't see it. I went outside to look for it. I didn't see anything. You were lying. Absolutely. Yeah.

[00:39:39] Must, must've been a little cloud cover or something that obscured it. So outrageous. Come on. All right. Yeah. So I'm sorry to say this as you get older, you gotta enjoy stuff like this. Wake up. I don't have that many more years. That might be the last blood moon of my lifetime. Wake up for a comment. Wake up for a lunar eclipse. Let's go somewhere for a solar eclipse. Wake up for work. That's about as much as I can do. Damn. How you got it? Why you got it?

[00:40:06] Also, one thing I wanted to do before big shout outs, uh, they give us tags. I want to give a big shout out to Aaron Leonard, uh, from Guardian Revival who got promoted to chief executive officer, officer of Guardian Revival and also Henry de la Vega who got promoted to program executive director of another summit. Now, Aaron Henry, we're on episode 109 talking about their program, another summit who supports

[00:40:31] the show and also does free stuff, outdoor activities for veterans and first responders. And Guardian Revival does free almost anything for veterans and first responders like music, you know, outdoor adventures, you know, support therapy, stuff like that. So Aaron and Henry, congratulations on your promotion. And, uh, you know, definitely wish you best of luck in the future. You guys are perfect at doing this, this stuff. And, you know, God, that, that just, that just warmed my heart.

[00:41:01] Aaron is, was awesome. He was on the show. I don't know if you remember episode 109 and him and Henry, Aaron just was phenomenal. Henry, I've been on several hikes with him and he is just, I have to say insane. Henry, you're insane. You know, insane in a good way. In a good, in a, in a trail, good way. This guy, I, the times that I've met Henry that we've gone through, I went on the Pemi Gosset loop with him and the presidential hike with him. And he was just so knowledgeable and he's so positive.

[00:41:31] He's one of those guys that it's truly rare to find. And, uh, you and Aaron congratulations. Once again, thank you for supporting the show, but thank you for what you do because you supporting these veterans and first responders are big deal, especially where we live in the Hudson Valley and you know, the area that is the most. So get them out to break that bridge. What? Uh, silence.

[00:41:59] Better do it now before the 21st when they shut down all, all hiking in the Hudson Valley is coming to an end on the 21st. John, everybody's got to stay in the city. Yeah. Can't come to Catskills. Please. So we can have it to ourselves. Right. So, uh, hard siders, buy us a hard cider on buy me a coffee.com. It's called buy me a coffee, but I changed it to buy, buy me a hard cider. So, uh, it's, it's on our Facebook page. It's on our Instagram page.

[00:42:26] So support the show whenever we can also rate the show. Anyway, you can, I don't know if it's on Spotify or I be your eye apple or something like that. Just rate the show five stars, uh, 4.9 and above is what we accept. I'm sorry if the intro is not the greatest. It's still pretty awesome. Yeah. We're a work in progress. So if we don't get it this week, maybe next or the week after just keep listening.

[00:42:55] Eventually it'll be worth it. Oh, I hear that, that Tad has turned off his background noise. Was that? Oh yeah. It sounds different. I'm getting ready to crack my beer. So I've been waiting patiently. You go first and then I'll go. All right. So that's without the background noise. It sounded great. I'm going to do that with mine with, with, with the background noise on. We'll see how that came out. What do you got?

[00:43:24] I heard nothing when you cracked yours. Oh, well, nothing. You got to drink that one quickly and then do another. That's how it works. New rule. Not tonight. It'll work tomorrow. What do you got? All right. So after my hike this weekend, I swung by the West kill brewery on a Sprucedon road.

[00:43:45] And I picked up a four pack of dead rabbit, dry Irish stout, because of course yesterday was St. Patty's day. And I just noticed that my dead rabbit was put in the can on March 11th. The 11th? March 11th. So just a few days ago, it's not even a week old. Wow. Yeah. So it's dark as advertised.

[00:44:14] Look at that. Oh yeah. That's Guinness dark. Oh yeah. So it's well, it's Irish. They say. True. So I wonder how it tastes. Should I give it a sip now? That's what, that's why we do this. You're not going to let it sit there. Are you? It's good. What's your, what's your, what's your heritage, Ted? What's my, that's a little personal, isn't it? Telling you my heritage. I'm curious. You're going to want to know like my hiking background and my hiking pedigree. It's funny because. I feel like I'm on a job interview here.

[00:44:43] We also didn't discuss in the beginning why, what, what this episode is about. So this is about you, but like, are you Irish? It's always about me. Okay. Um, yes, I'm, I am a quarter Irish, a quarter Scottish. Oh, those two ever got together. Yeah. And then the, the remainder is Italian. Okay. Particularly Sicilian, the best type of Italian.

[00:45:12] So you have like, like that, that, that dark beers is in your blood. So you can be like, eh, that's all right. Yeah. Uh, I've always liked, I can't say that I'm overly impressed with the West kill brewing dead rabbit, Irish stout. It's a little, little, I don't know, flat, a little slacking a little, that dynamic that I was expecting the finish. It's dead. Yeah. Maybe it is. The flavor comes to a grinding halt.

[00:45:41] Grinding halt in the middle of the road. Oh man. As Alex would say. Yeah. Somebody became the rabbit slayer. So good. Well, I'm having a good old nine pin, uh, cranberry again. They're trying to get these off of the shell. So it was on sale. So it's very good. I'm from Albany. Where do you buy your nine pin? Where do you go to buy your hard ciders? Hannaford is where I get most of mine.

[00:46:07] And then the liquor store, the liquor Depot has some good cider. Sometimes they, they mostly have liquor of course, but this was a nice cold nine pin hard cider. So, and then sometimes I go when I'm swinging by, when I go down to kind of like, uh, you don't want to, I hit over more towards the Eastern Catskills. I can hit Van Dusen's and hit something up. They usually have a good local stuff. Sure. That's it. Right outside of West kill. Yeah.

[00:46:37] Yeah. I mean, a lot of, a lot of people like you might hit that once in a while when you're going out, but a lot of people from the South don't hit that spot, but it's a great spot. If you want to go into Hunter and get something to eat or something, Tannersville, I would definitely recommend going to get something to eat. But you know, Van Dusen's is right there. Used to be an old, right next to the old post office. Uh, it's still there. The post office is still there, but used to be an old community store and it's a, it's a fantastic spot. Cool guy. I like him.

[00:47:05] And they have really, really good soft serve ice cream. Do they? Yeah. I must've been in now they're too quick. Oh, when you're, when you're doing like one of those real long grinding, sweating hikes in the summer and you're, you know, either in the Sprucedon area or even at, you know, Hunter Tannersville, it's worth this, you know, going over that way, especially it's on your way home and, uh, get a soft serve. Mm hmm. Van Dusen's.

[00:47:35] And Mo would point out that they have, um, real Coke there. So you can buy a real Coca-Cola with sugar. Thank you for saying that's real Coca-Cola instead of something else. I was just like real Coke. I'm just like, what are we, we dealing now? Wheeling and dealing. Well, in downtown Lexington, you can buy a lot of things. Yeah. Just saying. At that abandoned, uh, at that awesome abandoned hotel that I wish they would restore. Right by the bridge. Yeah.

[00:48:05] That's the, you know, that I wish that that, that, that place has gotta be under, it's gotta be crazy, horrible, but just imagine sitting right there on the scary Creek. Just listen to the water. Yeah. Problem with something like that. It's, it's been abandoned for so long. If you wanted to revitalize it and use it again as a lodge of sorts, you'd have to make it all handicap or disabled compliant.

[00:48:32] And that's just going to be really expensive for a building like that. Yeah.

[00:49:05] Yeah. I guarantee there's not much about it. So beautiful spot. Go there. Previous hikes. Ted, I could go first because mine's going to be nice, short and sweet. Okay. Do it then. All right. So today, last week, uh, I didn't go anywhere on Sunday. Uh, Wendy, I should have, I wish I did, but I got to, uh, teach my goddaughter who is, I think eight years old.

