Blackhead Mountain - Winter hike #2 (03/19/2011)

This is the one mountain that during the Winter season seems to cause the most anxiety. That probably has a lot to do with the fact that an experienced hiker died there last year during a "freak" 8 foot snow storm. A number of different "perfect storm" issues had come together to cause that tragedy, but I had assured all of my family that voiced their concern about us that if anything didn't appear to be safe, we would turn back and live to climb another day. Having climbed most of these mountains by myself, I know that I have tempted fate from time to time and taken several chances. It's a little different when you are responsible for someone else's safety... When we reached the trail head in the morning, it was significantly colder than the previous day's hike and we had dressed accordingly. I had planned it out to take the red blazed Black Dome trail up to the col between Black Dome and Blackhead, push on to the summit (notice how the DEC sign in the picture to the lower left points up?) and then come down the back side of Blackhead along the Escarpment Trail. I have been over Blackhead on the Escarpment twice before and knew to expect an extremely steep descent.

The trail up climbs continuously through hardwood forests and is aided by a couple of "switchbacks." True to form, our "clear but cold" weather at the bottom changed to near blizzard conditions for about 30 minutes near the top. About an inch of snow accumulated quickly before it all blew past and and the sun came back out. It's this unpredictability that gives this northern Catskill Mountain it's reputation in Winter.

We actually ran into two people along the trail that I had previously climbed with back in the Fall. It truly is a "hiking community" of people that love these mountains and come back time and time again.

At the summit, we met up with a group of SUNY Delhi students who had climbed up from the direction that we intended to go down (the steep backside of Blackhead). They passed on to us their concerns about the treacherous ice conditions that they had encountered on the way up and were nice enough to oblige us by taking our summit picture. I did listen to their comments, but I still thought that we could press on down through the icey conditions. I guess that the next clue that should have registered with me is that the trail down literally starts off a small cliff. At the bottom of this cliff, we met three other climbers who were adamant that they had so many problems getting up, they warned that our trip down would be extremely dangerous without ropes and an ice axe.

So... remembering what I had promised, we turned around and went back down the way that we had come from. We had made it to the summit so that qualifies the climb. The way that we come back out doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. It was actually a longer distance than the route that I had projected, but hey... we didn't slide off the back side of the mountain. We made it safely back to the car, pulled off all the climbing gear and set the GPS to take us to the Mountain Brook Inn over a peaceful back roads country drive. There aren't many places that you can still get Genesee Beer on tap. So, taking that into consideration and the interesting conversation (Sandy can truly talk to anybody) with a bartender who has a reputation for knowing everyone made for a good finish to this mountain.

The dinner that was included in our package at the Alpine Inn was.... (Of course) Corned beef and Cabbage. What else could you expect in the mountains of New York over St. Paddy's Day weekend? It was by far the best that we had eaten during the trip but it was only just one part of a multi-course dinner that was fantastic. We staggered, full of food, back to the room to prepare for our one last day of climbing...