What is the point of hiking if you can’t enjoy it, too?
Long Path Sections 12 - 14 : Wurtsboro to Witch's Hole
This is the seventh installment of a series on section hiking the Long Path. The adventure begins here, and you can read the previous installment here.
Wurtsboro to the Shawagunk Ridge
Climbing up to the Shawagunk Ridge was a thrill after multiple days walking woods roads or rail trails or road-roads. The narrow path wound through scrub oak and blueberry bushes and dramatically exposed slabs of rock where we could sit out and rest like lizards. We climbed down to a stream and dropped in the can of Coors and bottle of orange juice we had been too exhausted to drink in the motel the night before so they could cool while I soaked my feet again. Frequent applications of achingly cold water seemed to be helping.
We passed a really nice campsite on the ridge set back from the trail in a stand of trees hours before we were ready to settle down for the night, and reluctantly walked on. We stopped again at the fire tower further along on the ridge. There were multiple flat areas around the base and it would’ve been fun to stay and enjoy sunset and sunrise here, although we had been hoping to make more progress.
We ate dinner at the base of the tower while we waffled and as we were finishing up, leaning towards calling it a day and putting up the tent, a couple came up from a side trail that led to a parking area less than a mile away. What if a whole influx of people washed over us in the next hour? It was Friday night and the tent sites we were considering had no privacy.
We mosied on, just as someone else emerged near the tower. A bit further on we passed up what I thought was another mediocre tent site too close to the fire tower, but I started to regret it when we walked and walked and the ridge was thick with shrubs in every direction, with no level, clear ground in sight.
The light was enchanting—soft, golden, and we had plenty more of it, an hour or two at least, so we kept walking. But a night on the ridge was not to be. We dropped down into a woodsy area again and found a flat spot under some trees just as the sun set.
Shawagunk Ridge to Witch’s Hole State Forest
We broke camp quickly and set off without coffee. I gripped my hiking poles in one hand and chewed on a bar in the other. It was easy, grassy walking to start. Up ahead at the first rocky outcrop E made us a pot of coffee and hot chocolate. It was a breezy, clear spring day. Ticks were appearing on our skin and clothing with distressing regularity.
It was the day of magic moving goalposts, and by magic, I mean confused. I thought the first road we crossed was a different road, but we were in fact four miles further away from that road than I thought. Up, up, up, we climbed. A ravine fell away on our left. It was a lovely bit of woods, but without the breeze on the ridge, hot and sticky, and we were still climbing.
Then suddenly, the trail dropped down to a waterfall with endless tiers like a mossy wet wedding cake. This was as good a place to stop for lunch as any; better than most, in fact. Once I coaxed E to take a break, I stripped down for a quick dip, as he worked out the sobering miles math. ‘What is the point of hiking if you can’t enjoy it, too?’ I argued.
The water burned it was so cold. But shallow, too: I had to sit to go under fully and it was scary and vulnerable, going in backwards like that.
We started hiking again, sooner than I would have liked. Tense, purposeful hiking. More climbing, crossed another road, but still had one more to go. Finally, up ahead, we could see the visitor center! A bathroom! We were very excited about pooping in a bathroom.
Waiting in line with the shiny, clean day hikers, we saw it: A flimsy paper sign tacked up, showing a spider’s web of red trail closures with our destination for the night in the center. We used the facilities and then approached a DEC employee about the sign.
‘Is the Berrypicker Trail still closed?’ I asked. The woman behind the desk said yes and suggested we hike out to Ellenville—four miles back in the direction we had just came, to that very first road. Shock, horror: We were screwed and needed to get off the trail.
Desperately, I gestured at a different sign under the glass on the desk which didn’t show the Berrypicker Trail closed, and asked if she was sure. The woman sighed and said she would go check. While she was gone, another DEC employee came up and we asked her. Berrypicker had recently been reopened! Hurrah! But not the trail after that, Mine Hole Trail. That was closed after a fire last fall, and would be for a long time.
More DEC employees came up to confer. One of them kindly offered to take me to the office in the back to look up the reroute (our phones predictably had no service). ‘We’ve got a Long Path hiker,’ she explained to curious colleagues, like I was a rare bird. It was probably harder to find than it should be, even though someone there had actually helped the NYNJTC design the reroute. But we did find it and she drew it out with a highlighter on a flimsy paper map of the park, up to the point where the map ended. We would have to figure it out ourselves from there.1
I could immediately see that the reroute went nowhere near the one place in this section it is legal to camp, Witch’s Hole. To complete the official reroute we would have to retrace almost 5 miles tomorrow morning, and the cumulative distance to our next planned campsite was more than 27 miles.2 It was more than we wanted to walk and probably more than we could walk. Or we could skip part of the reroute and take a ‘shortcut’ instead, but that would still make for a very long day—over 20 miles. I knew we could do that, if we had to, but I didn’t want to, and I knew E didn’t either.