[00:49:32] Now I got to do a guitar lessons for her. So, but really, it was phenomenal time electric or acoustic electric. Oh yeah. She's an electric fan. So I'm sitting there with my, my metal shirt on teaching her some though. The first song she learned was dirty deeds by AC DC. We taught, I taught her done dirt cheap, right? I seriously was just like, I showed her and she picked it up instantly.

[00:50:02] I'm just like, this is perfect. And then, so the next day in church, she got up and sang it for the car. The deeds. Yes. I hope so. I hope so. But she, though, I did that. So today, uh, I went up to Roman's nose over in Middleburg, uh, New York, right about scary County. I would say coble scale area.

[00:50:28] If you're looking beautiful, easy, very easy, probably like 1.6 miles, not even, uh, to the summit and back 500 feet of elevation gains, beautiful top of the line. Views overlooking the scary Valley. You could see some of the Northern peaks of the Catskills, Northern peaks. I say like not talking about the Catskill high peaks, but moresville range part of a mountain. See on the. Uh, Shulstus peak.

[00:50:57] And, uh, what's the other one? Clum Hill. You could see from there, but beautiful, wide scary Valley. You got awesome views. Beautiful day. We got to stand on what they call the dance floor. I explained this in my Instagram post where this used to be a place of ritual for the Native Americans and the Dutch, the new settlers and stuff like that, where they used to go up

[00:51:19] to ceremonies like rain dances, weddings, funerals, just any ceremonies that they could get up there. And it was just flat area. And we talked about being, you know, I said etching, you know, in, in the stone. And this was an area that is etched by, I I'd have to say, I wouldn't say thousands, but hundreds and hundreds of etchings in there where the, I didn't look crazy. But one of the earliest was 1919.

[00:51:50] Hmm. Well, over 26 years ago. And, uh, you know, we talk about, I talked about the dance floor and it's called the dance floor because they had, of course, a glacier came through 15,000 years ago. And glaciers on the bottom tend to have a lot of sand and a lot of stone.

[00:52:08] So apparently this just kept moving back and forth and etched this stone to make a flat surface, kind of like pancake just kept going and made it such a flat area, perfectly flat. And you could see the striations leading from going this, uh, from the, the north to the south. I'm pretty sure it was a Laurenti glacier that went down through the Skahari Creek and a fantastic spot.

[00:52:34] I don't know if you've ever been there, but you know, I, it's very, it's a far drive for you. It's how it's going to be two and a half. Yeah. To do a mile and a half hike. I don't think so. Yeah. I could only imagine. So yeah, but it was a beautiful day. Awesome. Uh, weather, beautiful sunshine all around. We got to just watch birds and chickadees go by and, uh, just the, the etchings.

[00:53:02] I tried to like, once again, I tried to look for a little bit deeper dates, but I saw 1919 on there and I'm guessing earlier, of course, than that is probably etched in there. And on the way, the way out, we got to see some bald Eagle spotting, uh, that area, the Skahari, uh, Creek area. The Skahari Valley is very, very rich with bald Eagles. And we saw three mature bald Eagles and one immature bald Eagle. I got, I got good pictures of them.

[00:53:31] The one of them was flying over. And then the, the two mature bald Eagles were in their nest. I'm guessing they were just sitting over the eaglets. Maybe. Uh, I don't know if the eaglets have hatched yet. I'm guessing they have because it's been warmer out, but I'm not quite sure. And then, uh, the other was an immature one that we pulled into a parking area. And then we look around and I thought it was like a Cooper's Hawk or something, a red tailed Hawk.

[00:53:57] And I look up and it like looked down at me and I can see that beak was definitely different than a Hawk. And I, I zoomed in, I had my professional camera and I zoomed in and it was, uh, an immature bald Eagle. And it was just, it was so weird. Just the colors, weird patterns on the head. And, uh, it looked at me and then it like looked around and then it did like the, the head did the 180. And I was just like, what the hell look back. And then it did like a feather shake and all these feathers came about.

[00:54:27] So I'm like, Oh yeah, that's definitely an immature bald Eagle. It's shedding. It's it's layers to become, I don't know how I would say how, uh, immature it was, but it was cool. Bald Eagle spotting you, if you want, now is the time to gold bald Eagle spotting. If you want to, uh, we had an awesome, I forgot how the scope was. It was really cool. It was one of those scopes that kind of looked like a portable telescope.

[00:54:51] So you could get really close, but a lot of the times we saw, you could see the nest from the road and all you saw was the head of the bald Eagle, like popping over their necks to look once in a great while. Fantastic. Magical. We have a bald Eagle family, uh, just up the river from the house and twice a day. One of them will fly over the river out, you know, doing some shopping for food.

[00:55:21] And, and we've been here over 10 years. I've yet been able to get a picture of one of them. What? Yeah. It's crazy. I mean, and they literally sometimes when you see them go by, they're just, you know, so close, but huge. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I haven't been able to snap a photo of, of one of them. So, but that's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was a great day. So, uh, what, where it looked like you had a great time this weekend. What did you do? Yeah.

[00:55:50] So I was hemming and hawing, whether to go hike something over 3,500 feet or, uh, chip off another segment of trail on that Catskill all trails challenge. And because I had done the prior, I think 16 weekends. 16. Yeah. Doing a hike with, uh, snowshoes on or hiking on the snow.

[00:56:16] I opted to, uh, do the hunter loop out of the end of Sprucedon road. So it was my ninth time doing that hike, uh, going counterclockwise up, uh, Southwest hunter hunter East rusk and rusk. And one of the things when I, I double checked my tracks, guess how many times I've now hiked Southwest hunter.

[00:56:44] Uh, 63. No, not 63. You're not Dr. Kudish. Yeah. It was my 19th time. Wow. That was my second guess. Yeah. So I thought that was interesting. I was, I was surprised I've been up Southwest hunter that many times, but. Yeah. People hike it one or two times. Yeah. Well, some people, you know, it, it, some people don't really get into it for whatever reason.

[00:57:11] Cause there is no view, but I just find the hike along the old rail trail or the railroad bed out to South. I just think that's a really, really scenic stretch. And not all 19 times that I've been to Southwest hunter. Have I come or gone via the old railway? Yeah. So I, I, I bushwhacked it from a number of different directions, but it was a pleasant day to go out. Uh, like I said, I started from the end of Spruxton road.

[00:57:41] It was windy. The beginning of the day, it was just really, really, uh, blue skies. It was just lovely out. I passed a few groups going uphill. One of the people I ran into was Mo hike on guides. Mo had spent the night at devil's acre with a couple of people that he was doing a little shakedown with cause they were going to be setting out to hike the eight.

[00:58:04] He, I think he said in a couple of weeks when I ran into Mo, he was in the process of measuring the diameter of a tree. Oh, nice. Yeah. How the hell do you like on like right on the trailer? Were you off? Yeah. Right, right off the trail. It's just as you, um, you, you've climbed out of a diamond notch or where the bridge is and you start to make that turn. Oh, that section. Oh yeah. Yeah.

[00:58:34] So just before you head into the, the, the furs up there. So he, he was doing that. I threw that whole part. I mean, there was coming out of the parking area. There was some ice on the old road bed. I would imagine that ice is gone by now, although, well, maybe it's water now and it'll refreeze when the temperatures drop. So, but there came a point before I bumped into Mo and company where I even took off my micro spikes. It was just bare booting it shortly after I ran into him.

[00:59:03] It was spikes back on time, kept them on all the way out to Southwest Hunter, then up to Hunter proper. And, um, I think I had them off most of the way down to that turnoff for East Rusk. So I got there.

[00:59:24] Yeah, I got there and going up from that junction up to East Rusk for the most part, I'm going to say the first half, if not two thirds of the way up. You were kind of like just hiking to avoid the snow patches, because when you got into the snow patch, it could be anything from a few inches deep to up to your knee or deeper. So it was worthwhile to stay away from it.

