Plateau Mtn (Catskills)

OK, I know its not in Connecticut, but I thought I'd describe my hike anyway. CT400 purists can skip on. I was in the Catskills for the Catskill 3500 Club dinner (http://www.catskill-3500-club.org/). The club does litter clean-up on Rt 214 through the notch as a way of giving back to the Catskills. It usually doesn't take all that long and we were done in 90 minutes which gave me time to get a hike in before dinner. Since I was already in the notch I thought I'd follow the Devil's Path east to the summit of Plateau. The climb out of the notch is pretty steep and goes on for quite some time. You gain about 1800 ft in just over a mile. Once up on the ridge however there is a great view point that looks out over the notch toward Hunter Mountain. It was a beautiful spring day so the firetower on Hunter was easy to see as were most of the other peaks in that direction. Shortly there after there is another view point that looks north with good views of the northern peaks. Plateau is well named, it has a long, mostly level, summit ridge, with the "true" summit being on the eastern end. Once up on the ridge I found the trail to be snowy/icey and so it wasn't as easy going as I expected. I had traction devices (stabilicers) but it didn't seem worth putting them on. As I moved along the trail I realized I wasn't going to hit the summit before my turn-around time of 2 PM (I didn't want to miss the cocktail hour before dinner!). I readjusted my goal and settled on finding the end of the new Warner Creek trail junction. This trail was recently completed to reroute the Long Path off of Rt 214 and I'd never seen it. I got there right at 2 PM. I hear its a pretty nice trail, have to check it out some time. The trip back to the viewpoint went quickly but the trip back down to the notch seemed to take forever. By the time I was down I had a nice case of sewing machine leg! The club dinner was fun as usual but it meant a drive home pretty late. I've found that listening to books on tape makes the drive go faster and keeps me alert. This trip I listened to podcasts of science fiction stories from Escape Pod (http://escapepod.org/). This is pretty much my favorite podcast. They broadcast science fiction stories. The readers are excellent and they have a great selection of stories (>150). The guy who runs it, Steve Eley, has a wonderful sense of humor and finds a great selection of stories and readers. Well recommended. A good choice for those long drives to the trail head. Hopefully next week I'll have another CT400 hike to tell you about.