Blackhead Mountain

Blackhead Mountain lies right next to Black Dome Mountain, which we just did two weeks earlier. Blackhead has a good range of difficulty in it, with nice, steep inclines on the way up and down. I look forward to these hikes because I like challenges and Blackhead Mountain is one of them. My friend Travis decided that he would like join me again! I told him to be ready, because this one was going to be difficult! The picture above is of Blackhead Mountain from Blackdome Mountain.

The day was hot, humid and hazy. Sunny and at a temperature of 85 degrees was going to make this hike even more challenging. But we were ready with a lot of water and food. The beginning of the hike to the trail junction is flat and runs along the Batavia Kill creek, which at times, can be dangerous to cross at high waters. It's a good way to start a hike. Let your muscles warm up before you get to the challenging parts. After the junction you start increasing in elevation, but not too much. Once again, enough to slow you down just a bit. After a little bit of the slow elevation gain, the fun begins.

All of the sudden, it starts getting very steep. Very challenging parts of the mountain start to hit you right away and you find yourself climbing up some of the steepest parts of the Catskills. In less than a mile, you gain over 1000 feet in elevation. Sometimes you are pulling yourself up the roots of trees to get up and over the rocks. At about halfway up the steep parts you hit this beautiful view of part of the Hudson Valley:

The small hill in the middle is Round Top Mountain in Cairo. There are two Round Top Mountains, one in the Kaaterskill Mountain Range and this one outside of the Catskills. Pretty amazing hill in the middle of nowhere right? As you can see, it was extremely hazy so we couldn't see the Hudson River or different mountains from other states. There's another viewpoint on the top so I guess we'll keep on climbing!

It was still very steep as we continued to climb. The only place we knew where the steep climb would stop, is the top. These climbs definitely wear you down a lot. Especially in hot weather. We would climb up a section, then stop to catch our breath. Climb again, then stop. Here's another picture of the hard areas that we had to encounter:

After all that steep climbing, we finally found ourselves on the top. We celebrated by giving ourselves a couple minutes to enjoy our victory and drank more water to keep us hydrated. Our next stop was the viewpoint on the east side of the mountain. They call it Camp Steel. When we got there we were once again blown away by the view:

Definitely a great place to have lunch. The good thing was that the wind from the Hudson Valley was hitting us so it gave some relief from the hot, humid air. We took our time enjoying the stunning view, as we both knew this wasn't the end. We still had to climb down the mountain and it wasn't the same way we came up. Now this part that we are going down wasn't as steep as the way we came up, but it would still be a challenge. It also offered a great view on the way so we were excited. Sometimes you regret that you have to decent back down the mountain because your knees are punished from the hike up. When you start going down, your knees feel like jello and you tend to be flimsy and loose your footing. Both Travis and I are prepared for this because we take extra time on the way down. Falling on your face while going down the mountain would not be pleasant in any way.

Sometimes while hiking you notice some cool stuff along the way. Like different sized trees, animals, insects, colors and many others. I noticed this beautiful rock formation on the way down. It was so cool to see how this evolved over time:

As you can also see to the top of the picture, the steepness of the area we were climbing down. At that point, we also came upon a beautiful viewpoint of Blackdome Mountain!

This beautiful view also shows the stunning and challenging Devils Path:

After the viewpoint, it was still challenging going down. Our knees didn't feel great and I think the humidity was sucking all the energy out of us. Luckily, soon enough we were at the trail junction in the Lockwood Gap. After that it is a very easy walk back to the trail head. On the way down we saw these beautiful views of the creek and butterflies! Since the water was low, the moss was covering everything! Another awesome hike!!