[00:59:50] And then eventually once you got up to that, that fur ring around the summit of East Rusk, um, I put the snowshoes on, there was a faint signs of a beaten track where the snow was firmer under that, but it wasn't like trenched out because the snow had melted enough where it was the track that others had taken. Um, was kind of level with the surrounding area, but you know, for the most part, I was able to stay on it.

[01:00:18] When you stepped off it, you would, you know, your snowshoe would go into the snow up to your knee or thereabouts. Um, but East Rusk, I've always enjoyed the summit of East Rusk. I, Rusk, I assume you've been there, Stosh. Oh yeah. That's, it's magical. It feels like it's, it's a little bit more remote than Rusk. Like just because of the, the balsams and furs and stuff. Like it just, I don't know. Yeah.

[01:00:45] And you have, you have some, um, older, much larger furs up there and then you have some, uh, fresh growth in there. So you kind of get a nice variety, um, but it's just got a good feel going through there. And then you continue on your way westward to Rusk and through that whole, through that whole saddle, it was just snow nonstop. It wasn't patchy.

[01:01:09] It was deep in spots, but I was able to stay on the track pretty much, you know, 90, 95% of the way, uh, got to the summit of Rusk. I see that a few people had, a few groups had been there, um, earlier that day. So, you know, signed in, made my way down, ran into, um, a group of three on my way down. Uh, there were nice people, a little, a small family out for a family hike.

[01:01:35] And then, uh, continued my way back to my Jeep and set off to Westkill to pick up my dead rabbit, dead ear. Nice. Nice. Sounds like a good day. A day full of like everything, clear skies, stuff like that. You go up the tower. I did. And I'll have to say. Of all the times I've been up the tower, this time it was moving the most. I mean, you really felt the tower moving back and forth in the wind. Yeah. The wind was kind of ferocious.

[01:02:05] Yeah. Yeah. Tell me about the wind. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like I posted some pictures. If you look at my story from that hike, you might get a moderate sense of the wind velocity, but yeah, definitely in the tower. It was one of those days that you're asking yourself that, gee, if this, this tower was made over a hundred years ago and that metals that old and it's been sitting here for how long?

[01:02:32] I wonder how much wind force it can sustain, you know, given its age type of thing, because I had this like mental image of the tower toppling over as I was going up there to snap a photo of something I've seen a zillion times before. But then you see, I'm the guy that that's like, like does the Creed song. Can you take me high? And I just want to go higher because I want to feel that. That wind is just. Yeah.

[01:03:00] And maybe I feel the way I did because I don't know the Creed song and I wasn't able to get into that vibe. And so, but it was, you know, it was an interesting experience then. As I was done with my tower experience, a young couple, the fellow was from Rochester. The woman was from Albany and they had come down to hike in the Catskills for the weekend. And so they went up in the tower and I gave them a little forewarning that it was windy.

[01:03:29] And, you know, they were having fun up there with the wind when it was blowing it, you would hear them yelling and screaming and carrying on. So I thought I better get the hell out of there before the thing blows down. And I have to like, you know, perform some CPR or something like that. So, so I moved along. Yeah. But it was, you know, look, that's a, I mean, that's, it's a, it's a great hike. The data, it's about 11 and a half miles, just shy of 3000 feet of vertical.

[01:03:57] And, you know, it's one of those longer loop pikes, if you will, in the Catskills, you can always cut out the East Rusk Rusk experience. If you don't want to do that and or cut out Southwest Hunter, but. You know, it's a, it's a nice loop hike. You can, plus you've got some nice stops afterwards at the Westkill Brewery, Van Dusen's or anything along Route 28 on your way back. So, yeah. Fun.

[01:04:27] And I agree that, you know, even if you have a nice day, I mean, Hunter has the views that are just worthwhile at everything because second highest mountain in the Catskills, Fire Tower. What else could go wrong? Yeah. I, you know, and there's, there's some nice pull-offs on that hike to, to also get some views on your way up. Sean Roblin too. Yeah. I think that's one of the best views in the Catskills, frankly. I got to admit. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:04:52] Just looking down that Spruce in the Valley just gives you a sense of just, it's funny how small the Westkill, like the Westkill is, but how big the Valley is. You think that the Westkill would be wider, but it's. Well, that's, well, that's all from the ice moving in or in large part from the ice moving in.

[01:05:12] But you know who I, I just kind of skimmed through it the other day who did an interesting study on stream migration or meandering in the Catskills is Danny Davis. You run into him every weekend. Yeah. Well, I haven't talked with him in a while because I think he's out of town right now, but he, and I sent you this link.

[01:05:33] He, with the University of Vermont, they just took a whole bunch of data and AI programming and came up with a model that predicts stream turbidity after rain events. Turbidity is sediment or mud, dirt, whatever, and water. And that's, that's a big issue for municipalities that get their water from a reservoir is that after a rain event, getting all that turbidity in the water.

[01:06:03] And then it's, if you have a filtration system, it's extra strain on the filtration. If you don't have a filtration system like the city of New York, you have to, you know, control how you draw out of the reservoirs to let that sediment settle. So maybe this is a good reason for getting Danny will come on the show again, like I've asked him 200 times. Well, you got to ask him nice. You have to say pretty please. Pretty please. Hey, maybe I'll hike 25 miles with you up a stream. Will that be good enough? Well, it'd be fun. 25.

[01:06:32] I don't know if there's a, well, there's some, some interesting hikes that would be long in the Catskills. You can just do the whole never sink. I mean, that's, that's gotta be over 25 miles. Sure. That's cool. Well, good. Glad you had a good time. So, uh, Catskill News, volunteer 3500 Club, Catskill Trail Crew, Catskill Mountains Club, Visitors Center, Jelly Rover Trail Crew, Blamey Mountain Fire Tower. They're all coming out with their calendars. So get ready.

[01:07:02] I know the 3500 Club has a virtual meeting in April. So if you want to look, uh, to get with the 3500 Club for the Trailhead Stories, get ahold of me or get ahold of 3500 Club. Catskill Trail Crew just had a, uh, great article in the Catskill Canister, uh, about their, their trail crew. So get out there, volunteer. And, uh, Ted and I might join you. Let us know. Definitely.

[01:07:27] I'm gonna try to hook up with Matt Smith and the trail crew at least once, if not two times. Yeah. It's coming summer. I want to get out there when they're doing Seward stuff and just kind of be a bystander and do the, the brunt work where they cut and I pull the stuff just to see. It's gotta be awesome. The, the, um, swampers. Yeah. The swamping. Yeah. Darren White, uh, one of the listeners, he, he listens to him. We chat all the time. He's looking to become a, uh, a swamper and then a, uh, what do they call the? The Sawyer.

[01:07:58] Yeah. Sawyer. He's going to be a Sawyer. So he's got his, he's already got like, uh, authorization to do that. So I don't know how they go through that, but he's going to be a Sawyer soon. So. Yeah. Well, we heard Matt Smith gave the whole rundown on what it takes to, to go through the training and the testing and, and get your credentials. Looks fun. Right. Right down to telling us what type of chainsaw is the preferred one to have. I forget. It was the 18 inch model or the 16 inch, you know? Probably. Yeah. I don't know.

[01:08:27] Crazy stuff. So how about weather forecasts? What are we looking at this weekend? So Friday, I don't know if this, I'm going to, you know, let me refresh this because I just saw that and I was just like, oh yeah. Thank God. Oh no. Well then. Did you know that we are supposed to be getting a snow storm coming Thursday, Friday? Not surprising. Okay. So Thursday going into Friday, heavy snow.

[01:08:58] So this is from the summit of Lone Mountain. So we're looking at Lone Mountain, heavy snow, six inches of snow Friday morning, AM. Wow. Six inches. Yeah. That's, I mean, that's what it says on the mountain weather forecast. So six inches and then 0.4 inches of snow showers on Friday afternoon.

