Overlook Mountain and Echo Lake
Where: Catskill Park, NY
# Days: 3
Mileage: 10ish
Mountains Bagged: Overlook Mountain
This time we decided to plan a more relaxing trip than what we usually do. During our planning meeting, Justin, Kyle, and I (Tania joined our group later) decided to choose a hike that wasn't as many miles, we weren't looking specifically to climb a 3500' peak, and we thought it would be really nice to be able to camp at a lake. We decided on Overlook Mountain to Echo Lake, a 4 and some change mile hike each way that would take us to some old house/lodge ruins, a fire tower, and Echo Lake,
one of only two named ponds protected as wilderness in the Catskill Park.
Friday night the 4 of use pull into the parking lot around midnight, which is right across from a beautiful Buddhist Monastery with prayer flags everywhere. We had read the trail was a popular trail, and that was confirmed by how many cars were in the lot. We got our stuff together, and decided to just hike about 10-15 minutes in and try to find a mountain flat spot of land to pitch our tents. The boys were in a 3 person tent, and Tania and I were in her new 2 person tent. After we got everything set up, we all crowded into the 3 person tent, and played rummy, drinking some wine and Washington Apples (a whiskey mixed drink that was amazing). Around 2am, we snuggled into our respected sleeping bags, and snoozed while it gently rained outside. Happiness :)
Saturday morning we lazily got out of our tents and packed up, with day hikers already marching up the hill. The climb up Overlook Mountain was well graded and easily traveled. Near the summit of the mountain are the ruins over Overlook Mountain House, an old hotel built 3 times, in 1833, 1875, (both times the structure burned down) and again in 1923. The final attempt, the building was never completed due to financial difficulties.
I cannot put into words, or pictures, how absolutely amazing it was to see these ruins. The size of the buildings (there were 2), and the details, even though most of the building was either gone, or never built, were unbelievable. The house was intended to be a hotel for tourism, for people to arrive to from cities and spend time in nature, which really excites me, especially with all the research I did for my thesis on the whole nature-human experience.
Nature has completely overtaken these ruins, which astounds me. Nature always finds a way to thrive.
This is a view of the other structure, smaller, I suspect was the caretaker's and/or workers' house. The inside was empty, and filled with plants, flowers, trees. You couldn't really walk into this structure like you could the main lodge.
Crumbly staircase inside main building. The main part of the hotel that you walk into has a huge fireplace, and these stair are to the right, taking you downstairs. Stairs to the right of the fireplace took you to what would be the second floor, and to another entrance to the building.
Just past the ruins is the summit of the 3,140 foot mountain. Atop the summit is a very popular fire tower on the west side, and a small cliff overlook on the west side. There is also a small building with information about the history of the Overlook Mountain House, as well as the snakes in the area! Overlook mountain is a protected habitat for Timber Rattlesnakes, but we were lucky and didn't see any snakes.
About 2ish miles past the fire tower is Echo Lake. The hike to the trail junction to the lake is pretty mild, more the hiking I like, though, with rougher terrain than the old jeep path up to the fire tower. Once you get to the trail junction, however, the sign says 0.6 miles to the lake, and I said it going down, and again the next morning going back up - that was NOT 0.6 miles, no way. At any rate, the steep climb down to the Lake was filled with loose rocks, which can be annoying, but once you get to the bottom, the lake is beautiful. It's small, with a trail all the way around the lake, littered with campsites. We had 2 tents of course, and had brought a slackline, so we needed a larger site with 2 large trees about 20 feet apart, which we found easier than I expected. Slackline set up, tents set up, as much filtered water as we could store, and we were ready for a relaxing evening.
The evening was filled with slacklining, eating a fabulous feast of fajitas, tortellini, salmon pasta, and brownies, more wine and Washington Apples, and since I'd brought my mp3 player and mini speakers, our evening was also filled with lots of good music. We slept under the stars that night with no rainfly on our tent, and in the morning had another amazing feast of scrambled eggs with bacon, scallions, tomatoes, potatoes, and cheese mixed in.
We ended our weekend with the traditional beer and truffle frites at the Dutch Ale House in Saugerties, NY, which I highly recommend to anyone in the area. I also would absolutely recommend this trip to anyone looking for a nice, low key backpacking route. I think I will probably go back again sometime :)
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More photos on my flickr page www.flickr.com/photos/theashface
