Today, Cathy and I went hiking on the trails near Delaware Academy in Delhi (pronounced DELL-high), New York.
The original plan had been to hike Mount Sherrill, a trailless peak in the Catskills reported to be fairly moderate as Catskill bushwhacks go. (Which is to say, a hard-core hike! Catskill bushwhacks are never easy!)
I spend way too much time yesterday worrying and re-re-doing the trip plan; somehow this one had me anxious. Cathy reported that she was uneasy, too, and neither of us knew why!
But the morning went fine right up to when I started loading the car. I couldn't find my trekking poles - which I knew I had less than a week ago, and I don't think I'd had the car out since. I checked the back seat of the car. I checked under all the seats. I checked the garage. I checked the corner by the door where I sometimes lean them. I checked my backpack, and under my backpack. I checked the gear shelf. I checked all the places multiple times. Nothing doing!
With my knees, I can't hike without poles, and eventually, I said, “There's no help for it. They're gone. We'll stop by EMS on the way out and get another pair.” We headed out, with me still berating myself, and got to the outfitter, which of course wouldn't open until 10 AM. Add 1.5-2 hours to get down to the mountain, and that's way too late a start when daylight is as short as it is.
We went back to my house to make other plans. I suggested that we might want to start on the CMC Hiking Trails Challenge a patch program for a set of relatively easy trails. (Not to be confused with their 350-mile All Trails Hiking Challenge which is for mountain goats only!
We got back, printed a couple of copies of the map and set off for Delhi to do the first set of trails - the set near the Delaware Academy. The weather started to look considerably worse than forecast: we got some spatters of rain and even a few flurries of snow, and decided that we were glad we weren't going to be at significant elevation.
As Cathy put it, “This is Someone Up There telling us, ‘all right, you both ignored the bad feelings that I gave you about this trip? Fine, I'll send a clearer message!’ ”
The trip wasn't terribly difficult, but it was strenuous. The trails up the hills had only piddly 600-foot (200 m) elevation gains, but because we were trying to do them all, we were doing several of them out-and-back and probably had a couple of thousand feet of elevation (600 m) gained as we hiked 7.5 miles (12 km) to map about 5 miles (8 km) of trail.
The area has charming names for trails and viewpoints, taken from the children's book My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George.
With the leaves off the trees, there were a couple of pretty views. The village of Delhi is charming from above!
More fun than Sherrill would have been trying to hurry and in marginal weather, so the change of plans was a good call!
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