[01:09:20] Nighttime, it looks to be clear, a high of 34 at night, a low of nine degrees with wind chill. Saturday looks to be some clouds with a little bit of light snow accumulations up to 0.2 inches, a high of 34, a low of negative nine at night with the wind chill. With 35 degree, 35 mile per hour winds. Yeah. So look at, look at Friday though on slide mountain.

[01:09:45] It's saying 60 mile an hour winds Friday morning through midday on slide. I was actually thinking of taking off work on Friday and go hiking. That's going to be breaking trail. What do you think? Well, if you get up there early enough, you can get before the storm and then bring your toboggan and go down in the toboggan. But why does Friday show or slide show only 0.4 inches? That's the midday. I see it.

[01:10:13] It shows Thursday night, three inches, Friday morning, six. Right. Okay. Now it's updated. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So on the Sunday. Yeah. Looks like we're going to be getting over seven, eight inches. Oh, it looks like 10 inches of snow. So, uh, within Thursday and Friday and then coming to Sunday, it says clear, uh, a high

[01:10:38] of 32 later in the day, but a low of negative 20 in the morning with 35 power polar wind gusts at a low of 12. So it looks like this weekend, you must be prepared for fricking everything and anything that winter will bring. Yeah. It's interesting that the, uh, winter season closes on Friday. Yeah.

[01:11:02] But we have these, these, you know, uh, Sunday slide mountain ambient temperature, 12 degrees, 19 degrees, wind chill, negative 20. Yeah. And that goes up to like eight degrees. Yeah. Good old spring hiking. Yeah. Right. Never know. I wouldn't call this a storm, but it's a storm. So not crazy. So not something we haven't seen before.

[01:11:27] So pack anything and everything for the trail this weekend. If you plan on going out and getting some peaks. So, all right. So Ted, let's go over the last set of sponsors and then we'll get to you. We'll get to the four 20. And that's not weed by the way. Uh, it isn't, that's what I thought it was. I didn't have to smoke all that weed. Oh, yeah. Right. Damn. Well, that's okay. All right.

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[01:13:17] Apply today on anothersummit.org. So they are doing Spring Forest Ecology Saturday, May 29th at 10 a.m. in Rhinebeck, New York, and Backpacking 101 April 5th at 9 a.m. in Beacon, New York. Check them out on anothersummit.org. Get a hold of them, and you can hook up with them. All right, so how about we get on to the guest slash topic of the night? Let's go!

[01:13:46] So Ted just finished his 420 grid, his grid experience. Just finished? Just, right? No! I finished in November of 22. I think it was November of 22. Jesus! Well, you sounded like you made it finish this weekend. No, not this weekend. I did a single season, winter, so. Oh, now you got me. Yeah, so now what do you want to do a different?

[01:14:15] Let's change topics. Let's do something different. No, so, Ted, we're going to talk about the 420 grid 101. How about that? Okay, 420 101. Okay, so the real question is here that, you know, we haven't really gotten a background about you. You've interviewed me and gotten my background. So how about a background? I mean, we've sort of gone through your background with like skiing and stuff out west. And now you know my nationalities.

[01:14:45] Stasch, I have to say, the rest of my background is classified information. Are you government or something? Yeah, I am. I work for Doggy. Doggy, that's it. Doggy. Doggy. Elon's my immediate report. I like that. I like that. So, a little background about yourself, Ted. Full detail, whatever you want. Okay, whatever I want. So, I'm going to just do the important stuff. I've been married for 30 years.

[01:15:14] Come September, I have two amazing daughters. And I enjoy hiking. How's that? That's it. That's it. So, you grew up over in the western part of New York State. Yeah, I grew up south of Buffalo back then in the 60s and 70s when I was a youngster. It was, you know, winters were snowy. They were really snowy.

[01:15:39] I mean, they were so snowy that it's really hard for me to describe to you how snowy it was when I grew up without you thinking. I'm completely bullshitting. But it was. I mean, winters were ferocious, as I probably have mentioned before. We would typically start skiing at least a week, if not two weeks, before Thanksgiving. And my mother's birthday is in the end of April.

[01:16:06] And most winters, we would ski on my mother's birthday. So, and then when that ski area shut down for the season, we would just start chasing the snowpack northeast and eventually make our way up to Vermont and ski up in Vermont through late May. So, I did a ton of skiing growing up. Now, where were you out west with skiing and such like that?

[01:16:34] Like, what were your ski centers and stuff like that? What was like the, I know it's, of course, not compared to the Catskills and the Adirondacks. What was there like? So, in western New York? Yeah. Yeah. So, I had a small ski area by the name of Cockane, about 15 minutes down the road from where I lived. And I skied for them. I raced for them. I also skied and raced for a place that's still open, known as Holiday Valley. We also had a place by the name of Wing Hollow.

[01:17:03] Wing Hollow was a great ski area back then, as were those others too. But I skied a lot at Wing Hollow, Cockane, Holiday Valley. There were some smaller areas, but like I said, the one that was just 15 minutes from my house. I would basically, when I was young, young, I would hitchhike to the ski area or get rides from people. So, I would ski, honestly, in the winter.

[01:17:29] It was pretty much every day I would ski. Wow. I mean, 15 minutes away. That's a dream. Yeah. I would, you know, when I was in high school, I would generally leave high school around 12 noon and ski the rest of the day. And they were open, you know, they had night skiing. So, I would ski, sometimes like on weekends, I'd ski from opening to the end of the day. Or I would, on weekdays, I'd ski from midday to the end of the day. But I was, I would generally ski every day. Wow.

[01:17:58] And what was like the length of the ski run and stuff like that? So, Cockane had a vert of just shy of 400 feet. That doesn't sound like a lot. But it had some really good terrain. And it just got a ton of fresh snow. It got more snow than anyone else in the county. And with all that fresh snow came a couple really, really good mogul fields.

[01:18:24] And then also the same thing over at Holiday Valley, they got less snow. They had more vert, more pitch on some of their runs. And they had some really good mogul fields. So, I grew up skiing bumps at Cockane Holiday Valley. I've actually seen stuff about Holiday Valley. And a lot of people praise that place for staying open as long as they have. And then doing the, their, you know, their traditions as long as they have.

[01:18:54] You know, it's pretty neat. Yeah. Especially being like a small place. It's tough to stay open. Yeah. I mean, back, I don't know if it's the same owners now, but I remember growing up, I knew the owners, you know, personally friendly with them. Wow. So. Now, how did you get into, did you transition from hiking or skiing to hiking in this? Or like, how did that come about? Well, that's a long story. And if we hadn't spent so much time shooting the shit tonight, maybe I could get into that.

[01:19:21] So, I'm going to blame that on you, but there was, you know, when I was, before I started skiing, you know, it just started off going for walks and walks led to going for hiking and backpacking. Um, but I did spend, before I, I got my first pair of skis, I spent a lot of my time, particularly in the summer, hiking, backpacking.

[01:19:46] It was not uncommon for me to go backpacking, you know, as a young adult, like an, not even adult, seventh or eighth grade. I'd go on week, two week long trips, uh, in the Allegheny area up in the ADK. Um, sometimes I'll look back having raised two daughters. I look back at what I did before I was in high school and I'm like, wow, my parents let

[01:20:13] me get away with this stuff, but I did, I'd go on these, you know, for that age, these epic backpacking trips. And that was kind of a staple of my growing up was backpacking and hiking. My grandmother, uh, lived in Lake Placid through 1980. She and her husband, my grandfather moved to Lake Placid in 1952. So he could be a bobsledder.

[01:20:39] He was the oldest, he was the oldest bobsledder in North America. He was number four on our world cup team. And presumably if he had been younger, he would have been faster, but it, he was in his fifties at the time. And so we had a slower start than the other guys. Wow. They own. Yeah. For you, any of you like Placid fans that know like Placid going back a few decades,

[01:21:04] they owned a place on station road known as the handlebar. Interesting. So that's, I mean, so you went all about hiking and then how did you get down to the Catskills? How did you transition down to the Catskills area? Uh, well, so I, where I grew up in Southwestern New York, the median household income is under $25,000.

