Sherrill and North Dome
So the week before, I had climbed North Dome Mountain. I was planning on doing both North Dome and Sherrill with Travis, but he backed out the night before. Well wouldn't you know it, Travis is back asking if I could do North Dome again, along with Sherrill. I had to do it, because when I did North Dome the previous week, I bailed out of doing Sherrill because of the horrible black flies. Most people do both mountains together. It's easier to do them both on one hike. If you separate them, you have to climb each mountain up, then back down. With climbing them together, you climb up one and back down another. This usually requires two cars, so Travis and I drove separately, parking one car at the other trailhead.
Both North Dome and Sherrill are bushwhack hikes. They have no trail and you have to use either a compass and a map or GPS to find your way to the top. Travis and I usually study the maps before we go on hikes, so we know where to go without using anything to help us. Like identifying ridges or certain gains in elevation. We were both getting better and better at it. We knew that when we started, we had to go over a creek then head east up the ridge. Well, that's just what we did!!
After the horrendous deal I had last week with the black flies, we prepared ourselves this week with bringing head nets. We looked silly, but instead of hating every second of the hike, we actually enjoyed most of it. I'll tell you what we didn't enjoy later on.
Even though it's only been a week, the green was popping out even more than it was on the last hike. It was full blown spring now. You could barely see through the trees and that made us happy. It's cool in the winter when you can see through the trees and locate other surrounding peaks, but the cold and the lack of color gets old. Seeing the green leaves pop out is one of those feelings that you get when you live up in the north east. That feeling of the summer coming is just great. I can't describe it.
After we hopped over the creek, we headed up the ridge and began a continuous climb up Sherrill Mountain. It wasn't too steep, but it was steep enough. It wears you down here and there, but if you can keep pushing yourself, you can make it up the mountain in good time. There's a viewpoint on the southern side of Sherrill, but Travis and I didn't find it. I think we didn't look hard enough. We might of been in the wrong place also. Oh well, the mountains will be there the next time we hike and so will the viewpoint.
As you keep getting higher on Sherrill, the trees get shorter and older. Up in the higher elevations of the Catskills, the trees kinda have this 'I'am possessed' look. They almost make it look like a horror moive scene, because the branches are all twisted and short. You also run into very interesting and unique rock formations on the way up. Like this neat little seperation of the ledge that makes it looks like a hallway or maze!
And this ledge that had fallen off and shows layers of rock that formed millions and millions of years ago.
We still had a decent amount of gain to get to the top, but it wasn't bad. It was actually quite pleasant! Almost all of the mountains on the 3500 list have a conifer forest at or near the top. It's an amazing site when you reach the conifers. The scent is different, the scenery is different and the feel is different. I really can't explain it. It also gives you that signal that you're near the top, or that you've hit a certain elevation in the hike. But..... Sherrill doesn't have a conifer forest at the top, so we didn't have that 'special' feeling. Sherrill has it's own feeling though. It's a weird, dark feeling, but it has a feeling. Kinda of like a dark, heavy metal song that you love and everyone else hates. Sherrill is like that. Not many people like her because she doesn't have a view or a conifer forest, but I am one of the few that like her!
Sherrill also had a dark feeling because of another factor. The day before, one of my favorite musicians passed away. Chris Cornell, lead singer of the band Soundgarden, committed suicide. I was a 90's kid and I loved grunge from the start. Soundgarden was one of the biggest bands of gunge scene. We dedicated our sign ins on the top of Mount Sherrill to Chris Cornell. RIP.
After signing in and having a good snack to re-energize, we headed on over to North Dome. The hike going form Sherill to North Dome isn't that difficult, but it has a marshy, boggy area in the middle. This area is tough to avoid and at this early time in the spring, it was filled with black flies, flies, mosquitoes, almost everything. It was horrible. We moved quickly through the marshy area and started to go up North Dome. Now the week before, I went up the east side of North Dome, which is an extremely steep hike. This was a walk in the park compared to that. A decent uphill gain, the wind thinning out the bugs and what made it even sweeter: the conifer forest when we got closer to the top. That feeling hit us. But it was more than a feeling when I smell that conifer forest while hiking...
We reached the canister signed in and tried to have lunch. With tried, I meant we took a bite, then put out head nets on. Took a bite, then head nets back on. We had to repeat this over and over again, till we were done. When you're moving, the black flies and bugs are trying to catch up to you and they aren't that annoying. When you're not moving, they are all over you. Relentless. While having lunch, my phone started to ring. I looked at Travis and said, "What the hell? This is odd/" It was Jessica's uncle calling me through facebook. Funny thing is that he barely uses facebook, so that made it even weirder. I chatted with him telling him that we were hiking and it was amazing that I even got a signal on top of the mountain. After chatting and food, we headed to the viewpoint on the south eastern side of North Dome
Above is the view overlooking some of the southern Catskills. The sharp, taller mountains in the photo are Wittenberg, Cornell and Slide Mountain. All are part of the great Burroughs Range.
Looking into the south eastern parts of the Catskills.
Just like last week, we spent a very short amount of time at the viewpoint. The bugs were horrible and ruining almost every minute of the hike. Our original plan was to go back up to the top of North Dome and descend down the norther ridge, almost right back to the car. Well, at that time we both really didn't want to climb back up, so we just decided to descend right off of the viewpoint. It was risky, but doable, because I had done it last week. Here's a photo of how steep it was:
The ground was very wet from recent rainfall and everything was starting to grow in, so step by step down this steep area was tricky/ Travis slipped on a rock and flew straight into the air. Luckily, he landed right onto his backpack and it softened the blow. If he didn't have his backpack, we would of hit his back straight on the rock and we would of been in a lot of trouble. We took every step carefully and finally made it down to the flatter part of the mountain. Around 1,000 feet of elevation loss in under a half a mile. That's steep!! But, this is where it got interesting.
When we reached the flat part, it was very open and we kept seeing a decent amount of bear scat here and there. Fresh too. We started looking a little closer and we could see that there were big rocks flipped over everywhere. Not just every 15 feet, but everywhere around us. And it was recent. I looked at Travis and said, "Keep your eyes open, they're close and we've got to keep moving." The bears had flipped the rocks looking for grub. Since they just recently came out of hibernation, they are probably pretty hungry. We didn't see any on our way though :-( The flat area where we descended into was also very wet and marshy. After about a half a mile we eventually came upon a small pond which starts to drop down into Mink Hollow.
At that point, I knew where we were and we were getting close to the trail of Devils Path. This trail would lead us back to the parking area. Unfortunately, we still had about a half a mile of road walking to get to our car. If we had taken the ridge down, it would of led us straight to our car on DEC land, but we took the steep way down and ended up further away. Oh well, it was a beautiful walk along the road and listening to the flow of the West Kill creek was relaxing. My knees hurt, but it was still relaxing.
32 of 39. Only 7 more climbs to go!!