Adirondack Peeks Winter 2024

Climbing the County High Points of New York State Frank Sutman, #8900 T ired of worrying whether you will find a weekend park ing spot at the Loj? Concerned about overcrowded high peaks trails? Yearning for the olden days when a “trailless peak” was truly trailless and required good plan ning and navigation skills? If you answered yes, you may be interested in taking on the 62 county high points of New York State. I gradually became interested in list climbing or peakbagging with my pursuit of the Adirondack 46 and then the high points of the 50 US states. I completed the 46 in 2015 and achieved 46 state high points by 2017. By then I decided that I was getting a bit too old for moun taineering, and I would stick to hiking. County high points intrigued me. Many of these are seldom visited. New York has 62 counties. My retirement in 2019 allowed me more time to get out and explore. Between October 2019 and June 2022, I completed the New York list. Ten county high points are within the Blue Line. You’re already familiar with Marcy (Essex) and Seward (Franklin). If you have completed the Adirondack/Catskill fire tower challenge you have climbed Snowy (Hamilton), Lyon (Clinton), Gore (Warren), and Black (Washington). Let’s not forget Hunter (Greene) in the Catskills. So, you’re al ready seven high points down with 55 to go. This is where it gets more interesting. Pigeon (Fulton) and Tenant (Saratoga) require some bushwhacking. Matumbla (St. Lawrence) and the Herkimer County high points re quire long and arduous bushwhacks. The Herkimer County high point is so remote it doesn’t even get a name. More on that later. There are nine county high points I would consider to be in the Catskills. I had only climbed Slide Mountain (Ulster) years ago. My first trip after retirement in the fall of 2019 al lowed me to climb Hunter (Greene), the Northwest Peak of Bearpen Mountain (Delaware), and Huntersfield (Schoha rie). It was October and the leaves were close to their peak! Beech Mountain (Sullivan) is in the southwest part of the Catskills. This was a gated road walk followed by a short bushwhack and was a rare case where the topo map was wrong. The high point indicated on the topo map was most definitely not the highest ground. The map was about 200 yards off. In some cases, the county high point may be on a county line, rather than an actual summit. Not this time. The Catskills

Frank Sutman, Herkimer High Point

one-day marathon. We performed a circuit to visit all five of the New York Borough high points, plus the high points of Nassau and Suffolk Counties on Long Island, on a beau tiful, warm Sunday. There wasn’t much hiking, but lots of navigating on busy roads. We racked up over $50 in tolls! My favorite was Battle Hill, the highpoint of Kings County (Brooklyn). This is at the top of the historic Green-Wood Cemetery, with striking views of lower Manhattan, the Stat ue of Liberty, and the Inner Harbor. In May of 2020 I climbed Morgan Hill (Onondaga) with 46ers Membership Chair Jim Houghtaling. Morgan Hill State For est is just east of I-81 and south of Syracuse. It comprises a large ridge with several trails and numerous bumps along the top. We visited a bump identified with a lovely sign pro claiming it to be the highest point in the county. The only problem was it wasn’t. We reached the true high point, less than a mile away, after a moderate bushwhack. In some cases, the highest point may not be obvious, or might change. Albany County’s high point used to be Hen ry Hill. Apparently enough of it was removed by a mining operation to give the new distinction to nearby Pond Hill. I visited Pond Hill on a subsequent trip. Steuben County in the Northern Allegheny plateau has two equivalent high points, as they are both defined by a 2400-foot contour line. Call Hill and Jackson Hill are officially equal. When in doubt, visit both! The official high pointing “rules” state that all candidate high points should be visited. Morgan Hill We're Not Sure

New York City

The pace picked up for me in January of 2020. I met up with fellow 46er Mick Dunn and his friend RuthAnne for a

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