[01:21:34] And I realized that when I got out of grad school, I had too much student debt to be able to pay off that debt and live comfortably. So I decided I'm going to move to where more money could be earned without putting myself in New York city. So here where I am now is about three miles from where I moved to when I first moved out to the Hudson Valley.

[01:22:01] And you've got that perfect blend of downstate income and upstate leisure and activities. So here I am. Um, and then you moved over to the Catskills. Did you, did you became like, what, what, what got you into the Catskills hiking? Like where you, do you see the 3,500 club and be like, Oh, let me pursue that. No. So what got me into Catskill hiking? Um, what got me into Catskill hiking was my daughter. Sophronia.

[01:22:31] She, she and I did a lot of hiking, uh, around where we lived. Um, at local places, the gunks and it essentially, uh, you know, we had kind of hiked everywhere around here and we had, you know, skied a lot. You know, I got both of my daughters into skiing. We skied quite a bit at, um, Wyndham, Bel Air, Platyck Hill. And so one day it was, uh, the end of summer, August of 2016.

[01:23:02] Sophie wanted to go hike in the Catskill. So I told her, put it together, you know, pick a place you want to go hike and we'll go do it. So we set out on Labor Day weekend, 2016. She decided on hiking slide mountain. The went up the Curtis Ormsby trail. We had so much fun on our way up that we decided to continue on to Cornell.

[01:23:27] And so we went, we went over to Cornell, turned around, uh, came back. I have a great photo of her standing on that lookout on Cornell, looking back at slide. And so that was our first excursion into the Catskills. And one of the memorable things about that hike is we were on our way down the Jeep trail from the summit of slide. And there came a certain point on that hike that I realized what later on, I realized

[01:23:55] that it was going to be when you're at a group hike, something that commonly occurs when you're on a group hike. And that is when you're a few miles from the end of the hike, all you can think about and all you can talk about is food. Yeah. We're going to go and eat after the hike. So we, we went to the Phoenicia diner and we got omelets. We had a good time. Um, so that I got to admit, that's an unusual approach to slide mountain.

[01:24:21] You go over to slide for your first time going up to Curtis homesbury trail and then over to fricking Cornell and then back. I've, I've, I don't think very many, very few people do that. What go up, slide to Cornell or. And then back. Like, like the, usually they pursue over to the Cornell Wittenberg and then back, but not just to Cornell. So, well, well, I mean, there's a lot of things that contributed to that. And one part, if you want to know the, the background background to my story, when we

[01:24:50] did that hike and labor day weekend of 2016, I had only been walking for about five months. So I was on the recovery from a pretty bad leg injury. So yeah, pushing it. Yeah. Pushing to Cornell that day was quite painful for me and I paid for it dearly, but my daughter wanted to hike in the Catskills and I wasn't about to say no. So we did that. And, um, it was, you know, we had, we had a good time.

[01:25:19] It was kind of like the, the beginning of all that hiking her and I did in the Catskills and what kind of set me off to, to eventually get into the grid. Wow. And then you did, of course, I'm guessing you did the 3,500 first. You gotta, you, you have to, to do the grid starts with one round, one round of 35. True. So what, what number do you know? What number you are?

[01:25:44] So on the, um, hikers anonymous list, I think I'm number 61. Of, of, well, what of the 3,500 though? Oh, of the 3,500, I am 2960. Oh, nice. Nice. I'm before you. Wow. 2829. I got a unique number. I love that number. 2829. What's so, what's so unique about that? 2829. Two sequential numbers. Yeah. That's, that's cool.

[01:26:12] Do you ever play that when you play a lot or do you ever play 2829? I should. Good point. Good. Very good point. So what was your finish on the 3,500 club list? Um, so my finish on the 3,500 club list was on Wittenberg on father's day and with Sophie. No, she actually, uh, it was her, I guess it was her sophomore year in college and is

[01:26:40] a good sophomore or I guess entering junior year. She wasn't around. So I went off to hike. Um, and I had planned to finish on Wittenberg because my intent was to continue onto Cornell, where was the, the furthest point out we did on that first hike. So I kind of viewed it as kind of like completing the loop, if you will. And so I went up Wittenberg went on word.

[01:27:09] And I have to admit, you know, as I said, that first hike I did, I was recovering from that injury. I was pretty weak. I was in pain. It was kind of a struggle for me to do those two mountains. And so a year and a half plus afterwards, I did Wittenberg. I'm on my way to Cornell. And I say to myself as I'm hiking over there, God, this is taking forever. And I kept hiking and I'm saying to myself, boy, is this really taking forever?

[01:27:36] And eventually I looked at a map and I thought to myself, where the fuck am I? And so, but I kept going, you know, I kept going, I kept going. And then I got to these ledges and these ledges look really, really familiar. And I'm like, where am I? So I pulled out my GPS now to check where I was. And I had gone up and over Cornell without even realizing it. So yeah, I just went, I just, the Cornell crack, it was nothing.

[01:28:04] I mean, I'd gone from that first hike where I was, you know, frankly, kind of like schlepping the two thirds of the way into that hike. And I was just kind of like tagging along my daughter. And then, you know, here I was a year and a half later, just motoring around the mountains and having a good time. So, wow. That's that story. We're moving on now. Let's talk about. How did you get to the grid? Like, did you like know about it before then or not?

[01:28:32] So the very first hike we did, I remember hearing one hiker talking to another hiker about somebody who was working on their grid. And I wondered what that was. And so that was in the back of my mind. And then somewhere along the way, whether it was in our, you know, getting the list for the 3500 or reading somewhere. But then I saw that there was this grid thing.

[01:28:59] Obviously, I wasn't thinking about it at the outset. And I really had no ambition of doing the grid, nor did I think that it would be something that I was capable of doing that first year or two that I was hiking. Because, you know, it took me a while to get my strength back. But, you know, there came a point. You finish the winter and then you do the four seasons.

[01:29:24] And when you do the four seasons, the one thing, if you're going to move on to the bridge, you need to think about, because I didn't think about it. So I was, you know, the season ends on the 21st. So you might the next week, still in that month, go and hike the same mountain that you did earlier that month. So you're going to satisfy the four season requirement because you're doing that hike in different seasons, but it's in the same month.

[01:29:52] And so when you go to fill out your grid, you have a duplicate. So I wasn't really all that cognizant of, you know, working everything into doing the grid when I was doing the four seasons. So I had quite a few duplicates when I finished the four seasons. Did the four seasons come before the grid? Like your thoughts? Yeah. Yeah. So that was, you know, I did the winter and then I thought, okay, I'll do the four seasons,

[01:30:19] which once you do, you know, the winter, that's one out of the four seasons. You take what you have in the remainder of your first round that you didn't use in the winter and you see where that falls in the other three seasons. And then you go and knock off the four seasons. And what I did for the four seasons is I decided that at least one, one mountain, every hike I would bushwhack no matter what mountain it was.

[01:30:48] So if I was doing, you know, um, plateau and sugar loaf, one of them would be a bushwhack. The rest of it could be a trail, but that's one of the necessities for me of doing that was I was doing this mainly solo. And so often it was just easier to park the car and bushwhack to one of the mountains and then hike trail back to it.

[01:31:13] Um, I also, during that, that first four seasons thing, I did a lot of, um, hitchhiking, plumbing rides off of people. So that'll, and this was, this wasn't 20 years ago. This is no, that's so this is all, you know, from, I guess. So I finished the first round in 2018 and I don't think I did much hiking the rest of that summer. And I started up again that fall working on the four seasons.

[01:31:41] But I mean, this is not times of like the 1970s and eighties where everything was hitchhiking. This is a time of where you just be like, oh shit, this is going to be tough. Yeah. I've done, I've done a lot of hiking in the Catskills and I've also, you know, pre COVID, I would do a lot of, I'll call it mooching off of people, you know, on, on your hike back to a parking area, you just strike up a conversation with somebody and then you just say, Hey, I need a ride back to such and such. You okay with that?

