The Beautiful All Be It Wet Catskills...

Last year we backpacked into the Adirondacks to camp and hike. It was a bit rougher than expected, so this year we decided to stay at a campground and hike from there. We picked the Catskills because they were relatively close. We found a nice campground with showers and bathrooms, right in the the middle of some of the best peaks. We got to the campground a round 12:30 Saturday. The plan was to set up and hit the trail. We were shooting for the Summit of Mt. Wittenberg. We hit the trail at about 1:20, we were hoping for about 4 hours up and back. The trail wasn't bad for the most part, that is until the last mile or so, when it went straight up. At one point

we thought we lost the trail, we didn't lose the trail, it just went straight up a rock face. There were a few of these ledges along the way, which were fun, but difficult.

We finally found ourselves on the summit at about 4:00.

The views were worth the effort.

Our efforts were not without sacrifice, but still worth it.

We got back to camp and enjoyed a nice dinner and a few beers, then went to crash. We had more hiking in store for Sunday. About 1:00am it started to rain, then it started to thunder storm. Brian is not a fan of thunderstorms so he was a basket case. I checked the weather before we left and they were calling for scattered thunder storms. Well they were not scattered, they were concentrated right in the valley we were staying in. It was relentless.

We got a tiny break in the rain, and were able to make coffee, but it didn't last long. Finally we decided to go into town and get breakfast. We were also looking to buy a pop up. We had no luck in the little town, so we drove a half an hour to Kingston and found what we were looking for.

We got back to camp and set it up. We were now able to cook dinner. As most people know, pop ups are for shade, so it started to leak, just a little, but it was probably going to get worse. We had a couple of little breaks in the rain and managed to stroll around the campground, but then it started to rain and storm again.

Finally we talked to the ranger and let us know it was supposed to rain all night and into the next day. We decided, enough was enough. We started packing up at 6:00 and were on the road at 6:30. We were a bit disappointed, but it made no sense to stay another night in the rain, just to pack up in the morning.

One of these days we will go camping and hiking and stay the whole time planned. In fact we are planning to hit a couple sections of the AT in the fall.

Hoping for abundant sunshine,

Cheers,

Buddy