That was a problem for tomorrow. For the time being we just needed to get to Witch’s Hole (which unfortunately sounded like a dark, dank place to camp). Then we could decide if we wanted to push on or end our hike early in Kerhonkson, call a cab, and go back to the city.
I told E our options, doing my best to hold back tears, and then sent him to make sure the trail we needed to take for our ‘shortcut’ tomorrow was really open, because if I talked to the DEC employees again I was sure I would cry. We didn’t even buy the popcorn or the Gatorade we were so excited about before. Then I cried anyway while walking up the horrid wide road up to Sam’s Point, while day hikers looked at me askance.
We still had many hours of incredible hiking ahead of us.
Sam’s Point was fine. The ice caves were closed, which I was disappointed about, but it saved us from choosing between adding more miles to do a fun side trip and getting to camp at a reasonable time. Verkeederville Falls was beautiful and dramatic, but crawling with day hikers. We paused briefly for a snack but sunset was coming so we continued on and left all the people behind.
We were tired and discouraged but the next section was possibly one of the best, most beautiful trails in New York I’ve ever hiked, and we had it to ourselves.
Minnewaska closes at night and there’s no camping allowed in the park, so the trails far from the parking lot were now empty, totally empty. We followed the ledges on the aptly-named High Points trail: view after view after view. We scrambled up and over the distinctive white layers of rock, each outcrop connected by soft narrow paths lined with bouncy pine needles. From the highest of high points we could see the distinctive silhouette of the Devil’s Path to the north. Now that was a tearful trip—at least the first night was. I quietly considered how much stronger I was now.
We turned on to the Berrypicker Trail, and stopped to prepare dinner (two Knorr Broccoli Cheddar Pasta Sides, an easy, comforting favorite of ours) in the lee of a small boulder. Then on, on, on again. We were tired but the terrain was gentle enough, except for all of those exposed slabs of rock to clamber over.
We climbed down to the carriage road, which was not dark and hemmed in like we expected but open and wide and bright, even in the fading light. There was even a lovely view out to the setting sun. But we were racing twilight to Witch’s Hole.
It was well and truly dark once we passed off the carriage road and out of Minnewaska, and hard to find a good campsite. We started to set up the tent in a spongy spot, but E found a wide, flat, dry clearing that other campers have used, so we moved. My headlamp was failing, wan and dim, so I switched out the batteries to see properly as we unpacked: much better.
Once the tent was up and our cozy sleeping bag unfurled, I walked back to the shallow stream and waded in gingerly in my sandals, letting the cold water flow gently over and around my tender toes. I sat on a rock and pulled off the band aids, pocketing them before the water tugged them away. Water bugs flitted around in the beam of my headlamp, as the dipper above come into focus.
Hike it yourself, from NYC
Short Line runs late afternoon and evening buses to Wurtsboro and the Wurtsboro Park & Ride, which is about 2 miles from the trail, but apparently not on the weekend, so you might have to travel up on a Friday and either spend the night at the Day’s Inn (a half mile from the Wurtsboro Park & Ride), or night hike up to one of the first camp sites on the ridge. The road walking is along a busy highway but it’s manageable, and there are local taxi services you can call if you want to skip that unpleasantness.
If you want to end your section hike at Witch’s Hole—which we considered—there is a trail that looks like it will take you right into Ellenville, where there is a single weekday morning bus to Port Authority. BUT, according to Google maps, this trail is CURRENTLY CLOSED. I only mention it here because I can’t find any other details about the closure or when the trail may reopen, but if this option is of interest I suggest reaching out to DEC. You can try the contact info for Witch’s Hole State Forest here. I can’t vouch for this option, I’m just sharing it here in case it is of use to someone at some later date.
Otherwise you can continue hiking on the Long Path/Long Path reroute out to Kerhonkson, where you can catch the weekday morning Short Line bus to Port Authority, or call a cab to New Paltz, where Trailways runs more frequent buses back to the city.
If you’re hiking a longer section starting in Monroe, you can mail yourself a resupply box to the Wurtsboro post office (there aren’t a lot of thru hikers on the trail so the post office is NOT used to this and gave us a hard time about it because they couldn’t immediately find our box on the shelf for general delivery, even though it was right under their noses, but they did have it). Or, if you’re not picky about what you eat you can resupply at the Stewart’s.
It did not occur to me at the time to go back out to E and get our paper maps of the trail and use those, for some reason. I was a bit frazzled.
I didn’t actually calculate this figure until writing this post. I could just look at the map and knew it was too much for us.