[01:32:10] And so I would get rides back from people. So with all this, like, like 420 grid, the four seasons and stuff like that, it's, it's gotta be tough to plan all this. Like, this is what's where my anxiety kicks in. It's just like, I mean, I'm going to do this and this, but you know, weather, you know, might kick in road closures, you know, the, uh, the seasons, you know, closures. How does, how the hell do you plan all this? Is it just day by day?

[01:32:37] Well, yeah, obviously you, you know, you need to look at the weather right up until the last minute, because that's kind of a controlling factor in terms of whether you're going to finish a hike, whether it's safe to do a hike or not. Or even if some, some hikes aren't, you know, if you get a ton of snow might not be possible for you to do that hike. So weather is a, um, significant factor in the planning.

[01:33:03] Uh, another significant factor is, you know, if you need a ride or not. So, like I said, I would do a fair amount of hitchhiking before COVID. I, I started doing what I call the bike and hike where I'd park the Jeep at the end. I'd ride the bike to the beginning of the hike. And so now part of the planning process becomes how, how easy or difficult the bike ride is going to be. Are you going to build a lot of vertical into the bike ride?

[01:33:32] Or are you going to try to make the bike ride less vertical? So the bike ride is easier and, uh, the hike is harder. So that's a factor into it. Um, but I'll say when it comes to the logistics of planning a four 20 versus the all trails, the four 20 is so much easier.

[01:33:55] The all trails, man, because you're, you know, you got all these, this, like this webbing of trails in some spots, you know, with these loops and, and this, that, and the other thing, it just, you know, that is a big logistical issue, at least for me. And that's one of the reasons where I've, you know, I've gotten to this point where I didn't really think about mapping all these different hikes for the all trails at the beginning. And so I got a lot of these little stragglers that I need to knock off.

[01:34:24] But, uh, the four 20, you know, you look at it, what some people have done with it. Um, there's one woman out there who's done the four 20 in a year. Kudos to her. That's a lot of hiking. Um, so that's something, if you're going to try to knock it off in a short period of time, that now becomes a controlling factor in your planning.

[01:34:45] Whereas my thing was, I wanted to make it interesting as opposed to just doing the same thing over the same trail over and over again. Yeah. Although I say that, and yes, I have done the hunter loop nine times. Okay. I admit that, but it's a fun loop and I have hiked those mountains from other approaches. But. Of course.

[01:35:10] Like, like, I mean, someone like you with your ambitions and stuff like that, you like, Hey, you know, let me take this route up. And there's, there's another one off the list or you'd like, I, I, we, we know you being on here so many times that you don't like to take the, the easy route up. You know? Yeah. Well, sometimes, um, let's take Hawket as an example. If you're going to hike Hawket 12 times to knock off your grid, don't do all of them from the same direction. Right.

[01:35:40] Yeah. That's boring. Yeah. Because it not only is a boring, but it's steep. And then in the summer months, you're going to deal with all the nettles and there's a lot of other, and frankly, more interesting ways to get to the top of Hawket than starting off a 42. So, um, let's say fricking bear pen, like everybody is just going to go up from route three. No, there's several. Yeah.

[01:36:06] Bear, bear pen has some interesting approaches, um, on trail as well as off trail. And there's some really interesting stuff to, to experience on both bear plan and fly by not going the common way. But then what the, the problem is you fall into this tendency that you're going to have what I call the production hikes where you're just going to bag the peaks the easy way you can.

[01:36:32] So you do drive up route three, you go and knock off a bear pen fly. You do Hawk it and maybe Rusk. Okay. You do those four hikes in one day and you do it all the shortest and quickest way you can get done. So, but then you plan another hike that it will be more interesting. Yeah. So yeah. Challenging.

[01:36:54] And that's, you know, and that's where you can either just, you know, hike to those summits to, to say that you hike to those summits and do it the same way every time, or you can get around and see different things and have, have some fun. And, and so there, there came a point in time where you've done what seemed to be the more challenging hikes and you want to do some interesting hikes.

[01:37:20] And so one of the things I did is I got Mike Kudish's book with his map. Yeah. With his map of all the old growth areas. And then, so I just started to plan my hikes to take me through those areas. Sounds like a fantastic idea. Yeah. It worked for me. And now what, how do you, how do you track all this? How, how, wait for a quick question. How long did it take you from day one? So you're talking about slide mountain to when you finished a four 20, you said 2018.

[01:37:50] Uh, so I went from first hike was 2016 to 2022. So that's six years. I mean, I, that's, that's not a year, but I mean, it's, it's your time. Yeah. So there's, there was some periods there. I didn't do much hiking at all. Like in 2020 when COVID hit, you know, there was a, a long stretch where I didn't do any hiking. Then, then my daughter Sophronia came home and she wanted to take a big chunk out of her first round.

[01:38:17] And so we were, we hiked up a storm that late summer and fall. We actually did some backpacking and the cats during that time. So it's, it's not like I was out, you know, trying to get this done in any short period of time. And it's my words of encouragement to anyone who wants to do the four 20 is focus on the journey and not finishing the list. Right.

[01:38:45] So, because yeah, finishing the list, it's just kind of like, you know, this brief moment. Wow. Yeah. I'm done with this. And then you, you finish that hike and it's over. Whereas the journey, you know, is, is something that you should do in a way that you can really cherish it. So, instead of saying, you know, you've summited plateau the same amount of times from Roinkill because it's the, or, uh, Mankalo because it's a shorter route.

[01:39:13] You can say that I approached it from the Southern side four times. I approached it from, you know, over on, uh, two 14, two or three times. And then I approached it from Mankalo, but then I bushwhacked up the ridge on the, on the Northern side, you know, instead of saying, how many times? How many times did you summit plateau? Oh, I just went from Mankalo 12 times. Yeah.

[01:39:37] It's just some, you know, I, in certain respects you can do the same hike multiple times and it's a different hike each time. And other times it's the same hike. It depends on a lot of different things. And this is where I just go back to whatever floats your boat. I mean, some, for some people it's, it's more about the effort they put in to, you know, have more of a endurance high output type of hike. And, and that's what they're into.

[01:40:06] And then other people, it's more of a, I'm just going to go out and hike this one mountain. And then next week I'll hike another mountain. I'm not trying to do the nine. I'm just doing one or two mountains at a time. And I, I've hooked up with some people and that's been their approach to doing the four 20 is to just take little sips of it. And then there's other people that are gulping it and whatever puts a smile on their face. So that's my view. How did you track this stuff?

[01:40:35] Well, I, that's where I was just doing it on a, uh, homemade. I'm not going to say spreadsheet. It was really a word document, but I tried to organize the mountains and logical groups, you know, that, that would go together for hiking purposes. And I filled that out and kept filling it out.

[01:40:57] And then there was some point in time where I, uh, transferred all my data to Tom Martone site, Hikers Anonymous. And that worked out really well for me. So, wow. Amazing. Now, did this, did you track this through your phone? Do you have a GPS system that you do this with? Yeah. So I started off, um, with no GPS. Um, then I got a, um, a Garmin.

[01:41:28] And eventually I went with Gaia on my iPhone for tracking while I'm out on tracking and navigation out on the trail. But at that time when I was, you know, becoming, uh, experienced and more versed in bushwhacking and planning bushwhacks, I was using Cal Topo. Oh, nice. Yeah. Yeah. And they, they did not have a phone app at that time.

[01:41:55] So I was, I was using the Gaia program, but, uh, Cal Topo, you could just really make some great maps. And that was part of the, the fun during, you know, the initial rounds was just sitting down with Cal Topo and plotting out these various bushwhacks and then printing off the maps, bringing them along and having fun. Yeah.

