Overlook

This has the makings of why I would not like this hike: excessive crowds, lousy parking, radio tower, and views of the Hudson Valley Mall. Despite this, Overlook happens to be one of my favorite mountains in the Catskills.

Today was not unlike previous hikes up. The lot was full and I could not find parking on the road. After almost triple parking, I squeezed in nice and tightly in between the trees and a car which required a Dukes of Hazard type exit from my vehicle.

"Cotton kills." Lately I have been refraining from this first rule of hiking (although I'm using the term hiking lightly here as Overlook is a friendly walk up on a beautiful day). Today I wore a beat up pair of Dockers and a cotton sweatshirt (this would be stupid in poor weather conditions).

The hike starts right across from a Buddhist temple 2 miles up the mountain from Woodstock. The trail up really is more of a dirt road than any thing else. Except it goes up relentlessly. In the good old days a friend and I would run up the mountain from Woodstock as a training run. These days, I walk up.

A lot of people were out. I passed quite a few people coming down and there is always that person that asks, "are we almost there yet?" when we have barely walk past the entrance gate. The trees were bare enough to expose some good views of the Devil's Path (my favorite part of the Catskills) and there were no signs of snow. Finally, at two miles I came across the remains of the Overlook Mountain House. This was a happening place at one time. Apparently, they originally constructed a hotel here in the 1830s. But the remains that exist today are from the versions that was built in 1871. It hosted President Grover Cleveland in the late 1800s and was used as a site of gathering for the Communist Party during the early part of the 1920s. That's got me thinking, "maybe I should start my own party to overthrow the current government."

After the hotel, the trail eases up and passes the radio tower and another half mile brings us to the overlook fire tower. It was quite windy and the top part was closed so I didn't stick around for long. As always the views were great. To the north you have views of the Devil's Path, High Peak (airplane mountain), the Tri-peaks (Blackhead, Blackdome, Thomas cole) and the Hudson River. I wasn't looking for it, but on a clear day Albany is visible. To the west, the central Catskills are visible (Slide Mt and Bellayre, which clearly had snow cover). To the south the Ashokan Resevoir, Cooper Lake (where Kingston gets there water), the Gunks and the town of Woodstock are all visible. To the east you can see the highest bridge in NY state (Kingston-Rhinecliff, although it doesn't look so from here), City of Kingston, the great Hudson Valley Mall, the Hudson River and the Taconics.

The walk down is fairly quick and surprisingly it didn't beat the shit out of my knees like it normally does. I was back to the car an hour and a half after I left it. Probably another reason why I love this mountain.