Kaaterskill High Peak - South Access

Challenging and dangerous. I've done Kaaterskill High Peak(we're going to call it KHP to make things easier) a while back. Since I had done it alone, I went the easier way up to avoid any accidents. Travis still needed to climb it for the 3500 club and I decided to join him, but we were going to do a different route than I did the last time. A more challenging, dangerous route.

When I did KHP before, I did the north access route. This was a longer hike than the south access, but it was also less challenging. Since I hiked alone, I decided to do the easier way than the hard way. Now that Travis is hiking with me, I wanted to do the south access. This is considered to be the most difficult climb in the Catskills. The last 200ft or so is almost near vertical with 400ft before that being a very difficult and dangerous climb. Overall, 600ft in about .3 miles. Super steep!

We also planned on looking for the second plane wreck on the eastern side of KHP. Last time I couldn't find it, so this time I was going to try harder to locate it. I had the coordinates and my GPS on my phone to locate it.

It was a beautiful day. Warm, maybe in the mid 70's and mostly sunny with clouds rolling through. The first 3/4 of the hike goes over a private, muddy road, a short bushwhack through an Indian camping area and a snowmobile trail. After the snowmobile trail, you have to navigate your way to the top. Some people call it a bushwhack, but the trail is there. It might not be marked, but you can tell where it is and follow it to the top. A bushwhack, but, to me, not a true bushwhack.

Also, KHP is well known for its high population of Black Bears. We didn't see any on this hike, but they were definitely in the area earlier:

There's a lot of history in and around KHP. We had to take a turn off of the private road and hike through a place called Indian Camp. This is a place just below KHP where the Indians camped. Since KHP is the closet to the Hudson Valley, it was the first high peak discovered in the Catskills. For awhile, some thought it was the highest peak. Later, when they started to explore more of the Catskills and technology improved, it was found out that it was 22nd highest peak in the Catskills. Nowhere near the highest. It's unique shape made it stand out over the other high peaks.

A little after Indian Camp we had to take a left onto the snowmobile trail and head towards the south access turn. On the way there, you get to see the remnants of a plane crash that happened back in 1987. Three people died on that plane due to bad weather and poor navigation.

A little further down from the plane wreck was a cairn marking where we had to turn and finally go up KHP. Man was it massive!!

So we took the turn and headed up KHP. At first, it slightly started to gain in elevation but not for long. Not even a tenth of a mile later and we were hitting massive climbs. This wasn't steep like the rest of the Catskills. The rest of the Catskills have sections to climb. Usually it's steep then level. KHP was one steep climb. Just one. For a perspective of how steep it was, here's a few pictures:

That's what it was like almost all the way up. Steep, steep and steep!! The second picture is the beginning of the hike, the first is the last super steep area. Challenging all the way up. Loose dirt, slippery rocks and....steep!! This steep area leads all the way up to the beautiful Hurricane Ledge. Hurricane Ledge is a huge area on the side of KHP that was caused by a massive wind storm that occurred in or around the 1950's. Winds exceeded well over 100mph, blowing down a huge chunk of trees on the south side of the mountain. This wind storm made a stunning viewpoint on KHP:

A view that you'll never forget. The weird thing was that it wasn't too windy at the top. The clouds were flowing over us very fast but where we were, it was just a little breeze. It was perfect. The sun was out and we thought this was a good place and time to have lunch. We sat here for probably over 30 minutes just staring and pointing out peaks. Hurricane Ledge looks over the Indian Head Mountain Range and the Hudson Valley. In the photos above, the Hudson Valley is far left, then it goes Plattekill and Overlook Mountain, Indian Head Mountain, Twin Mountain and Sugarloaf Mountain. It was a phenomenal view and a great place to have lunch.

After that, we headed to the actual top of the mountain. It wasn't much further up, only .3 miles and about 100ft in elevation till you get to the summit. When we reached the summit, I had to find out which way to go to look for the crashed airplane. Since it's not marked on any maps, I had to look it up on my phone and fine the GPS for the wreck. Once I had a general idea of where it was, we started heading east and followed a heard path down. A heard path is not an actual marked trail, but a place that has been traveled on a good amount of times that it shows on the terrain. We started to descend a little bit and I got worried that we were going the wrong way. I said "Naw, we're going the right way". The heard path faded and we actually started bushwhacking. We came to these big ledges and I said, "Hmmm, whats over here?" Well, we came to this:

What a view!! The ledge couldn't even fit both Travis and I. About the size of the hood of a car. But I guess one small ledge equals one great view!! The top photo shows the whole view, which has Kaaterskill Clove, the Hudson Valley, Plattekill Clove and the start of the Indian Head Mountain Range. It was magnificent!!

After the view we kept bushwhacking down the mountain. Steep ledges, loose and slippery rock, thick trees and blowdown from the wind were all over the place. It was very difficult especially when there's no path. But that's the best thing about it: there is no path. We had to make it ourselves.

Further down the mountain I looked on the phone to see where we were in terms of where the second plane crash was located. I told Travis that its right over here, about 15ft away. We ventured over and we found nothing. We looked around in the same area for awhile and found nothing. I went online later to find out if I had the wrong GPS location. I didn't. I guess we didn't search hard enough. The plane is leaning up again a ledge and it is covered by trees. This plane crash is the oldest known in the Catskills, so that explains why it's sort of hidden. I'll definitely be back to search this again.

We kept bushwhacking off the of the steep area of KHP and finally got onto flatter land and eventually made it back to the snowmobile trail. From there on it was a walk in the park compared to the other areas we had to climb before. When we were done, we stopped at a place not far from the trailhead called Hell's Hole:

This is a massive area of very large rocks and waterfalls that has been building up for thousands and thousands of years. It is a very, very dangerous area. That's why they named it Hell's Hole. A lot of deaths have happened here and almost every area is dangerous to navigate around. We didn't go any further than below the bridge just to check things out. We didn't want to take a risk. Really cool site to visit and look from the top of the bridge, but don't go much further than that!!