Continuing our series on fire tower mountains, Hunter Mountain is one of the two peaks in the Catskill Forest Preserve over 4,000 feet in elevation that offers spectacular winter vistas in addition to fire tower viewing. There are several approaches to Hunter Mountain, and our snowshoe route combines four trails to create an ideal eight-mile loop over the summit of Hunter that avoids potentially hazardous cliffs, ledges and drop-offs, interesting on a summer hike but not on a snowshoe.

If you prefer a shorter day, you can ascend 1,950 feet on the Spruceton Trail from Spruceton Valley to the summit in 3.4 miles, one-way. You could ascend the Becker Hollow Trail from Route 214, a more challenging workout because you ascend 2,200 feet in only 2.3 miles, with the first half-mile on level trail. Yet this approach, too, is without cliff-like ledges—unlike the famous Devil’s Path from Route 214 near the Devil’s Tombstone campground in Stony Clove, which has its name for a reason!1 Or you can take our route, accessing the Devil’s Path from Spruceton Valley via the Diamond Notch Trail. The Devil’s Path is uncharacteristically benign on the western side of Hunter Mountain, offering none of the daunting cliffs prevalent on the Devil’s Path in the Indian Head Wilderness, which we’ll feature later.

We recommend doing the loop counter-clockwise, ascending via the Diamond Notch Trail and Devil’s Path and descending the Spruceton Trail, because beyond Diamond Notch Falls there’s a tributary of the West Kill, easily rock-hopped in dry seasons but possibly challenging otherwise. Crossing spots are usually found a bit upstream. If you are ascending this route and you do find water too high and rocks too icy to attempt a safe cross, you can retrace and ascend the nearby Spruceton Trail, which has a reassuring wide bridge over Hunter Brook. You wouldn’t want to have hiked seven miles over Hunter and be unable to cross the tributary!

The Diamond Notch Trail from the end of Spruceton Road goes past lovely small waterfalls and ice formations for 0.7 miles to beautiful Diamond Notch Falls. You’ll continue straight, up a small rise, on the red-marked Devil’s Path. In other seasons you can admire the interesting rock at the top of the falls from the bridge. Do not cross the bridge to other trails; we’ll explore those in a later article.

Due to run-off in the mountain’s lower reaches, there may be wet and/or icy spots. The climb steepens and finally levels out, reaching a vista at Geiger Point, a rock ledge 1.6 miles from Diamond Notch Falls. Across the valley is the long ridge of trailless Southwest Hunter Mountain, added to the list of required peaks to climb for membership in the Catskill 3500 Club² in 1990. From here the trail loses a little altitude as it contours the slope at about 3500 feet on a narrow path through pretty evergreen woods; it regains altitude to another level section where the beginning of an old narrow-gauge railroad bed provides the best approach to the summit of Southwest Hunter.

In another 0.2 miles you reach the Devil’s Acre Lean-to, which faces the midday sun in winter, a fine spot to rest and snack; you might catch a day when ice shimmers on each tiny branch of deciduous trees surrounding this shelter. Just beyond here, you will access the Hunter Mountain Trail, leaving the Devil’s Path, and enjoy a beautiful gradual climb to the higher reaches of the mountain. If it has been snowy, the smaller balsam and spruce at this elevation may be entirely blanketed in snow. This high trail is especially beautiful in winter.

As the trail levels out, you soon reach the Spruceton Trail in a clearing where the original fire tower was located at the terminus of the Becker Hollow Trail. Here is a four-way junction where the unmarked path, left, leads shortly to outstanding vistas from 4,000 feet towards 3,880-foot West Kill Mountain and vistas south and east. (Take care on small ledges.) Back at the junction clearing, turn left toward the fire tower; the terrain is nearly level here and always a lovely walk in any season amongst dark conifers. The tower is open to climb, one of five renovated fire towers in the Catskill Forest Preserve. The fire observers’ summit cabin has been refurbished, and may be open on summer weekends when volunteer interpreters are there to answer questions.

Enjoy 360 degree views from the tower in the heart of the Catskill high peaks; the ski area is way below you! Northeast is the Blackhead Range, three peaks that just miss joining Hunter as 4,000-footers: Thomas Cole, Black Dome and Blackhead. Facing east you will see 3,655-foot Kaaterskill High Peak with its shorter companion, Roundtop; because of its proximity to the Hudson Valley, High Peak was long thought to be the highest in the Catskills. Southeast are the four Devil’s Path peaks: Plateau, Sugarloaf, Twin and Indian Head Mountains, where the Devil’s Path really gets devilish!

