Winter Rusk

Timeline:

• 11:50 AM Start from Spruceton Road Parking lot
• 12:10 PM Begin bushwhacking
• 1:45 PM Summit Rusk
• 2:35 PM Summit East Rusk
• 3:20 PM Back on the carriage road

• 4:00 PM Back at the car

• Tracks: Strava, eBird
• Conditions: Cold (20s at the base, colder at the top) but windless. Mostly cloudy. Light snow (~1 in) at the base, deeper (~1ft) at the summit.

The first hike of 2025! One of my goals for this year is to complete my winter peaks. I have nine left. Four of those are typically done as pairs (Wittenberg/Cornell, North Dome/Sherrill) so, realistically, that’s seven hikes. Two or three each month will get me there, so with January half gone, I was eager to get up to the Catskills!

Alex had a Spanish interpretation session in New Paltz this morning, and we had aims to go out for dinner in Kingston for her birthday in the evening. Both of those are in the direction of the Catskills, so today was a good day for a hike.

Which one to do? Alex also had nine peaks left for her 3500 list, but they’re mostly not the same as mine. The only three in common are Rusk, North Dome and Sherrill. North Dome and Sherrill are a big hike that I’d like to save for the longer days in March. So Rusk made the most sense.

As this was our first winter hike in quite a while, there was lots of discussion and hemming and hawing over breakfast about whether to do it. Were we excited about it? Did we really want to do this? Was it safe? We read the post for my last hike up Rusk and it didn’t encourage us. But we eventually decided to give it a go, frantically packed our winter gear and made our way out the door. I stopped by Rock and Snow to buy some new gloves while Alex was doing her interpretation (I’d lost one of mine on the Devil’s Path last winter).

There was a light snow on our drive up. We listened to the 99% Invisible podcast episode Ancient DMs, about an enormous trove of cuneiform tablets discovered in ancient Ninevah, and how they paint an incredibly paranoid portrait of the ancient Assyrian king Esarhaddon. A memorable line from Alex: “Dan, I want to be an Assyriologist!”

From the road we could see that there was light snow on the ground but much heavier snow on the peaks. That proved our experience on the hike as well. I’d expected us to be the only ones on the mountain (it was a Friday morning), but there were quite a few cars in the Halcott lot as we drove past it, and a few in the Spruceton lot as well.

We were quite cold as we put on our gear in the parking lot, but we knew we’d warm up as we hiked and that it was best not to overdress. We put our snowshoes on from the get-go. They weren’t necessary at the base, but we knew we’d eventually need them and it was easier to wear them on our feet than carry them.

I was relieved to see that another hiker had signed in at the register for Rusk/East Rusk this morning. So maybe we’d have tracks to follow!

The turnoff from the blue trail was easy to find. After the bridge, right before the big turn. There were, indeed, tracks for us to follow coming off it. Soon we weren’t thinking at all about being cold. Quite the opposite! I took out my handwarmers for most of the ascent and alternated having my hat on and off.

There wasn’t much animal activity in the woods, but Alex was excited to see this snow flea:

As we gained altitude, the terrain grew steeper and we had to pull past a few rock ledges.

After one of the ledges, there was a sudden transition and there was much more snow. Alex said it felt like we were in a snow globe. It was quite beautiful. It really feels like a proper winter when you’re surrounded by that much snow.

Soon we were on the summit plateau. We had a bit of trouble finding the canister, but eventually we found the right tracks to follow and signed in.

Now a decision: did we want to do East Rusk or go straight back down? It was 2pm and sunset was just before 5pm. I figured we’d worked hard to get to elevation, we may as well enjoy the snow some more. Even if it was dark by the time we left, we’d at least be back on the carriage road before sunset.

It was lovely hiking through the snowy woods. We saw our first birds of the day up here: a few Hairy Woodpeckers. I enjoyed seeing the Hemlock nursery completely covered in thick snow.

We made excellent pace and were back at the car by 4pm. We were the last ones to leave the parking lot. We drove down to Kingston and finished the day with a delightful birthday dinner for Alex at Chleo.

Despite our misgivings, we had a lovely time and were both glad we did the hike. I posted on the Catskills Trail Conditions and someone asked whether I’d checked out the view. I hadn’t, but I do see a star on the Avenza map just to the west of the summit. Next time!