[01:42:21] And then seeing your progress on Cal Topo is pretty neat too, because you can do each hike can be a different color and stuff like that. And you can, it's just, it's really neat. Yeah. At some point I want to consolidate all my tracks on something like that. And then just, um, send off the, the data file to one of those, um, online photo printing places and have, yeah. And have them print like almost a poster size. It looked like a spider web, like it just did mush. Yeah. My own personal heat map.

[01:42:51] I know the DEC is looking at heat maps of, you know, people Strava activity. And I want, I want Tad's Catskill heat map. They're going to hire you. Yeah. You're going to be Danny's new executive assistant or something like that. And you're going to be like, all right, we need the info on this trail over here. Go do it. Got it. So did you have any like difficult, crazy times?

[01:43:18] Like when you were out there, I mean, breaking trail, of course is difficult. And I know you do solo a lot. So solo is like, I got to admit one of those, it's, it's a tough time, especially when you're out there in the winter. Yeah. So I'll say the, the most difficult hikes were probably the early ones, particularly my first

[01:43:41] round, because in part I was still recovering from that injury and I was acquiring, you know, my knowledge or experience base. So the, the first round, there was a one hike where I set out to do a big Indian and fur for the first time that had snowed heavily during the week.

[01:44:05] And I set out, wasn't prepared for as much snow that I encountered. And I had, you know, mentally in my head, uh, set a turnaround time. If I had not reached a certain elevation by 11 time, 11 o'clock, it was time to turn around. And I didn't, I mean, I was just going so, so slow. So, so I bailed and, uh, it was the right thing to do.

[01:44:32] Um, later on when I was up at a big Indian and fur, you know, like a month or so later, I saw that nobody signed in that day. So it wasn't just me, it wasn't just me that didn't make it that day. I mean, I have this, uh, later on that you, so you, did you, was those one of the times that you never, didn't ever summit? Like, did you have many of those times? Yeah. So it was big Indian and fur. So big Indian and fur have always held a special place for me because I remember that, that

[01:45:02] first time to go and bag them. They bagged me. Uh, I also, one time, I also, one time bushwhacking sugar loaf. I didn't put enough, uh, reconnaissance into my approach that I was going to take to bushwhack sugar loaf. And I remember, so I was driving down the road, looking at sugar loaf. I'm saying to myself, there's no fucking way I'm going to be able to get up this today. And sure enough, man, I got, I got to this one spot that I winter or not winter. Uh, it was in the fall.

[01:45:31] It was October. I was doing the four seasons at the time. And I was just saying to myself, I walked around as, as much as I could. Since then, I've been able to get up that way, maybe because I'm smarter and more patient. But yeah, that day I, I forget what elevation it was. I ran into, I, I refer to it as the Al Capitan of the Catskills. Let me ask you this. What did, what was your approach? Did you, from the, from the split, did you just go straight up?

[01:46:01] Kind of. Yeah. I think we might've hit the same spot, buddy. I did the same thing. Yeah. I was, I was probably, I don't know, 50, 75 yards from success that day. Oh, okay. So I was a little bit further away from that. Yeah. Well, I mean, I was much further from the split, but the, the, the deal breaker was, is it was such a big tallis slope up there.

[01:46:25] I mean, going back and forth and trying to hunt for a way up was so slow going. And my concern was, is that maybe if I had made it up 25 or 50 feet vertically, and then if I ran into another problem, what was I going to do? There was no going down, uh, from there. And so actually after that, I started carrying a rope. So I'd be able to get down if I had gone up, you know, something like that. Oh, wow. So that, that was one that beat me.

[01:46:55] And then there's, there was, um, one time I actually, I set out to, uh, do an interesting bushwhack of, uh, Wyndham and the blacks. And I underestimated how much snow had blown in there over the week. And I made it to Wyndham, but I had a bail on the rest of the hike because it just, it was so exhausting getting to the summit of Wyndham that day. I kind of felt like Moses trying to go up to get the tablets.

[01:47:23] If you remember that it was just brutal. So, so I mean, there's, there's, so there's, you admit there's times that you've had to bail and then that your, your plans have not only on this podcast, which we're not airing. Yeah. There's times, there's times I, I, I pulled the plug. So, so did you ever do any like weird? I mean, I know you have, cause you've actually recently talked about it. Some crazy convert like combinations for the grid.

[01:47:48] So you said you did bear pen and fly, and then you went over and did hawk it. Yeah. Well, are those really combinations? Those are. It's a day. Well, but, but also you can get from hawk it to fly in bear pen. You got to just got to go on private property. Well, where you just do a little side sloping to get around it. True. Okay. So, I mean, there's that. So a crazy combo.

[01:48:17] I don't know how crazy it is, but West kill to hawk it. That might qualify. That's pretty crazy. Yeah. So West kill North don't what West kill St. Anne's St. Anne's at North dome, Cheryl and hawk it. So when that's a hike where I, I dropped the Jeep at, um, Hawk at road out, not to the end of spruced in, because you can cut some miles off by lacking up West kill.

[01:48:46] And it's actually, um, a really interesting approach to West kill. And then you just take the trail all the way over to North dome. Back then the herd path wasn't so well, you know, beat from North dome over to Cheryl and down. But, uh, that was a, that was a good hike. That's a pretty crazy combination. I got to admit. Was that the bike and hike? That was one of them. Okay. Okay. That's nice. See one of many.

[01:49:16] Yeah. Yeah. I was going to say any, anything else that, that, I mean, a lot of people do the whole, I think, I think for me is crazy is, is the whole Wyndham blackhead range. I think it's a. From, from the DEP lot. Yeah. So you're doing. Yeah. That's, I mean, it's, it's a very doable hike. As long as you have the endurance there is in the bushwhack up to Wyndham. Um, there's nothing really that technical.

[01:49:44] I mean, you, it's all avoidable, easily avoidable. Um, and I did the bushwhack. I almost did that exact hike not so long ago, but I just opted out of it and, but I still did all four mountains. But the key to that hike is after you do Thomas Cole continuing on the trail and coming down between Thomas Cole and Camel's hump. Cause you avoid the, the steep talus section. Yeah. Of Thomas Cole. That's a pretty crazy thing.

[01:50:11] And it's better that that's coming off of Thomas Cole is better with deep snow. Yes. Yes. It's almost like skiing downhill. So yeah. And you're familiar with skiing. So what's your favorite? Well, that's a hard thing to say. What's my favorite. I, you know, I, a long time ago, I, I thought of each one of these mountains is like being your kid and you can't have a favorite kid. Right. You just appreciate each one of them for their, their subtleties and their nuances.

[01:50:42] So there, there is no favorite mountain, if that's what you're asking. There can't be. Okay. And I'm not going to be like Tom Hoos and say, I can't stand bear pen and fly. I have some, I have some pretty fond memories of hiking the two of them. Plus the history is just absolutely phenomenal with those two. So like, you can't, so like, what do you have a certain viewpoint or stuff like that?

[01:51:06] I know you, you've been to many viewpoints that have the off trail and stuff like that, that just continues to be like, God damn. I know all fire towers are like that, but like, like, like Westkill has that, that, that. So I can't, I can't tell you where they are. I can take you to them. Hmm. Oh, so you're going to be getting some messages soon. So yeah, you have to hike with me to find those spots. Fred's going to quit this and he's going to start his own guiding service.

[01:51:37] Yeah. Not for, not for hire. I'll leave that to Mo and company. Yeah. Yeah. Mo and Greg and I will love them. So, uh, any advice for people that are going to pursue in the four twenties? Yeah. So my advice is don't do it to finish the list, do it to enjoy the list. And you, you know, think about how long you want to take doing it. Some people, their goal is to say they did it in a year.

[01:52:03] And if that's, what's going to make you happy, then plan to do it in a year of my, that was not my goal. And knowing that it wasn't my goal, I think one of the better things I did is structure my depletion of that list by saving interesting hikes for, you know, that, that last year. So you didn't have like your spend your last year, just hiking duds, you know, doing.