The Burroughs Range is south: Wittenberg, Cornell and Slide Mountains, Slide being the highest peak in the Catskills at 4,180 feet. This challenging and spectacular range is named after John Burroughs, born in 1837 in a simple log house near Roxbury called Woodchuck Lodge. He so loved these mountains that he wrote many essays and became a renowned naturalist, whose books were required reading in schools throughout the United States. He became friends with Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Theodore Roosevelt and John Muir, among other “movers and shakers.” Burroughs wrote, “Nature we have always with us, an inexhaustible storehouse of that which moves the heart, appeals to the mind, and fires the imagination—health to the body, a stimulus to the intellect, and a joy to the soul.”

From the summit, turn right and descend the Spruceton Trail. One mile down, it passes the Colonel’s Chair Trail, which runs from this trail to the top of the ski trails. On occasion, people miss the Colonel’s Chair trail on their descent and mistakenly end up in Spruceton Valley. One woman said, “You wouldn’t believe how many folks arrive here looking for Hunter…now I charge them for thirty-six miles round-trip to drive them back to their car!” We actually met one such man, walked him back up to the Colonel’s Chair Trail and shared our water with him.

Nice viewing west opens up soon where the John Robb Lean-to was located, but it burned in 2005 and was rebuilt just below here by Catskill 3500 Club volunteers along with New York-New Jersey Trail Conference members and Department of Environmental Conservation personnel. The off-trail approach to the lean-to involves a narrow descent through ledges, possibly difficult in snowshoes. Past the lean-to, take care approaching the new excellent lookout here.

Now the trail begins a very steady, sometimes icy, descent for 0.6 miles to the low point between Hunter and Rusk Mountains. Trailless 3,680-foot Rusk is one of the 3500 Club’s thirty-five required peaks. This is the halfway point from the summit; turn left here. (To the right was the old Hunter Road down Taylor Hollow.) The remainder of the Spruceton Trail is a delightful gradual descent with nice views through the trees over the valley. The wide bridge over Hunter Brook is reached half a mile from the first DEC parking lot; this last section is very attractive next to the rushing cascades of Hunter Brook. If you parked at the last DEC parking lot, road walk left for another 0.2 miles. (A final parking area is a snow-plow turnaround.)

¹The twenty-five mile Devil’s Path offers some of the most challenging hiking in the Catskill Forest Preserve, running over the summits of five high peaks—Indian Head, Twin, Sugarloaf, Plateau, and West Kill—and the shoulder of Hunter Mountain. In between the mountains are historic routes, now trails, linking villages south of these peaks to points north: Jimmy Dolan Notch, Pecoy Notch, Mink Hollow, Stony Clove (Route 214), and Diamond Notch. The Devil’s Path can be dangerous when wet or icy, and is fascinating in any season. We recommend the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference’s set of six Catskill Forest Preserve maps, www.nynjtc.org.

²The Catskill 3500 Club was founded in 1962 after Bill Spangenberger and Brad Whiting determined to organize a club to hike all Catskill peaks 3,500 feet and higher. Dan Smiley had compiled a list of these peaks, having studied the Bicknell’s thrush and its habitat, the balsam fir found above 3,500 feet. Using criteria adopted by the Adirondack Forty-Sixers to determine which Adirondack High Peaks in close proximity should count, it was decided that the Catskill high peaks must be at least half a mile apart and have at least a 250-foot drop between them. Thirty-five now qualify, and they decided that four of them—Slide, Panther, Balsam and Blackhead Mountains—must be ascended in winter. The Catskill 3500 Club offers hikes every Saturday and Sunday year around (except during big game hunting season) and introduces people safely to the joys of snowshoeing mountains. Visit www.catskill-3500-club.org for further information.

To Reach the Trailhead and Parking Area:

From Exit 19 on I-87 in Kingston, travel west on Route 28 for about 29 miles to the hamlet of Shandaken; turn north on Route 42 for about seven miles to the hamlet of West Kill. At a flagpole, turn east on County Route 6, Spruceton Road, for seven miles to the second DEC parking area on the right. Road walk another tenth of a mile to the end of the road, pass the barrier gate and sign in at a trail register on the Diamond Notch Trail. The first DEC parking area is on the left at 6.8 miles, the trailhead of the Spruceton Trail.

On Route 23A, travel to Lexington and turn south on Route 42 for four miles to the hamlet of West Kill. (See above directions from there.)

Carol and David White are authors of Catskill Day Hikes for All Seasons (Adirondack Mountain Club, 2002) and editors of Catskill Trails, 3rd edition: Volume 8 (Forest Preserve Series, Adirondack Mountain Club, 2005). Carol is editor of Catskill Peak Experiences: Mountaineering Tales of Endurance, Survival, Exploration & Adventure from the Catskill 3500 Club (Black Dome Press, 2008). Signed copies of all of these books are available at the Village Square Bookstore and Literary Arts Center in Hunter, NY. To order a copy, call 518 263 2050.