Trip/Event Location: Hunter, NYUS
Trip Leader(s): shep5
Max # People: 10
Trip Guiding / Event Fee: No, I will not be asking participants for money
Difficulty Level: Strenuous
Join me for this loop hike over the Indian Head Mountain Range and its Devil's Path...Twin and Indian Head Mountains. We'll start from the Prediger Road Trailhead ascending Twin Mountain (3640')
Take Exit 20 off the Thruway (I-87) and take Route 32N for 5.8 miles. Turn left for Route 32A and follow for 1.9 miles. Take a left for Route 23A West and continue for 6.9 miles. Turn left onto Railroad Ave in Tannersville. Follow this for 5.7 miles as Railroad Ave becomes Spruce Street and then subsequently County Road 16. At Prediger Road, turn left and follow to the end.
Look for a grey Hyundai Elantra.
For GPS Users: 42.134147,-74.103752 (trailhead on Prediger Road).
On Saturday, September 21st, I arrived at the trailhead at the end of Prediger Road at about 8:40AM. Shortly thereafter, one of the Andrews arrived. We waited for the other Andrew until about 9:15 and he wasn't there yet, so after leaving a note on the car, we headed up the trail. Driving in that morning the area was mostly sunny but the peaks, we were going to climb, were in the clouds. Heading up the trail we quickly came to the split for the Jimmy Dolan Notch and took this trail up to the col between Indian Head and Twin Mountains. This trail was mostly modest in grade initially but as we approached the notch it steadily steepened and became more rocky. We reached the trail junction for Twin Mountain in the col at about 10:30AM and took the trail up to Twin. As we climbed the peak, there was a view eastward to Indian Head and as we progressed further we made it to the mostly open summit of the first Twin with its south and west views. It was now about 11AM and we headed over the the other Twin peak, which is actually the higher of the two. This only took us about 20 minutes to reach the open ledge just beyond the peak. This provided nice views to Sugarloaf to the west and into the wilderness to the south. Initially the peak was clouded over, but it did clear while we were there. It was very windy and chilly though. We took a short snack break, but decided to have our lunch back over on the other Twin, since we had to backtrack across it to head over to Indian Head. On the way back we finally ran into Andrew...he had not followed our path, but instead traversed Indian Head on his way over to the Twins. Anyway, it was nice that we were all together. Andrew continued onto the other Twin, while we would have lunch on the first Twin and wait for him. All back together again, we headed down off of Twin back to the col between the peaks. We were back there by a little before 1PM and we started up Indian Head, which is less than 0.5 mile to the summit. There were minor views near the summit...a view to Overlook Mountain could be seen, but the majority of views were past the peak. We reached a really nice granite ledge, which supposedly provided great views, but unfortunately, it was mostly clouded over. Continuing on we descended a few very steep sections and by 2:30 we reached the final ledge, which had some great views down upon Platte Clove and over to Kaaterskill Peak. From here it was a fairly easy hike back to the trail junction for Prediger Road. We reached out cars again at 4:30PM. As we were about to all head out, we were approached by a young woman, who had locked herself out of her car. We tried our best to help, but ultimately she had to call the police. After this we called it a day, so Andrew and I could drive down to Woodland Valley to camp overnight. Thanks, Andrew and Andrew for joining me and making this a very memorable hike!
Outdoor Fitness Level: Very Strenuous
Outdoor Fitness Level: Moderate to Strenuous