[01:52:35] Wow. Man. Or, you know, not my favorites. They all sort of are. And I was fortunate enough to have some great hikes. I even did some nice hikes in the rain. I mean, I guess that was part of the planning is, you know, figure that there are certain hikes you can do in, in bad weather. And so save them for like a rainy day, bring an umbrella, do a trail hike, um, do it, uh, very durable trail hikes.

[01:52:59] You're not moving around a lot of dirt and you know, the, the best advice is just be prepared and have fun. Yeah. I agree. Something like that. I just, just like the hike, but you know, who knows? So, yeah. So the, the benefit. So after I finished the four 20, you're, you're kind of like, well, what's next? You know, are you like Tom Martone or others where you just go onto the next list?

[01:53:29] And I don't know what Tom's up now to now, but he's, you know, done thousands of Catskill mountains. So, you know, there's a period of time where I just drifted around. I started with the Catskill hunted highest and you just find yourself in my opinion, hiking a lot of what I'm going to really call ho-hum mountains that have been logged out. There's really nothing all that interesting about some of them. Um, and there's other far more interesting things to do out there.

[01:53:58] So I eventually started to do the all trails challenge, which I highly recommend. Um, just emphasizing that you need to put some thought into trying to not leave like I did is some of these stragglers towards the end. But I will say I have started to compile a list of, you know, my eight 40, I guess it

[01:54:25] would be that I'm, I'm working on now my second four 20 and it just forces you to get around. You know, sometimes I find myself asking myself, which hike should I do this weekend? And now I have a list to go to and see what I want to knock off. The other cool thing is to go do what they call blue lining and hike some of the, the streams and rivers only if you're super experienced.

[01:54:51] That's a whole nother, you know, it's gotta be the right time of year for you to do it. And you need, you know, if you're going to do it in the winter, you need the right equipment. But if you're, if you're, if you've done a four 20, I'm going to assume that you, you've got the experience in the, of course, go out and do some blue lining. So yeah, I mean, and if you want some tips, get ahold of me or somebody else who's gotten around the Catskills. Yeah.

[01:55:16] And I will have the, uh, the four 20 grid, the hikers, the nominous thing on here, the lake to show people about the four 20 grid. Uh, right. Does that, is that the only place that does it? There's well, actually in the Catskill mountain club, um, they have a little different list than the hikers anonymous list for each of them to have 35 mountains on the list. They exclude round top and, and South double top. South double top. Okay. Yeah.

[01:55:46] They, they have two other trailed mountains on their list. And I actually, I have finished the Catskill mountain club list. I just haven't sent it in because I don't know. I'm, I, I have all these patches that I've accumulated from hiking now and I don't put them on my pack because donate them. Yeah. It's not about to me. It's not about the patches, you know, it's about that experience. Yeah, exactly.

[01:56:13] And that's, you know, why you, you know, don't do just one or the same trail over and over again. You are pursuing these from all different directions. You're checking out different stuff. Like, like just hearing you talk about like Dr. Kudish's book and be like, oh man, you know, I could approach twin from this area and then get a whole different view of the forest. Yeah. We've all been up big Indian.

[01:56:38] And if you go the traditional way of big Indian, you're really missing out because there's a great hemlock forest along the biscuit brook that gets you to big Indian. So you're talking about what, what is, uh, is it, it's not haze mountain that you go over. No, you're, you're basically, you're, you're taking the trail out of, um, uh, frost Valley

[01:57:02] and you're just going to, you're going to continue past the turnoff to go up for. And before you really start climbing the hall between big Indian and that little no name knob between big Indian and double top, you're going to cross the risk biscuit brook and head up that slope. It almost takes you into the saddle between big Indian and fur, but you go through.

[01:57:32] It's not as big as, you know, where, um, the black forest is in the Catskills wild cat. Oh yes. Yes. It's, uh, yeah. The, the, the, the other, the Southern side of two or 42. Yeah. So that's a huge hemlock forest, right? Um, this one's not as close to that in size, but it's, it's rather generous and it just makes

[01:57:58] for an, uh, an interesting variation on a hike that you're going to do 12 times if you're doing the grid. So you, you know, when the right, I mean, sometimes I wanted to do that hike and the water crossing has just been too, too high, um, to get it done. And then there's times where you're going up there and you can just make that split and hit big Indian early. So, and then there's other ways to get to big Indian.

[01:58:22] Some now you can't get to because the, the, uh, the bulls making that one pitch off limits, but, um, hiking that out of, uh, from where the lean to is up to big Indian was a, it was a interesting hike, an interesting way to get there. So there's very, very many interesting ways to get there everywhere, as you said.

[01:58:47] So, so hopefully, uh, people have been influenced by you to do the four 20 grade in a special way. So, um, I'm glad you congratulations on finishing it in 2022. I, once again, I don't know how I thought you just finished it. I mean, I'm just like your, I'm like your internet spouse. You know nothing about me. You never pay attention to me when I, when I talk, you don't know any of my wants, my needs, none of that stuff. So true, true. All right.

[01:59:16] So thank you for joining us. Uh, well, that sounds weird. Thank you for joining me, Ted, and talking about your, your grid experience. I hope, uh, you've had a great time and, uh, It was fun. I hope to be back on the show again real soon. This was a blast. Do I get a t-shirt or a patch? Get a big high five. Done. I want a hug. Come on. Come on, bring it on brother. We'll bring it on. All right. What about post-hike bruising brights?

[01:59:46] Uh, like I said, I, I hit up the, uh, Westkill to pick up this dead rabbit. Dry. I guess the emphasis is on dry Irish stout. So that's what I did this weekend. Oh, nice. I didn't really go anywhere. No, I didn't. Yeah. Cause I was in for romance. No, as we went through, uh, cobalt skill and that's about it. So awesome. Awesome.

[02:00:12] So once again, thank you for talking about your four 20 grid experience. Ted, uh, thank you to the monthly supporters and the monthly sponsors for donating to the show. Really appreciate you guys believing in the show. Thank you to everyone who has donated so far. And thank you one who everyone to is still listening to the show. You know, I thank you very greatly, but I think Ted does as well. Don't you? Yeah, I do. All right. So soon. Hope to see out on the trail folks.

[02:00:42] Yeah. Yeah. Let us know if you want to get out, uh, this weekend, I won't be out. Unfortunately, I have to work. Uh, we're going to be working on Saturday and Sunday. So got to do what you got to do, but hopefully next Tuesday, I will be out with my nephew. He is going to be going. He has a week off and then he's going to be a New York state trooper. So he has a long time of craziness. So I'm going to take him out. He wants to go hiking.

[02:01:10] I don't know where we're going to go hike, but I'm trying to think of something good. Maybe Hunter, get him some fire tower view if it's, if it's good, because that's a good push. He's going to push me. He's six foot eight and his stride is, is eight times the size of me. So it's going to be fun. So, so what, what happened to you? How come he got the good genes and you got shorted, you got shorted on these jeans? I don't know. He's a handsome dude. Oh yeah. Wow. Yeah. So he's going to, he's going to, hopefully we'll have a good time.

[02:01:39] So I'll be out on Tuesday. So if anybody wants to go out Tuesday, meet us wherever we're going, let me know. And Ted, you'll probably be out this weekend. So for sure. Can't wait. Going to hike that fresh snow. Just got to figure out where, got to look at my list. It's all about the list. It is all about the list. All right. So fly and bear pen over and over and over. Same spot. All right. So have a good night, Ted. You too, buddy. We'll see you next week. Do we have a guest? Next week?

[02:02:08] We might. Okay. We'll see you next week, buddy. Hi, everyone. I just want to thank you for listening to the show. If you enjoyed the show, subscribe and throw down a smooth review on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or any podcast platform that you use.

[02:02:31] You can also check daily updates of the podcast, hikes, hiking news, and local news on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and the official website of the show. Remember this. You got to just keep on living in the Catskills, man. L-I-V-I-N. Wicked. Wicked. Wicked. Wicked. Wicked. Wicked. Wicked. Wicked.